James
Gillray
Checklist Part 3
43
Presages of the MILLENIUM; – with – The Destruction of the
Faithful, as Revealed to R: Brothers, the Prophet….
Published by Hannah Humphrey: June 4, 1795
Etching and aquatint, hand-colored
Slightly more than a month after he issued Light expelling Darkness,
Gillray, parodying a Benjamin West drawing, Death on a Pale Horse (1783),
portrays Pitt as Death riding a white Hanoverian horse, wielding famine
and destruction. An imp wearing the feathered coronet of the Prince of
Wales kisses Pitt’s bony behind. Pitt’s steed tramples Whig
politicians, including Fox, Sheridan, and William Wilberforce, who clutches
a document, “Motion for a Peace” (the Opposition had continued
to press for peace with France during the 1795 session of Parliament).
Also crushed underfoot are some pigs, alluding to Edmund Burke’s
comment in Reflections on the French Revolution that learning was being “trodden
down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude” (that is, the general
population). While Gillray was alarmed by the Whigs’ sympathy for
the French cause and distrustful of the radical British societies, he
hardly toed the Tory line (except after December 1797, when he was on
the ministry payroll), and his antipathy for Pitt was often quite evident.
The apocalyptic imagery refers, as well, to the predictions of Richard
Brothers, who believed the French Revolution was part of a divine plan
and fulfilled the prophesies of Revelation. Brothers, later deemed criminally
insane, warned that if George III and the nation challenged the Revolution,
they would be destroyed.
44
The REPUBLICAN-ATTACK.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: November 1, 1795
Etching, hand-colored
On October 29, 1795, a mob attacked the King’s carriage when he
was on his way to open Parliament. The mob clamored for peace and bread
and chanted, “Down with Pitt,” “No George.” A
stone or perhaps a shot from an air-gun broke a carriage window. Gillray
here presents his own version of these events. The coachman is William
Pitt, who furiously drives the carriage onward, and tramples Britannia
in his haste to escape the attacks of the ragamuffin Whigs, Fox and Sheridan.
Lord Landsdowne fires a blunderbuss at the King, while the mob pelts
the carriage with debris and a cat. The King appears oblivious to these
alarming events. Gillray’s message seems to be double-edged: he
is disturbed by civil unrest, but he is aware that British constitutional
freedom could be jeopardized by the Ministry’s response to dissension.
45
COPENHAGEN HOUSE.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: November 16, 1795
Etching, hand-colored
The English historian M. Dorothy George observed that Pitt’s popularity
was at a low point in 1795, with “dearth and unemployment, and
military and diplomatic misfortunes … [and with] the activities
of the Radical societies at their height.” In addition to the attack
on the King’s coach, there were a number of public mass meetings,
including a November 13 gathering at Copenhagen Fields on the outskirts
of London, organized by the London Corresponding Society. This society,
as George notes, pressed for annual Parliaments and universal male suffrage,
attributed the famine to the “cruel and unnecessary war,” and
demanded the recognition of “the brave French Republic.” Gillray
offers his own eyewitness account of this event, with radical speakers
attacking two Tory-sponsored bills, the Treasonable Practices Bill and
the Seditious Meeting Bill. The former allowed words, written or spoken,
as well as acts, to be judged treasonable, and the latter put restrictions
on meetings of fifty persons or more.
46
The DEATH of the Great WOLF.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: December 17, 1795
Etching with engraving and roulette, hand-colored
In this brilliant parody of Benjamin West’s The Death of
Wolfe (1770), Gillray comments on the Treasonable Practices Bill and the Seditious
Meeting Bill, a day before they became law. The dying hero General Wolfe
has become William Pitt, surrounded by Tory ministers and supporters,
including the bespectacled Edmund Burke and Secretary of War Henry Dundas,
always wearing Scottish tartan. Messengers race toward the “dying” Pitt
to tell of victory (“We have overcome all Opposition!”),
but in Gillray’s mock-heroic print the victory over the revolutionary
sans-culottes (in the left background) is a farce. Gillray suggests that
the government, with its arsenal of legal weaponry restricting individual
liberties, vastly overreacted to the threat posed by the small group
of dissenters. The idea for this print may have been suggested by the
Reverend John Sneyd, a minister and country gentleman, who was a friend
of Gillray’s and often acted as a liaison between the caricaturist
and George Canning, an ally of Pitt’s who served in the Tory government
in various capacities beginning in 1794.
