A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833Smith, John Thomas
History
A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833
Smith, John Thomas
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 18th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
[31] Sir John Eardley-Wilmot, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas,
decided several cases arising out of Wilkes’s libels: his reply to
Lord North’s extraordinary letter was the only one he could make.
In spite of Wilkes’s easy victory at the poll, the House of Commons
declared that Colonel Luttrell ought to have been elected, and his
name was substituted for Wilkes’s in the return, a proceeding which
inflamed the situation.
[32] Henry William Bunbury stands apart from his
fellow-caricaturists as a wealthy amateur. He was the second son
of the Rev. Sir William Bunbury, Bart., of Great Barton, Suffolk,
and married Catherine Horneck, the “Little Comedy” of Goldsmith.
Bretherton was an engraver and printseller in Bond Street. He
engraved nearly all Bunbury’s drawings, and it was said that he
alone could do so with good effect.
[33] For almost a century the exodus of the London citizens to the
outlying country was considered fair game for satire. Bunbury’s
caricature of 1772 only records the humours which Robert Lloyd
had touched in “The Cit’s Country Box,” printed in No. 135 of the
_Connoisseur_.
“The trav’ler with amazement sees
A temple, Gothic or Chinese,
With many a bell and tawdry rag on,
And crested with a sprawling dragon.
A wooden arch is bent astride
A ditch of water four feet wide;
With angles, curves, and zigzag lines,
From Halfpenny’s exact designs.
In front a level lawn is seen,
Without a shrub upon the green;
Where taste would want its first great law,
But for the skulking sly Ha-Ha;
By whose miraculous assistance
You gain a prospect two fields distance.
And now from Hyde Park Corner come
The gods of Athens and of Rome:
Here squabby Cupids take their places,
With Venus and the clumsy graces;
Apollo there, with aim so clever,
Stretches his leaden bow for ever.”
Even Cowper saw little but absurdity in the demand for villas and
“summer-houses.”
“Suburban villas, highway-side retreats,
That dread th’ encroachment of our growing streets,
Tight boxes neatly sash’d, and in a blaze
With all a July sun’s collected rays,
Delight the citizen, who, gasping there,
Breathes clouds of dust, and calls it country air.”
Horace Smith, Lord Byron, and Thomas Hood all touched more or less
satirically on this subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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