A scarce print of Gilray's commemorates a grand installation of knights
at Westminster Abbey, May 19th, 1788, and is called "The Installation
Supper," given at the Pantheon, in Oxford Road. It portrays the chief
notorieties of the day, in separate groups, simulating over the bottle
an obliviousness of political jealousies: Pitt and Fox hobnobbing
behind the gruff Chancellor Thurlow; Lord Shelburn is shaking hands
jesuitically with Lord Sydney; Lord Derby is hand-in-glove with Lady
Mount Edgecumbe, an antiquated _blue_, who still dreams of conquest;
the Prince is besieged by Lady Archer (of gambling notoriety) on one
side, and Lady Cecilia Johnson on the other: while Mr. Fitzherbert is
in amiable confab with the ex-patriot, Johnny Wilkes:--
"Johnny Wilkes, Johnny Wilkes,
Thou greatest of bilks,
How changed are the notes you now sing;
Your famed Forty-five
Is Prerogative,
And your blasphemy, 'God save the King.'"
SHERIDAN.
Edmund Burke always appears with long-pointed nose and spectacles. In
one large print by Gilray, he is discharging a blunderbuss at Hastings,
who is defending himself with the "shield of honour." The thin, meagre
figure of Pitt, "with his d--d iron face," was fruitful for jest as
that of his fat, slovenly opponent, Fox. An equivocal phrase of the
Prime Minister gave rise to Gilray's caricature of "The Bottomless
Pitt;" or it may have been the financial profundity of the Minister, or
the wit of his celebrated housekeeper niece:--
"William Pitt, 'tis known by many people,
Was thin as a lath, and tall as a steeple;
And so spare his behind, he was called (with some wit),
By famed Lady Hester, 'the bottomless pit.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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