Part 8 (2/2)
A more foolish and undignified proceeding, however, than this ”Bill of Pains and Penalties” can scarcely be conceived. Its fate might almost have been predicted from the first. The second reading was carried on the 6th of November, by a majority of twenty-eight, but the third (for the reasons already given) by a majority of nine only; whereupon, the Earl of Liverpool said that, ”had the third reading been carried by as considerable a number of peers as the second had been, he and his colleagues would have felt it their duty to persevere with the bill and to send it down to the other branch of the legislature. In the present state of the country, however, ... they had come to the determination not to proceed further with it.”[45] The victory will be acknowledged by us now-a-days as damaging as a defeat; but the result, curious to relate, was hailed by the queen and her party as if her innocence had been triumphantly vindicated. In signing a doc.u.ment prepared by her counsel on the 8th of November, she wrote, ”Carolina Regina,” adding the words, ”there, _Regina_ still, in spite of them.” The abandonment of the bill was followed by three nights of illumination; but it was observed that they were of a very partial character, wholly unlike those which had greeted the great victories by sea and land, in which the public sympathy was spontaneous and universal. The mob in some cases testified its disapproval when these signs of satisfaction were wanting; and one gentleman in Bond Street, on being repeatedly requested to ”light up,”
placed a single rushlight in his two-pair-of-stairs window. Some of the transparencies were, as might have been expected, of a singular character. A trunk maker in the same street displayed the following new reading from Genesis: ”And G.o.d said, It is not good the King should reign alone.” A publican at the corner of Half Moon Street exhibited a flag whereon, in reference to the unpopular witness Teodoro Majoochi, was depicted a gallows with the following inscription:--
”_Q._ What's that for?
_A._ Non Mi Ricordo.”
An enthusiastic cheesemonger at the top of Great Queen Street displayed a transparency on which he had inscribed the following verses:--
”Some friends of the devil With mischief and evil Filled a green bag of no worth; But in spite of the host, It gave up the ghost And died 53 days after birth.”
The caricaturists of course were not idle, and the trial of Queen Caroline provoked a perfect legion of pictorial satires. The queen's victory is celebrated in one of the contemporary caricatures (published by John Marshall, junior) under the t.i.tle of _The Queen Caroline Running down the Royal George_; while on the ministerial side it is recorded (among others) by a far more elaborate and valuable performance (published by G. Humphrey), called, _The Steward's Court of the Manor of Torre Devon_, which contains an immense number of figures, and wherein the queen is seated on a black ram[46] in the midst of one of the popular processions, the members of which carry poles bearing pictorial records of the various events brought out in evidence against her.
It is one of the peculiarities of our ”Glorious Const.i.tution,” that while the ministers who acted under his direction incurred all the blame, the prime instigator of all these exposures was enabled to shelter himself behind the backs of his ”advisers.” The ministers were unpopular,--they deserved to be so, for, whatever might have been the consequences to themselves so far as loss of office was concerned, they should have refused from the first to lend themselves to the publication of a scandal so utterly grievous. The king himself at this time was far from unpopular; the odium he had incurred the previous year by the thanks he had caused to be conveyed to Major Trafford, ”and the officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates” of the yeomanry who had signalized themselves in the ma.s.sacre at Manchester (an outrage which, by the way, led to a number of pictorial satires), seemed to have wholly pa.s.sed away. He was at Ascot only two days before the queen's arrival, and ”was always cheered by the mob as he went away. One day only a man in the crowd called out ”Where's the Queen?”[47] Again, we find on the same authority, that on the night of the 6th of February, 1821: ”The king went to the play (Drury Lane) for the first time, the Dukes of York and Clarence and a great suite with him. He was received with immense acclamations, the whole pit standing up, hurrahing and waving their hats. The boxes were very empty at first, for the mob occupied the avenues to the theatre, and those who had engaged boxes could not get to them. The crowd on the outside was very great.... A few people called 'The Queen!' but very few. A man in the gallery called out, 'Where's your wife, Georgy?'[48] His reception at Covent Garden the following night appears to have been equally loyal and gratifying.
