- Museum number
- 1859,0316.145
- Title
- Object: Giant Grumbo & the black dwarf, or, Lord G- & the Printer's devil.
- Description
-
Lord Grantham, in military uniform, wielding the club of Hercules, inscribed 'L G his cane', stands with legs astride, threatening Wooler (left), a tiny 'Black Dwarf, as in No. 12892, who registers extreme rage or terror. Grantham has enormous moustaches, which fly upwards on each side of his head. A lion's skin hangs from his shoulders, with a solid head which snarls savagely. He wears a bell-shaped shako, long tight trousers strapped under boots, and immense spurs. His left arm, terminating in a huge fist, is extended horizontally. On the left a knock-kneed yokel with bristling moustaches and wearing the cap of a Death's Head hussar, grins in oafish delight, saying, "Well done Col.! well done our side!!! my Zoul! what Honnor this will bring upon our Corpse!!! and if any more Dwarfs or Devils attack's our Regemunt Lord Grant'them all the zame fate, I zay!!" Wooler stands among piles of his paper, 'Black Dwarf', some of which have various inscriptions: 'Strictures on the York Hussars'; 'York you are not wanted'; 'The Devil to Pay'; 'a Lame Story to the Yellow Bonze at Japan'; 'universal Suffrage'; and (adapting 'As You Like It'), 'Then a Soldier, full of Strong Oaths & bearded like the Pard Jealous in Honor Sudden & quick in quarrel seeking the bubble Reputation Ev'n in the printing office'. He wears an ink-pot for hat, with three large pen-feathers; at his waist is a tricolour cockade. On the wall behind him is a framed picture of 'The Yellow Bonze', a grotesque imp, squatting with outspread fingers, and registering surprise. Below is a broadside headed by figures hanging from a gallows.
24 July 1819.
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1819
- Dimensions
-
Height: 205 millimetres
-
Width: 250 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', IX, 1949)
Grantham was Colonel of the Yorkshire Yeomanry or volunteer cavalry who had recently called themselves the York Hussars, and had grown moustaches, as worn by hussar regiments (cf. No. 13029). Grantham, while good-humouredly praising their 'right feeling', jokingly recommended them to shave their upper lips. This (recorded in the 'Yorkshire Gazette') was the occasion of a scoffing article in the 'Black Dwarf', 30 June 1819, the point being that the Yeomanry were regarded as the means by which 'one position of society' was 'arrayed against the other', cf. No. 13258, &c. Grantham thereupon demanded an apology from Wooler which the latter made the subject of his weekly letter 'From the Black Dwarf in London, to the Yellow Bonze [a term applied by Europeans to the Buddhist clergy of Japan] at Japan' ('ibid.' 21 July), which is here illustrated: 'I was a "Dwarf"! alone, unarmed, in the presence of a "gigantic lord"!'
Reid, No. 899. Cohn, No. 1159.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1859
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1859,0316.145