Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 397, November 1848

"'Twas when the seas were roaringWith blasts of northern wind,Young Perkin lay deploring,On warming-pan reclinedWide o'er the roaring billowsHe cast a dismal look,And shiver'd like the willowsThat tremble o'er the brook."

One would think the "Oxford scholars," accounted such fervent Jacobites, might have replied victoriously to such tepid couplets as this. But their hearts were down at their King's repulse. And poor as the verses were, no doubt they took wonderfully at the time, – so much, in such things, depends upon the apropos. And now a large section of the Tories, previously favourable to the Jacobites, broke away from them in their misfortune, made their peace with the ruling powers, and took the oath of allegiance. But long after fighting was over in the North – to be revived only in '45 by the chivalrous Charles Edward – the Jacobite mob kept London in hot water, and, thanks to the inefficiency of the police, might have done serious mischief, but for the Muggite Societies formed at that period. These were simply Whig clubs, meeting at certain public-houses, (the Magpie and Stump, in Newgate Street, was one,) and sallying out upon occasion to fight the Jacobites. The latter had also taverns of rendezvous, but these were few, and it was chiefly the lowest mob that in London still sported the White Rose, and cursed the Hanoverian. In most of the many conflicts that then occurred, the "Jacks" got the worst of it. If they assembled to break windows on an illumination night, or to burn William or George in effigy, they were soon assailed by the Loyal Society, or some other Whig association, who, acting as special constables without having taken the oath, drubbed them with cudgels, and extinguished their bonfires. It would appear that the Jacks did not often venture to impede the Whig mob in the performance of analogous ceremonies; since we read of a certain Fifth of November, when caricature effigies of the Pretender and his chief adherents and supporters were carried in triumph through the streets. "First, two men bearing each a warming-pan, with a representation of the infant Pretender – a nurse attending him with a sucking bottle, and another playing with him by beating the warming-pan. These were followed by three trumpeters, playing Lillibulero and other Whig tunes. Then came a cart with Ormond and Marr, appropriately dressed. This was followed by another cart, containing the Pope and Pretender seated together, and Bolingbroke as the secretary of the latter. They were all drawn backwards, with halters round their necks." The sole opposition made by the Jacobites to this outrageous demonstration, was by the somewhat paltry proceeding of stealing the faggots collected for the Whig bonfire. Four months after this, the Jacobites attempted a procession, and a great fight ensued, in which the Whigs were victorious, after having "made rare work for the surgeons." The government of the day showed little mercy to the rioters. Seditious ballad-singers, and persons holding disloyal discourse, were flogged and pilloried; and at last, the hanging of several of the disaffected for storming a Mug-house, put an end to the disturbances. That the Whigs did not bear their triumph very meekly appears from the following paragraph, extracted from Read's Weekly Journal of June 15, 1717.

"Last Monday being supposed to be the birthday of the Sovereign of the White Rose, in respect to the anniversary, an honest Whig went from the Roebuck to St James's, with a jackdaw finely dressed in white roses, and set on a warming-pan bedeckt with the same sweet-scented commodity, which caused abundance of laughter all the way, to the great mortification of the Knights Companions of that order, and all the other Jacks, to see their sovereign so maltreated in the person of his representative."

The poor crushed Jacobites were fain to grin and bear it.

The suppression of political riots was followed by a great prevalence of highway robberies, in and around the metropolis. The streets of London were not safe, even in the daytime; and ladies went out in their chairs guarded by servants with loaded blunderbusses. The following extracts from newspapers of the time read oddly enough – especially when we remember that not a hundred and thirty years have elapsed since the crimes recorded in them occurred.

"Thursday, 21st January 1720. About five o'clock in the evening, the stage-coach from London to Hampstead was attacked and robbed by highwaymen, at the foot of the hill, and one of the passengers severely beaten for attempting to hide his money."

"Sunday 24. At eight o'clock in the evening, two highwaymen attacked a gentleman in a coach on the south side of St Paul's churchyard, and robbed him."

"Sunday 31. A gentleman robbed and murdered in Bishopsgate street."