47
The DISSOLUTION; or – The Alchymist producing an AEtherial
Representation.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: May 21, 1796
Etching, hand-colored
Economic conditions improved in 1796, and Prime Minister William Pitt’s
own political career prospered. Though the general elections were uneventful,
Gillray offered this satire on the dissolution of Parliament in May of
that year. Backed by the power of the Crown (the bellows) and Treasury
gold (“Treasury cole”), the alchemist Pitt transforms Parliament
into a government completely subservient to him. The Prime Minister here
has become a “Perpetual Dictator.” Surrounded by the accoutrements
of “wizardry,” Pitt sits on a miniature military barracks,
a reference to a long-standing prohibition against the building of barracks
for fear it would lead to military despotism. With little time for war
preparations, Pitt had allowed barrack construction without Parliament’s
approval or proper Treasury supervision.
48
Promis’d Horrors of the French INVASION, – or – Forcible
Reasons for negotiating a Regicide PEACE. Vide. The Authority of Edmund
Burke.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: October 20, 1796
Etching and aquatint with engraving, hand-colored
Gillray addresses several issues here: fears of an impending French
invasion, the current peace negotiations between Prime Minister Pitt
and the French, and Edmund Burke’s alarmed response to these negotiations
in his Reflections on a Regicide Peace. In this outrageous satire, Gillray
depicts the Whigs as British Jacobins, who collaborate with the invading
French army and import the French Revolution to fashionable St. James’s
Street in London.
While the Palace burns in the background, Fox scourges Tory Prime Minister
Pitt, tied to a Liberty pole. The Prince of Wales has been tossed from
the balcony of White’s (a club, primarily frequented by Tories,
on the left), soon to be followed by his brother, the Duke of York. The
Whigs on the balcony of Brooks’s (a club favored by the Opposition)
operate a guillotine, which has already claimed several victims, including
Foreign Secretary Baron Grenville, whose head and ample hindquarters
hang from a pole below. Edmund Burke is tossed in the air by a bull (a
reference to the radical, cattle-breeding Duke of Bedford), while playwright
and Whig politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan skulks into Brooks’s
with the “Remains of the Treasury” and “Requisitions
from the Bank of England.” Below White’s balcony, two Tories
hang from a lamppost: on the left, Robert Jenkinson, later Lord Hawkesbury,
and on the right, George Canning, like Jenkinson a member of Parliament
and a future Prime Minister, who had been eager to appear in a Gillray
caricature. There is often more than a hint of theater lurking in Gillray’s
confabulations, suggesting that his message should be taken both seriously
and with humor, an implied reproof of Tory scare-mongering.
49
End of the Irish Invasion; – or – The Destruction of
the French Armada.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: January 20, 1797
Etching and aquatint, hand-colored
From the beginning of the conflict with France, the British feared a
French invasion. In October 1796, the King warned against such a threat,
which was dismissed by the Opposition as a fantasy. However, on December
15, 1796, a French force of 15,000 troops with an armada of ships, led
by General Lazare Hoche, sailed from Brest and anchored in Bantry Bay
off southern Ireland, assuming that their invasion would prompt a popular
uprising against the British. Like the Spanish Armada two hundred years
before, this plan was undone primarily by stormy weather. The winds in
Gillray’s version emanate from (left to right) the mouths of Prime
Minister Pitt, Secretary of War Henry Dundas, Foreign Secretary William
Wyndham Grenville, and War Minister William Windham. One ship, Le
Révolutionare with a Fox figurehead, is tossed by wind and waves, the L’Egalité is
swamped, and the Whigs aboard The Revolutionary Jolly Boat appear doomed.
Beginning in September 1796, Gillray began to sign prints after his
own design: “inv: et fect” (“invented/created” and “made/engraved” it).
Prints executed after a sketch or idea of another bore the annotation: “d:
et ft,” “des: et fect,” or some variation, or Gillray
simply left the print unsigned.
