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 sketch); Bergami (immediately behind) carries a banner inscribed "Innocence"; and next him, his fat sister, whom the queen had dignified with the title of a countess; Venus and Bacchus appear amongst the crowd, and are labelled "Protégés and bosom friends of Her M———y." She is welcomed by an enthusiastic body of butchers with marrow-bones and cleavers; while among the crowd waiting to receive her we notice Orator Hunt and the other popular leaders of the day.
And here we drop for the present the subject of Queen Caroline, a subject we have approached with caution, although conscious that it can be by no means omitted from a work treating of graphic satires of the nineteenth century. That she should now accept the £50,000 per annum which she had previously refused, will probably not surprise the reader. The end of a career so strangely undignified will be seen when we come to treat of the caricatures of George Cruikshank.
The duel between the Dukes of Buckingham and Bedford; the erection of the statue of Achilles in Hyde Park; the new Marriage Act; the second French invasion of Spain under the Duc d'Angoulème; the Tenth Hussars; Miss Foote, the celebrated actress; Edmund Kean; and the commercial distress of 1825-6, afford subjects for the pencils of the caricaturists, and will be mentioned in the chapters which relate to the graphic satires of the brothers Cruikshank.
Greek War
of
IndependenceThe pictorial satirists were kept fully employed by the political events of 1827 and 1828. The former year beheld the sanguinary Greek war of independence. Things turned out badly for the over-matched Greeks, until at last Great Britain, France, and Russia interposed with Turkey on their behalf. The proposals offered were such as the Turks refused to entertain. The Porte, in refusing them, maintained that, though mediation might be allowable in