"Monday, February 1. The Duke of Chandos, coming from Canons, had another encounter with highwaymen, whom he captured."

"Tuesday 2. The postboy was attacked by three highwaymen in Tyburn road, but the Duke of Chandos, happening to pass that way, came to his rescue."

His grace of Chandos seems to have been a sort of amateur thief-taker. Then we read of stage-coaches stopped and robbed between London and Stoke Newington, and of a certain day, when "all the stage-coaches coming from Surrey to London were robbed by highwaymen." At last a reward of one hundred pounds was offered for the apprehension of any highwayman within five miles of London. Amongst those captured were several persons of good repute in their respective callings. They included a London tradesman, a duke's valet, and the keeper of a boxing-school.

The speculative madness that prevailed in the year 1719-20, the "bubble mania," as it was called, offered a fertile field to the satirist. The contagion was caught from France, where, about that time, John Law projected his celebrated Mississippi Company, and, by his wild financial manœuvres, first rendered money a mere drug, then plunged Paris and France into the profoundest misery. The outline of Law's history is familiar to most persons. It will be remembered how, having killed a man in a duel in his own country, he broke his prison, and fled to France, met the young Duke of Orleans at the house of a courtesan named Duclos, and, being handsome, accomplished, and graceful, contracted with him an intimacy that led eventually to the hatching of the notable Mississippi scheme. The delusion began to flourish towards the middle of 1718, and was at its apogee at the close of the following year. The market for the shares was in an insignificant street, still existing in Paris under the name of the Rue Quincampoix, where every house was soon subdivided into an infinity of little offices, and a dwelling whose usual rent was of six hundred livres yielded one hundred thousand; where a cobbler gained two hundred livres a-day, by hiring out his shed to ladies who came to share in and look on at the game; and a hunchback earned a handsome income by lending his shoulders as a writing-desk. The five-hundred-livre shares rose to twenty thousand livres – to a premium, that is to say, of four thousand per cent. Money was for the time so abundant, that goods rose immensely, and articles of luxury were all bought up. Cloth of gold, a French writer tells us, became exceeding rare, except in the streets, where it was seen draping the plebeian persons of the newly-enriched speculators. A nobleman and a Mississippian disputed a partridge in a cook's shop: the latter obtained it for two hundred livres, or more than eight pounds! Beranger has devoted a witty stanza to that year of madness.

"C'était la régence alorsEt sans hyperbole,Grâce aux plus drôles de corps,La France étoit folle;Tous les hommes s'amusaient,Et les femmes se prêtaientA la gaudriole an gué,A la gaudriole."

As an essential preliminary to holding the office of Comptroller-general of the French finances, Law allowed the Abbé de Tençin to convert him to the religion of Rome. This apostasy, and its disastrous consequences to France, became the subject of many squibs and satirical verses when the fallacy of the system ultimately appeared. Before the panic came, however, and an attempted realisation on the part of some of the largest holders proved the exaggerated and fictitious value of the bonds, the mania for speculation had crossed the Channel, and raged in this country. The South-Sea bill passed through parliament, and received the royal assent; and on a sudden stock-jobbing seemed to become the sole business of all classes. The Tory papers ridiculed the folly. Sir Robert Walpole published a warning pamphlet, a proclamation forbade the formation of unauthorised companies; but all in vain. Shares in the most absurd bubbles were eagerly caught at. "A company was even announced, and its shares bought, which was merely advertised as 'for an undertaking which shall in due time be revealed.' Among other odd projects were companies 'for planting of mulberry trees, and breeding of silk-worms in Chelsea Park;' 'for importing a number of large jack-asses from Spain, in order to propagate a larger breed of mules in England;' 'for fattening of hogs.' In August, the stock of the various London companies was calculated to exceed the value of five hundred millions." About this time Law's credit balloon began to collapse, which was a hint to the English jobbers of what they might in their turn expect. It was nearly the end of the year when he was compelled to fly from Paris, and take refuge in Venice, where he died, an impoverished gambler, in May 1729, leaving for sole inheritance a diamond worth about 1500 pounds sterling, which he had been in the habit of pawning when hard pushed. Many weeks before his departure from France, however, the London companies were discredited and turned into ridicule by a host of songs and satirical pieces, one of the best of which was the celebrated South-Sea Ballad; or, Merry Remarks upon Exchange-Alley Bubbles.