50
SEARCH-NIGHT; – or – State-Watchmen, mistaking Honest-Men
for Conspirators. – Vide. State Arrests.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: March 20, 1798
Etching with engraving, hand-colored
Gillray again associates the Opposition with radical societies and implicates
them in plots against the government. On February 27, 1798, several Irish
radicals and a member of the London Corresponding Society were arrested
at Margate on the southeast coast of England before they could embark
for France to press for another invasion of Ireland. One of the conspirators
was executed, but the insurgents’ leader, Arthur O’Connor,
was exonerated, largely on the testimony of several members of the Opposition.
O’Connor later admitted his guilt in the invasion plot, a confession
considered by Gillray scholar Draper Hill to be “perhaps the most
damaging blow ever sustained by the Foxites.”
Gillray shows plotters Fox and Sheridan clambering up a ladder; the
Duke of Norfolk is preparing to follow the Duke of Bedford up the chimney,
while other conspirators (Horne Tooke, Nicolls, and Tierney) hide under
the table as Prime Minister William Pitt and Secretary of War Henry Dundas
break down the door. Only the tall and always erect Lord Moira, who had
charged the King’s troops with brutality in Ireland, stands his
ground. Evidence of their guilt is strewn about the room: bonnets
rouges are stacked in the corner, and everywhere there are incriminating documents: “Plan
of Invasion” (signed “yours O’Connor”), “Proceedings
of the London Corresponding Society,” and “Bloody News from
Ireland.” On the wall there are portraits of “Buonapart” and “Robertspier” (Robespierre).
51
MIDAS, Transmuting all into Gold [Gold crossed out] PAPER.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: March 9, 1797
Etching, hand-colored
A shortage of gold and a run on the Bank of England, triggered by the
attempted French invasion of Ireland, an actual landing in Wales, and
mounting war costs, led Pitt to suspend cash payments and substitute
paper money. Pitt is portrayed here as an all-powerful colossus Midas,
straddling the Bank of England (resembling a privy), gorged with gold,
spewing forth paper money. Tory putti proclaim the “Prosperous
state of British Finances.” In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, only
the reeds and his barber knew Midas’s secret: in exchange for the
golden touch he was given donkey’s ears (“for his Ignorance”),
which he kept hidden under a turban. The reeds here conceal whispering
Whigs, including Sheridan and Fox. In the background, a flotilla of ships
leaves Brest harbor, while an army of tiny French Jacobins, armed with
daggers, swoop up into the sky.
52
POLITICAL-RAVISHMENT, – or – The Old Lady of Threadneedle-Street
in danger!
Published by Hannah Humphrey: May 22, 1797
Etching, hand-colored
In another satire on the currency crisis and the substitution of paper
money for gold, Gillray personified the Bank of England as the “Old
Lady of Threadneedle-Street.” While he was undoubtedly inspired
by Sheridan’s reference to the bank as “an old woman courted
by Mr. Pitt,” the witty epithet, still in use, was Gillray’s
own. Pitt makes very improper advances to the terrified elderly maiden;
his hat partially hides a list of loans, alluding to the Whig accusation
that Pitt intended to spend the nation’s gold on war.
53
The Apotheosis of HOCHE.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: [January?] 11, 1798
Etching with engraving and roulette; plate roughened with sandpaper (?),
hand-colored
A general in the French Revolution at age 27 and an implacable foe of
England, Lazare Hoche led the ill-fated invasion of southern Ireland
and planned incursions into Wales and Scotland. When he died in 1797
of consumption – or possibly as the victim of poison – his
passing was observed in Paris with elaborate funeral celebrations and
extravagant speeches. In this “apotheosis,” based on a suggestion
from the Reverend John Sneyd and John Hookham Frere, a contributor to
the partisan Tory Anti-Jacobin Review, Gillray satirizes these lavish
obsequies, while he conjures up echoes of Michelangelo’s Last
Judgment.
However, sacred references are here perverted. Hoche plucks on a guillotine-lyre,
surrounded by Jacobin putti, wearing bonnets rouges, and is flanked by
martyrs and victims of the guillotine. Floating above is the “Jacobin
Decalogue,” which consists of an inverted Ten Commandments, instructing “Thou
shalt Murder … Thou shalt commit Adultery … Thou shalt Steal …,” all
sanctioned under the motto “Equality” and illuminated by
a sunburst of daggers and bayonets. Below, the Republican army continues
to kill and lay waste to the land, assisted by a venomous winged Fury.