The truth was, that the numerous and truly honest people who sympathized with Queen Caroline, did so from little admiration for herself, but because she had been the victim of twenty-five years' persecution; because, however great her follies, they had been grievously provoked; and above all, because they felt that the man who was her most powerful and relentless persecutor, was the very last who was justified in casting a stone against her. The ministerialists and their supporters, however, attributed the sympathy which was shown by her professed admirers exclusively to a political origin, and thus stigmatized the motives of their opponents (with more justice than poetry) in one of the jingling rhymes of the day:--
”What's the Queen to Reformists? as Queen was to France, Round her head and her consort's they'd equally dance.
They care not for Caroline, nor king, nor for queen, A pretext they want their intentions to screen, 'The Queen!' is the Radicals' rallying cry; A queen bears the standard the king to defy.”
How entirely unfitted this mistaken woman was to figure in the august position of a queen of England may be judged from her subsequent conduct. Instead of contenting herself with her victory, such as it was, she had the ill taste, in spite of the remonstrances of her friends and advisers, to communicate to the Lord Mayor, through the medium of her ”vice chamberlain,” her intention to proceed to St. Paul's in a public manner on Wednesday, the 29th of November, there and then to offer up her thanksgivings for the result: and this resolution she actually carried out. The details of her procession, which really reminds us of the entry of a company of equestrians into some provincial town, need not be entered into here; suffice it to say that it comprised trumpeters without number, stewards' carriages, gentlemen on horseback, the corpulent queen herself, with her attendant, Lady Ann Hamilton, and the indispensable Alderman Wood, the whole closing with ”the various trades with flags and banners.” It would appear to us that one of the rarest of the caricatures on the ministerial side has reference to this triumphal entry. It is labelled, _Grand Entrance to Bamboozlem_, and was published by Humphrey shortly afterwards. The queen is represented at the head of a procession, all the members of which (herself included) are mounted on braying ”jacka.s.ses.” A figure, intended no doubt for Alderman Wood, habited in a fool's cap and jester's dress, holds her by the hand; the lady who follows him, playing on the fiddle and wearing a Scotch bonnet, is meant for Lady Ann Hamilton (she is named ”Lady Ann Bagpipe” in the sketch); Bergami (immediately behind) carries a banner inscribed ”Innocence”; and next him, his fat sister, whom the queen had dignified with the t.i.tle of a countess; Venus and Bacchus appear amongst the crowd, and are labelled ”Proteges and bosom friends of Her M----y.” She is welcomed by an enthusiastic body of butchers with marrow-bones and cleavers; while among the crowd waiting to receive her we notice Orator Hunt and the other popular leaders of the day.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Face p. 81._]
And here we drop for the present the subject of Queen Caroline, a subject we have approached with caution, although conscious that it can be by no means omitted from a work treating of graphic satires of the nineteenth century. That she should now accept the 50,000 per annum which she had previously refused, will probably not surprise the reader.
The end of a career so strangely undignified will be seen when we come to treat of the caricatures of George Cruikshank.
The duel between the Dukes of Buckingham and Bedford; the erection of the statue of Achilles in Hyde Park; the new Marriage Act; the second French invasion of Spain under the Duc d'Angouleme; the Tenth Hussars; Miss Foote, the celebrated actress; Edmund Kean; and the commercial distress of 1825-6, afford subjects for the pencils of the caricaturists, and will be mentioned in the chapters which relate to the graphic satires of the brothers Cruikshank.
GREEK WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
The pictorial satirists were kept fully employed by the political events of 1827 and 1828. The former year beheld the sanguinary Greek war of independence. Things turned out badly for the over-matched Greeks, until at last Great Britain, France, and Russia interposed with Turkey on their behalf. The proposals offered were such as the Turks refused to entertain. The Porte, in refusing them, maintained that, though mediation might be allowable in matters of difference between independent states, it was utterly inadmissible as between a power and its revolted subjects. The allied powers then proposed an armistice, demanding a reply within fifteen days, plainly intimating that in the event of refusal or silence (which would be construed into a refusal), they should resort to measures for _enforcing_ a suspension of hostilities.
BATTLE OF NAVARINO.