"From the month of October to the end of the year, songs, and squibs, and pamphlets of all descriptions, on the misfortunes occasioned by the explosion of the bubble system, became exceedingly numerous… The general feeling against the directors was becoming so strong in the month of November, that we are told it had become a practice among the ladies, when in playing at cards they turned up a knave, to cry, 'There's a director for you!'" The period of the South-Sea bubble was particularly prolific in caricatures. A vast number appeared in Holland and France, and for the first time political caricatures became common in England. Those of which copies are given in Mr Wright's book have small claims to wit. Most of the foreign ones were aimed at Law, and those published in this country at the 'Change Alley speculators. Hogarth's first political caricature related to the bubbles of 1720, and appeared the following year.

As in France the temporary glut of wealth produced by Law's financial operations had the most unfavourable effect upon the public morals, so in England "the South-Sea convulsion had hardly subsided, when a general outcry was heard against the alarming increase of atheism, profaneness, and immorality; and an attempt was made to suppress them by act of parliament, but the bill for that purpose was not allowed to pass." Masquerades were especially inveighed against by the upholders of propriety, and were made the subject of much satire. The ugliness of Heidegger, "le surintendant des plaisirs de l'Angleterre," as the French called him; the conceit and caprices of the opera-singers, then, as now, notorious for their extortionate greediness and constant bickerings and jealousies; the neglect of Shakspeare and the old dramatists; the prevailing taste for pantomime and buffoonery – were so many targets for the wits and caricaturists of the day. But neither Hogarth's pencil nor the pungent pen of Pope had power to correct the depravity of public taste. Masquerades continued the favourite amusement of the town, and opera and pantomime preserved their vogue. The satirists persevered in their crusade, and as late as 1742 we find Hogarth still working the mine, in a capital caricature of Monsieur Desnoyer and Signora Barberina, – the Taglioni and Perrot of their day whose graceful attitudes he cleverly burlesques. Previously to the year 1737 the stage was used as a political engine, and violent attacks on the government were introduced into farces and pantomimes. Some of these were direct and open pasquinades, and gave great umbrage to the ministry; and amongst them two of the most conspicuous were a lampooning farce called Pasquin, and a dramatic satire entitled the Historical Register for the year 1736, both by Fielding. A still more abusive piece, to be entitled The Golden Rump, was spoken of as forthcoming; but, before it appeared, the matter was brought before the House of Commons; an act was passed "for restraining the licentiousness of the stage," and the office of Licenser of Plays was established. Thus a stop was put to stage-politics: but nevertheless – and although, in an age when parties ran so high, this suppression must materially have diminished the attractiveness of theatrical entertainments – the theatres continued, for many years, and from various causes, to receive a very large share of public attention, and to be made the subject of numerous prose and verse pamphlets, and of occasional caricatures. Pantomime and burlesque were still in vogue, but not to the exclusion of the regular drama; and Shakspeare gained ground, interpreted, as he was, by first-rate actors – by Garrick, Quin, and Macklin, by Mrs Woffington, Mrs Clive, Mrs Cibber, and others. About the middle