This remarkable print has been described as “probably the most
elaborate ‘cartoon’ ever published.”
54
London Corresponding Society, alarm’d. – Vide. Guilty
Consciences.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: April 20, 1798
Etching and aquatint, with engraving
The London Corresponding Society pressed for annual Parliaments, universal
suffrage, and an end to the war with France. The Treason and Sedition
Acts, however, led to changes in the Society’s membership: the
middle-class and moderate members withdrew, leaving the more radical
elements to carry on with increased secrecy. On February 28, 1798, Irish
insurgents planning a French invasion were arrested at Margate; Gillray
includes O’Connor, Binns, and Evans on the list of those detained.
The last two were members of the London Corresponding Society. Thomas
Evans was actually arrested later, on the night of April 18, 1798, and
the next day the remainder of the Committee of the Corresponding Society
was also detained.
As the scholar David Bindman points out, Gillray wanted to suggest an “association
between the United Irish, who had assisted the French to gain a foothold
in Ireland … and the revolutionary English republicans who formed
part of what was left in 1798 of the London Corresponding Society.” The
grotesque, scarcely human plotters, startled to read about the arrests
at Margate, recall Johann Caspar Lavater’s theory that character
was reflected in physical appearance (see also #65). By skillfully utilizing
the effects of aquatint, Gillray suggests that the members had to retreat
to dark cellars to plot their treachery.
55–56
United Irishmen in Training.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: June 13, 1798
Etching and aquatint, hand-colored
United Irishmen upon Duty.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: June 12, 1798
Etching and aquatint, hand-colored
The year 1798 was marked by a breakdown in peace negotiations with France,
heightened fears of invasion, and alarm at the radical activities of
the “enemy within,” confirmed by a month-long Irish rebellion
beginning on May 23. As early as 1791, societies of “United Irishmen” had
pressed for freedom from Britain and for parliamentary reform, but by
1795, their numbers fortified by the working class and peasants, they
had become more radical and secretive. The arrest of a number of their
leaders in 1798 sparked the summer revolt, which was eventually suppressed
by government troops, with more than 25,000 lives lost. Gillray imagines
Irish troops practicing their military skills in the top print, and pillaging
and perpetrating atrocities against innocent peasants in the bottom etching.
He peppers both prints with references to French influence, suggesting
that the uprising was a Jacobin plot. These prints were also intended
to encourage young Englishmen to volunteer in the militia and the army.
57
The Tree of LIBERTY, – with, the Devil tempting John Bull.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: May 23, 1798
Etching, hand-colored
Charles James Fox was Gillray’s favorite villain, the personification
of the British radical Jacobin. However, David Bindman points out that
Fox was, in fact, “a Whig gentleman who had espoused constitutional
reform,” “argued eloquently on behalf of basic human rights,” and,
for some radicals, was overly sympathetic to the establishment. He challenged
the excessive power of the King, welcomed the French Revolution, and
opposed the war with France, which he saw as a “crusade against
freedom in the interests of despotism.” Yet he insisted on the
sanctity of private property, believing that land ownership was the basis
of an aristocracy, and that a country with an aristocracy would prosper.
For Gillray, Fox is here the biblical serpent, tempting the slightly
dense, but steadfast John Bull with the “apple of reform,” plucked
from the decaying tree of the Opposition. However, John Bull’s
pockets are already full of the healthy fruit of a constitutional monarchy,
taken from the loyalist tree of “Justice,” bearing apples
of “Freedom,” “Happiness,” “Security.” Gillray
here also alludes to the French custom of planting a “tree of liberty” when
Republican troops claimed new territory, just as American revolutionaries
had earlier erected maypoles.
