- Museum number
- 1868,0808.11309
- Title
- Object: Fragment of a new farce.
- Description
-
Below the title: Scene—Interior of a Palace—Archbishop seated,—noise & confusion without—door bursts open—enter Bishop. Manners-Sutton (left), seated by a writing-table, receives with dismay Bishop Blomfield of Chester (right) who stands over him to give him dreadful news, in lawn sleeves, hat in raised hand:
Arch......Angels and Ministers! ist thou?
Dear saint of Chester? what? how now?
Thine eye distort—thy lip of blue—
That haggard cheek—that deathlike hue—
Each starting hair upon thy wig—
Some deed proclaims, with horror big!
Speak!—dread forebodings sieze my soul,
Of Papists—or, some new Old Noll!
Speak!—I conjure!—thy tidings tell!
Chestr O! hor.... O, horri.....horri-ble!—
No—no! no—no! most rev'rend brother!
Papists were not so bad!—nor tother!—
Becket and Anselm, they were good!—
And Noll—O! he had sanctitude!
E'en York who Sunday journey sped,
And spurn'd me, is out-Herod-ed!
For O! the church a monster bears,
With mitred head and hoary hairs!
The gates of hell thro' him prevail,
And th' beast with all the heads & tail!
Our truth—our holiness—are gone—
And we, are she,—of Babylon!
Then hear, what well may make thy soul,
Be wither 'd like a parchment scroll!
List!—if thou hast an ear—O! list!
Nor....ch!—old Nor....ch—plays at Whist!!
Arch......Ha! says't thou so ?—insulted heaven!
Can such things be—and be forgiven?
Shall scandal come to the church and shame,
For Sin, the declogue doth not name!
Give me my Crozier! such a rubber I'll
Lend th'old contumacious Liberal!
That cards—so help me! he shan't play
From this unto his dying day!—
And Thou! O! youth immaculate
Hear, what rewards thy zeal await—
On earth—thy wig at rubber horrified
With mightier mitre shall be glorified!
And heaven shall greet you when you die,
The Church's canonized Pry!
?1827
Hand-coloured lithograph vignette with title and inscription engraved on a separate plate printed below (dialogue in three columns)
- Production date
- 1827 (c.)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 91 millimetres (inscription plate-mark)
-
Height: 183 millimetres (lithograph)
-
Width: 275 millimetres (inscription plate-mark)
-
Width: 187 millimetres (lithograph)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', X, 1952)
Henry Bathurst (1744-1837) was considered for many years the only liberal bishop in the Lords; he was notoriously easy-going and neglected his diocese. S. C. Carpenter, Church and People, 1789-1889, 1933, pp. 55, 90, 255. Blomfield (1756-1857), who became bishop of London in 1828, was a disciplinarian, but though objecting to fox-hunting parsons, he tolerated cards and dancing. Matheson, English Church Reform 1815-1840, 1923, p. 169. A satire on the puritanism which accompanied the rapid growth of evangelicalism, seemingly misdirected but based on a newspaper story headed 'More Cant'.
The Bishop of Chester 'has complained to the Archbishop . . . that the venerable Bishop of Norwich, a Prelate full of virtues and years, (now in his 86th we believe,) has exhibited the vicious example of playing a quiet rubber of whist in the evening! And the Archbishop, thus dragooned into a species of petty meddling, quite foreign to his Grace's own disposition is compelled to communicate the unfriendly story to the Bishop of Norwich . . . what a condition of ecclesiastical polity, that must tolerate such a pious busybodiness!' Bell's Life in London, 2 Dec. 1827.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.11309