of the century, the rivalry between Drury and the Garden ran so high as to be a subject of annoyance and inconvenience to the public. "In October 1749 the Covent-Garden company opened the theatrical campaign with Romeo and Juliet– a play in which Barry, and especially Mrs Cibber, had shone with peculiar excellence. Garrick had armed himself for the contest: he had prepared a rival actress in Miss Bellamy; and he produced, to the surprise of his opponents, the same play of Romeo and Juliet, at Drury Lane, on the very night it came out at Covent Garden. The town was divided for a long time between the two 'Romeo and Juliets,' which produced a mass of contradictory criticism, and finished by almost emptying both houses, for every body began to tire of the monotonous repetition of the same play." There is not much danger, at the present day, of rivalry of this sort. How Garrick and Quin would stare, were they galvanised out of their graves, to see Grisi queen of Covent Garden, and Jullien lord of Drury Lane! Theatrical opposition is a thing nobody now dreams of, unless it be between a French vaudeville company and an English troop of low comedians. And were a contest to arise between the English theatres, it would most likely be of the nature of that which occurred in the reign of George the First, between the rival harlequins, when it was common enough for the two great theatres to bring out pantomimes founded on the same subject – as in 1723, when Harlequin Dr Faustus had great success at both Drury Lane and Covent Garden. That was also the period of the first introduction, on the English stage, of wild beasts, dragons, monsters, and goblins of various kinds, besides mountebanks, tumblers, and rope-dancers. Even Garrick, however, did not disdain the pantomime, when he saw in it the means to annoy and injure a rival. "At the beginning of 1750 he brought out a new pantomime, entitled Queen Mab, in which Woodward acted the part of harlequin. The great success of this piece, which drew crowded houses for forty nights, without intermission, gave rise to a very popular caricature, entitled The Theatrical Steelyard, in which Mrs Cibber, Mrs Woffington, Quin, and Barry, are outweighed by Woodward's Harlequin and Garrick's Queen Mab. Rich, (the Covent-Garden manager,) dressed in the garb of harlequin, lies on the ground expiring." Excepting the two important particulars, that good actors were then as plentiful as they now are scarce, and that the two great theatres were occupied by Shakspeare and Englishmen, instead of by fiddlers and foreigners, there is much coincidence between some recent occurrences in the theatrical world and others a hundred years old. Then, as now, attempts were made to drive French actors from the country. These attempts arose, however, from no apprehension of foreigners injuring or eclipsing native talent, then so superior to such fears, but from the anti-Gallican feeling abroad at the time. During the Westminster election of 1749 a company of French players were performing at the Haymarket, and Lord Trentham, the government candidate, was accused of favouring and protecting them. He spoke French well, and was said to affect French manners; and all this, of course, was made the most of for electioneering purposes. He was lampooned as "the champion of the French strollers;" and the mob, with their usual wisdom and admirable logic, said "that learning to talk French was only a step towards the introduction of French tyranny." A deluge of ballads descended upon the heads of the candidate and his assumed protégés; and the quality of the poetry seems to have been on a par with the liberality of the sentiments – to judge, at least, from the following brilliant specimen: —