58
Le Coup de Maitre. – This Print copied from the French Original,
is dedicated to the London Corresponding Society.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: November 24, 1797
Etching, hand-colored
Gillray portrays Fox as a hairy French revolutionary, aiming his pistol
at the British Constitution. He facetiously credits a French model as
the source of the image (in fact, George Canning, Under-Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, and one of the forces behind the Anti-Jacobin
Review, probably suggested the idea), and dedicates the print to the
radical London Corresponding Society. Diana Donald notes that this print, “‘hit
so hard,’ we are told, ‘that it was never forgotten – and
perhaps never forgiven.’” A preparatory drawing for this
satire is in the Library’s collection.
59
Shrine at St Ann’s Hill.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: May 26, 1798
Etching and aquatint, hand-colored
Beginning in May 1797, with Pitt ascendant and the ranks of the Whigs
depleted, Fox temporarily exiled himself from the House of Commons and
retreated to his home at St. Ann’s Hill (actually the home of Mrs.
Armistead, yet to be acknowledged as Mrs. Fox). Gillray imagines him
praying before an altar, which is virtually a shrine to the French Revolution,
replete with guillotine, Liberty cap, busts of Robespierre and Napoleon,
and, instead of the Ten Commandments, a perverse Rights of Man. Fox,
his hair cropped in the Republican style, is visited by an angelic host
of other Whigs. Gillray seems delighted with the dramatic effects, suggestive
of dark plans and subversive plots, that he could create with aquatint.
60
Nightly Visitors, at St. Ann’s Hill; –
Published by Hannah Humphrey: September 21, 1798
Etching and aquatint, hand-colored
Gillray, who enjoyed afflicting his unfortunate subjects with nightmares,
here suggests that Fox, who was critical of the government’s Irish
policy, was guilty of aiding and abetting the radicals. Fox is visited
by the ghosts of executed Irish insurgents. His cousin, Lord Edward Fitzgerald,
who was killed by the British while resisting arrest, accuses the startled
Fox, “Who first seduc’d my youthful Mind from Virtue? … who
caus’d my Death?” Mrs. Fox sleeps on, undisturbed.
61
Stealing off; – or – prudent Secesion; – “– courageous
Chief! The first in Flight!”
Published by Hannah Humphrey: November 6, 1798
Etching and aquatint, hand-colored
Pitt dominated politics in 1798, while Fox led a Whig party considerably
diminished in numbers. By 1794, many members of the Opposition had switched
sides in the wake of the excesses of the French Revolution, and aligned
themselves with the government, leaving Fox’s minority the weakest
Opposition ever known in England. Fox temporarily exiled himself from
the House of Commons. In 1798, he was dismissed from the Privy Council
for publicly supporting the “sovereignty of the people of Great
Britain” and “the sufferers in the cause of freedom in Ireland,” whom
Fox believed had a duty to use “every justified and legal effort – to
shake off the yoke of our English tyrants.”
Gillray shows Fox, accompanied by two fellow Whigs, Charles Grey (“Opposition
Gray-Hound”) and a tiny M. A. Taylor, fleeing the House of Commons.
Prime Minister William Pitt is in the process of announcing a series
of British triumphs (“Destruction of Buonaparte”; “Capture
of the French Navy”; “Britannia Ruling the Waves”)
that embarrassed the Foxites. He also holds up “O’Connor’s
list of secret Traitors” (O’Connor was the Irish revolutionary
exonerated by the Foxites, before he later confessed his guilt). Sheridan
and other loyal Whigs are forced to eat their words: “Homage to
the French Conv[ention],” “Loyalty of the Irish Nation,” “Peace
or Ruin.”
62
The UNION-CLUB.
Published by Hannah Humphrey: January 21, 1801
Etching with engraving and roulette, hand-colored
January 1, 1801 marked the meeting of the first joint Parliament of
England and Ireland, the Irish Parliament having voted itself out of
existence the preceding spring. For Pitt, this successfully concluded
his efforts to create a political union of the two countries. In this
satire, Gillray elaborates upon a “serious” print issued
to commemorate the first gathering of the new Union Club on January 19,
1801. In Gillray’s version, the Prince of Wales has slid from his
throne to the floor in a drunken stupor (he is barely visible under the
table), and the rest of the assembled Whigs, who were against this union,
join him in drowning their sorrows in drink. Gillray inscribes Pitt’s
name on the face of the clock, acknowledging his role in bringing about
the consolidation.
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