John Leechs Pictures of Life and Character | Page 5

to their elders, may say
"Grandmamma, did you wear such a dress as that, when you danced at
Almack's? There was very little of it, grandmamma. Did grandpapa kill
many watchmen when he was a young man, and frequent thieves'
gin-shops, cock-fights, and the ring, before you married him? Did he
use to talk the extraordinary slang and jargon which is printed in this
book? He is very much changed. He seems a gentlemanly old boy
enough now."
In the above-named consulate, when WE had grandfathers alive, there
would be in the old gentleman's library in the country two or three old
mottled portfolios, or great swollen scrap-books of blue paper, full of
the comic prints of grandpapa's time, ere Plancus ever had the fasces
borne before him. These prints were signed Gilray, Bunbury,
Rowlandson, Woodward, and some actually George Cruikshank-- for
George is a veteran now, and he took the etching needle in hand as a
child. He caricatured "Boney," borrowing not a little from Gilray in his
first puerile efforts. He drew Louis XVIII. trying on Boney's boots.
Before the century was actually in its teens we believe that George
Cruikshank was amusing the public.
In those great colored prints in our grandfathers' portfolios in the
library, and in some other apartments of the house, where the
caricatures used to be pasted in those days, we found things quite
beyond our comprehension. Boney was represented as a fierce dwarf,
with goggle eyes, a huge laced hat and tricolored plume, a crooked
sabre, reeking with blood: a little demon revelling in lust, murder,
massacre. John Bull was shown kicking him a good deal: indeed he

was prodigiously kicked all through that series of pictures; by Sidney
Smith and our brave allies the gallant Turks; by the excellent and
patriotic Spaniards; by the amiable and indignant Russians,--all nations
had boots at the service of poor Master Boney. How Pitt used to defy
him! How good old George, King of Brobdingnag, laughed at
Gulliver-Boney, sailing about in his tank to make sport for their
Majesties! This little fiend, this beggar's brat, cowardly, murderous,
and atheistic as he was (we remember, in those old portfolios, pictures
representing Boney and his family in rags, gnawing raw bones in a
Corsican hut; Boney murdering the sick at Jaffa; Boney with a hookah
and a large turban, having adopted the Turkish religion, &c.)--this
Corsican monster, nevertheless, had some devoted friends in England,
according to the Gilray chronicle,-- a set of villains who loved atheism,
tyranny, plunder, and wickedness in general, like their French friend. In
the pictures these men were all represented as dwarfs, like their ally.
The miscreants got into power at one time, and, if we remember right,
were called the Broad-backed Administration. One with shaggy
eyebrows and a bristly beard, the hirsute ringleader of the rascals, was,
it appears, called Charles James Fox; another miscreant, with a
blotched countenance, was a certain Sheridan; other imps were hight
Erskine, Norfolk (Jockey of), Moira, Henry Petty. As in our childish,
innocence we used to look at these demons, now sprawling and tipsy in
their cups; now scaling heaven, from which the angelic Pitt hurled them
down; now cursing the light (their atrocious ringleader Fox was
represented with hairy cloven feet, and a tail and horns); now kissing
Boney's boot, but inevitably discomfited by Pitt and the other good
angels: we hated these vicious wretches, as good children should; we
were on the side of Virtue and Pitt and Grandpapa. But if our sisters
wanted to look at the portfolios, the good old grandfather used to
hesitate. There were some prints among them very odd indeed; some
that girls could not understand; some that boys, indeed, had best not see.
We swiftly turn over those prohibited pages. How many of them there
were in the wild, coarse, reckless, ribald, generous book of old English
humor!
How savage the satire was--how fierce the assault--what garbage hurled
at opponents--what foul blows were hit--what language of Billingsgate
flung! Fancy a party in a country-house now looking over Woodward's

facetiae or some of the Gilray comicalities, or the slatternly Saturnalia
of Rowlandson! Whilst we live we must laugh, and have folks to make
us laugh. We cannot afford to lose Satyr with his pipe and dances and
gambols. But we have washed, combed, clothed, and taught the rogue
good manners: or rather, let us say, he has learned them himself; for he
is of nature soft and kindly, and he has put aside his mad pranks and
tipsy habits; and, frolicsome always, has become gentle and harmless,
smitten into shame by he pure presence of our women and the sweet
confiding smiles of our children. Among the veterans, the old pictorial
satirists, we have mentioned the famous name of one humorous