In the meantime arrived at Navarino the Egyptian fleet, consisting of ninety-two sail, including fifty-one transports, having on board 5,000 fresh troops. Ibraham Pacha's attempt to hoodwink the British, and to land these troops at Patras, was foiled by the vigilance and determination of the English admiral. Disappointed in these attempts, he proceeded, in the teeth of the warnings which had been given him, to execute his orders to put down the insurrection on land, and carried them out with merciless atrocity,--ravaging the Morea with fire and sword. Resolved now to bring matters to an issue, the combined fleets in October, 1827, entered the harbour. As was expected would happen, the Turks fired upon them, and then ensued the famous battle of Navarino, in which, after a four hours' engagement, the Turkish and Egyptian fleets were annihilated, and the bay strewed with the remains of their ruined vessels.
Russia declared war against Turkey the following year, and we meet with many miscellaneous caricatures having reference to the conflict which followed. In one, published by Maclean (without date) ent.i.tled, _Russian Bears' Grease, or a Peep into Futurity_, we see the Russian bear running off with Greece in spite of England, France, and Austria. Another (also without date), is labelled _The Descent of the Great Bear, or the Mussulmans in a Quandary_. In a third (also without date), called _The Nest in Danger_, we see Turkey sitting on a nest marked ”Greece”
disturbed by Russia, whilst the British lion stands looking on at no great distance, discontentedly gnawing a bone labelled ”Navarino.” By the time peace was concluded between the belligerents in 1829, England would seem to have realized the fact that she had been made the tool of Russia, and this is the obvious idea intended to be conveyed by the satirist in another caricature (also without date, but bearing obvious reference to the same subject). The Porte is represented in the act of _presenting a bill of indemnification_ to George the Fourth.
CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL.
The princ.i.p.al political topic remaining to be noticed is the Catholic Relief Bill of 1829, a measure forced upon the king, the ministry, the church, and the aristocracy by the imperative force of circ.u.mstances, directed by the prescience of a minister who, sharing at first all the objections of his colleagues, felt nevertheless that a large portion of his Majesty's subjects were labouring under disabilities and fettered by restrictions inconsistent with the boasted liberties of a free people; and that such a measure, in the face of the political changes which had been loudly demanded for a long time past, could no longer be delayed.
It is not surprising, however, that Wellington and his colleagues, following out the maxims of a Whig policy, should be viewed by their own party somewhat in the light of traitors. Accordingly we see them figuring in this character in some of the caricatures of the day, one of which (one of the ”Paul Pry” series), published by Geans in 1829, may be cited as an example of the rest, and shows them to us in the act of _Burking Old Mrs. Const.i.tution, aged 141_.
In this and the two preceding chapters we have attempted to give an account of some of the leading events of the first thirty years of the century, ill.u.s.trating them by reference to a _few_ of the miscellaneous caricatures of the period. We have adopted this method of arrangement because, if our theory be correct, it was during this period that the art of caricature continued to flourish, and it is from this period that we date its speedy decline and downfall. We think that the prime cause of this decline may be traced to the fact that George Cruikshank, the best of nineteenth century satirists, had by this time resigned the art to follow his new employment of an ill.u.s.trator of books; we think, too, that caricature received an additional impetus in its downward progress by the secession from the ranks of its professors of the veteran Thomas Rowlandson, who, although he did not die until 1827, had virtually given up caricature in favour of book ill.u.s.tration[49] many years before. Further ill.u.s.tration of some of the events already related, and of others to which we have no occasion at present to refer, will be found in the chapters devoted to the work of Isaac Robert Cruikshank and his brother George.
A considerable number of the caricatures which belong to the first quarter of the century have an anonymous origin; whilst a large proportion are due to William Heath, who, either in his own name, or often under the distinguis.h.i.+ng hieroglyphic of ”Paul Pry,” contributed largely to the political and social satires of his day. Other caricaturists of the period were H. Heath (hundreds of whose comic sketches were collected and published by Charles Tilt), Theodore Lane, and his friends Isaac Robert and George Cruikshank. To these names we must add those of the last century men who continued their work into the present, James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, George Moutard Woodward, C.
Williams, Henry William Bunbury, Robert Dighton, and others. Some idea of the industry of the nineteenth century satirists may be gathered from the fact that the ”Paul Pry” series of political satires of 1829-30, alone number some fifty plates, which in our day can rarely be purchased at three times their original cost.
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