"Our natives are starving, whom Nature has madeThe brightest of wits, and to comedy bred;Whilst apes are caress'd, which God made by chance,The worst of all mortals, the strollers from France."

This is wretched enough, even for an election ditty. And we are little disposed to join in the regret expressed in Mr Wright's preface, that no one, as far as he has been able to discover, "has made any considerable collection of political songs, satires, and other such tracts, published during the last century and the present;" since the wit and merit of those he has been able to get together are in general so exceedingly small. He is, very judiciously, sparing of his extracts, except when he stumbles upon a really good song or set of verses, a few of which are scattered through his volumes.

To return to the mob-hatred of the French. After the Westminster election, this feeling was kept up by squib and caricature; and in November 1755, Garrick having occasion to employ some French dancers, in a grand spectacle brought out at Drury Lane under the title of The Chinese Festival, a theatre row was the result. It was kept up for five nights; and on the sixth the mob smashed the lamps, demolished the scenery, and did several thousand pounds' worth of damage. This popular antipathy to the French did not, however, extend to the produce of France, or prevent the higher classes from patronising and importing French luxuries of all kinds, as well as a host of milliners, governesses, quacks, valets, and professors of other menial and decorative arts. The Gallomania of the fashionable world offered a fine field to the caricaturists, who made the most of it, to the great delight of the populace. French fashions, cookery, education, and nicknacks, were alternately taken as targets for the shafts of ridicule. Mr Wright transfers to his pages a ludicrous fragment of a print by Boitard, entitled "The Imports of Great Britain from France," in which an Englishwoman of quality is seen embracing and caressing a French female dancer, and assuring her that her arrival is to the honour and delight of England. And the mob of that day went so far as to believe that it was the love of the aristocracy for French perfumes and delicacies, cooks and coiffeurs, which prevented English ministers from properly protecting the national honour, and avenging the insults put upon us by our neighbours. The real evil, far more important than the consumption of French finery and cosmetics, was the importation of French corruption and immorality, so prevalent in England during the whole reign of George II., and during a portion of that of his successor. By this time the masquerades and ridottos, which had kept their ground in spite of the moralists, had grown so flagrant in their excesses and indecencies that, about the end of 1755, they were nearly suppressed; the earthquake at Lisbon having come to the aid of the anti-maskers, who took advantage of the panic it caused in London, to represent it as a judgment on the profligacy of the age. Previously to that, masquerades – not only those at public establishments, such as Vauxhall and Ranelagh, but at the private houses of persons of rank and fashion – offered glaring examples of indecorum – to use the very mildest word – until at last Miss Chudleigh, maid of honour to the Princess of Wales, and afterwards Duchess of Kingston, showed herself at the Venetian ambassador's in a close-fitting dress of flesh-coloured silk. We may judge of the court morals of the time from the circumstance, that her royal mistress's sole rebuke was by throwing her own veil over the immodest beauty. The host of caricatures to which this gave rise, and the grossness of many of them, in that day of great pictorial license, are easily imagined. After this there were very few masquerades during ten or twelve years, at the end of which time the court again set the fashion of them, soon after George the Third's accession. Towards 1770, Mrs Cornelys got up her "Harmonic Meetings," at Carlisle House in Soho Square. These subscription balls and masquerades were attended by most of the nobility and leaders of the ton; and, at one of them, we learn the presence of "two royal dukes, and nearly all the fashionable portion of the aristocracy. On this occasion, Colonel Luttrell (the same who had opposed Wilkes in the election for Middlesex) appeared as a dead corpse in a shroud, in his coffin." Much used, from the very first, for purposes of intrigue, these assemblies soon became unbearably licentious. The company fell off, both in numbers and respectability, until the only way to fill the rooms was by the admission of bad characters. This made them sink lower and lower, until "we read in the St James's Chronicle of April 23, 1795, the remark that 'No amusement seems to have fallen into greater contempt, in this country, than the masquerades… They have been lately mere assemblages of the idle and profligate of both sexes, who made up in indecency what they wanted in wit.'" A description that has ever since been applicable to London masquerades, which still continue, we apprehend, to be mere pretexts for debauchery; whilst even in Paris, whose atmosphere, and the character of whose inhabitants, have generally been found more favourable to that class of amusements, the famed opera balls have sunk, within the last twenty years, into the saturnalia of idle students, profligate apprentices, and ladies of uncertain virtue.

It would be unjust to leave out Samuel Foote, in a work treating of the satires and caricatures of the last century. Possessing neither the brush of Hogarth nor the pen of Churchill, he wielded a weapon as formidable in its way – that, namely, of dramatic mimicry, or stage satire; and he is properly named by Mr Wright the great theatrical caricaturist of the age. For a time, the reckless and vindictive wit was the terror of the town: an affront to him, real or imaginary, caused the unlucky offender to be paraded before the world, under some fictitious name, upon the boards of his theatre, which, at first, was the "little" one in the Haymarket. For some time Foote and Macklin had it between them, but, disagreeing, Macklin left, whereupon his ex-partner immediately caricatured him upon the very stage he had so lately trodden. "The Haymarket was an unlicensed theatre, and Foote evaded the law by serving his audience with tea, and calling the performance in the bills 'Mr Foote's giving tea to his friends.' His advertisement ran, 'Mr Foote presents his compliments to his friends and the public, and desires them to drink tea at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, every morning, at playhouse prices.' The house was always crowded, and Foote came forward and said, that as he had some young actors in training, he would go on with his instructions whilst the tea was preparing." Afterwards he got a license, and rebuilt the theatre. But his bitter wit and gross personalities continually got him into trouble, frequently caused his pieces to be prohibited; exposed him to threatened, if not to actual castigation; and, finally, were the indirect cause of his death, accelerated, it is generally believed, by shame and vexation at the false but revolting charge brought against him by a clergyman he had savagely lampooned.