English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.Everitt, Graham
History
English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.
Everitt, Graham
Caricature -- Great Britain; Illustration of books -- Great Britain -- 19th century
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 "jackasses." 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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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