English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. Graham Everitt
forty caricatures on the subject of “The Delicate Investigation,” as it was called, are due to the pencil of Thomas Rowlandson.
In order to show the character of this infamous woman, we must The end of Mary Anne Clarke. follow her progress a little farther than either Mr. Grego or Mr. Wright appear to have done. In February, 1814, she once more made a public appearance: this time in the Court of Queen’s Bench. She seems to have got the Right Hon. William Fitzgerald, Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, by some means or other into her clutches, in connection with the proceedings of 1809. By this time, however, she had descended so low, that exposure was threatened unless a sum of money was deposited under a stone. In her threats, she announced her intention of “submitting to the public in a very short time two or three volumes, which might be followed by others as opportunity should suit or circumstances require.” This threat, instead of extorting money, consigned Mary Anne to the custody of the marshal of the King’s Bench Prison for the space of nine calendar months, at the end of which period she was ordered to find securities to keep the peace for a space of three years. It might have gone harder with the brazen woman if the proceedings had taken any other form than that of an indictment for libel, and if she had not admitted her fault, and in some measure thrown herself upon the mercy of the court. The pages of history do not appear to be sullied with the intrusion of Mary Anne Clarke’s name after this period.
The year 1811 is marked by an event which claims special record in a work treating of English caricatures and caricaturists of the century. In that year, James Gillray executed the last of his famous etchings; and although mere existence was prolonged for nearly four years afterwards, till the 1st of June, 1815, he sank in 1811 into that hopeless and dreary state of mingled imbecility and delirium from which the intellect of this truly great and original genius was destined never to recover.
9 “If it had not been for you English, I should have been Emperor of the East; but wherever there is water enough to float a ship, we are sure to find you in our way.”—Napoleon to Captain Maitland. See Maitland’s “Narrative of the Surrender of Bonaparte,” p. 99.
10 London Chronicle, December 6th, 1806.
11 See also Gillray’s previous satire of the 23rd of January, 1806 (which probably suggested this), Tiddy Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Baker, drawing out a new batch of kings.
12 See also Gillray’s cartoon of 1st October, 1807, British Tars towing the Danish Fleet into Harbour.
13 See vol. ii., p. 92, et seq.
14 In a loose age, Madame Tallien, notwithstanding such virtues as she possessed, was a loose character. Between 1798 and 1802 she had three children, who were registered in her family name of Cabarrus. On the 8th of April, 1802, at her own request a divorce was pronounced from Tallien, and with two husbands still alive she married (14th July, 1805,) Count Joseph de Caraman, soon after heir of the Prince de Chimay. She died in the odour of sanctity, on the 15th of January, 1835.
15 O’Meara, vol. i, p. 250.
16 “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.”
17 According to Mr. Grego, £2,000.
CHAPTER III.
MISCELLANEOUS CARICATURES AND SUBJECTS OF CARICATURE, 1812-1819.
Drury Lane Theatre, which was burnt down in 1811, was rebuilt 1812. the following year, and the committee, anxious to celebrate the opening by an address of merit corresponding to the occasion, Rebuilding of Drury Lane Theatre. advertised in the papers for such a composition. Theatrical addresses, however, as we all know by reference to a recent occasion,18 are not always up to the mark; and whether the result of their appeal was unsatisfactory, or whether—as appears not unlikely—they were appalled by the number of competitors, which is said to have been upwards of one hundred, not one was accepted, the advertisers preferring to seek the assistance of Lord Byron, who wrote the actual address which was spoken at the opening on the 10th of October, 1812. Among the competitors was a Dr. Busby, living in Queen Anne Street, who apparently unable to realize the fact that competent men could have the effrontery to reject his “monologue,” refused to accept the verdict of the committee. A few evenings afterwards, the audience and the company were electrified by an unexpected sensation. Busby and his son sat in one of the stage boxes; and the latter, to the amazement of the audience, stepped at the end of the play from his box upon the stage, and began to recite his father’s nonsense, as follows:—
| “When energizing objects men pursue, What are the prodigies they cannot do?” |
The question remained unanswered; for Raymond, the stage Dr. Busby’s “Monologue.” manager, walked at this moment upon the stage accompanied by a constable, and gave the amateur performer into custody. It is said that his father, not content with this failure, actually made an attempt to recite the “monologue” from his box, until hissed and howled down by the half laughing, half indignant audience. The circumstance is commemorated by an admirable pictorial satire entitled, A Buz in a Box, or the Poet in a Pet, published by S. W. Fores on the 21st of October, in which we see the doctor gesticulating from his box, and imploring the audience to listen to his “monologue.” Young Busby, seated on his father’s Pegasus (an ass), quotes one of the verses of the absurd composition, while the animal (after the manner of its kind) answers the hisses of the audience by elevating its heels and uttering a characteristic “hee haw.” By the side of Busby junior stands the manager (Raymond), apologetically addressing the audience. Certain pamphlets lie scattered in front of the stage, on which are inscribed (among others) the following doggerel:—
| “A Lord and a Doctor once started for Fame, Which for the best poet should pass; The Lord was cried up on account of his name, The Doctor cried down for an ass.” “Doctor Buz, he assures us, on Drury’s new stage No horses or elephants there should engage; But pray, Doctor Buz, how comes it to pass, That you your own self should produce there an ass?” |
Dr. Busby was a person desirous of achieving literary notoriety at any amount of personal inconvenience. He translated Lucretius, and is said to have given public recitations, accompanied with bread and butter and tea; but in spite of these attractions, the public did not come and the book would not sell, facts which a wicked wag of the period ridiculed, by inserting the following announcement in the column of births of one of the newspapers: “Yesterday, at his house in Queen Anne Street, Dr. Busby of a stillborn Lucretius.”
The medical profession is ridiculed in a satire published in 1813. 1813: Doctors Differ, or Dame Nature against the College.19 Four physicians have quarrelled in consultation over the nature of their patient’s malady, and the proper mode of administering to his relief. Unable to convince one another, they wax so warm in argument that they speedily proceed from words to blows. “I say,” shouts one (beneath the feet of the other three), “I