- Museum number
- 1868,0808.12626
- Title
- Object: Dinner of the four in hand club at Salthill.
- Description
-
Plate from the 'Scourge', i, before p. 431. A scene of drunken disorder, the members drinking toasts, fighting, or asleep. A long table littered with bottles, some broken, glasses, &c., extends across the design. On the extreme left is the chairman's seat, empty. It is surmounted by a gigantic broad-brimmed hat and flanked by whips. On the back is a design of a coach-wheel surmounted by a similar hat and having the motto 'Prime Bang Up' [see No. 11700]. A man stands on the table drinking, holding up decanter and glass. One man smokes a pipe and holds a frothing tankard inscribed 'Tempest'. Most of the members wear coaching-dress, some with hats of varying patterns. A man wearing a coat with multiple capes sits tipsily on an overturned chair, holding a whip and imaginary reins, as if driving a four-in-hand. Next him is a man who spills wine from a goblet made of a skull and inscribed 'Trumpeter scull' [see No. 11711], showing that he is Sir Godfrey Webster. He wears a new-fashioned overcoat, with high collar without capes, double-breasted, with large buttons inscribed 'Tally ho'. Two men lie on the ground, one vomiting into his hat. The space behind the table is packed with men fighting and shouting. Raised above the others is a man playing a fiddle. On the walls is a placard headed 'Resolutions Passd at the Last Meeting of the Four in . . . Resolved . . . [signed] Buxton.' There are two pictures, one of a man driving an open carriage and four, apparently a 'landeau-vis', and one a man driving a coach and four, inscribed 'Royal M[ail]'.
1 June 1811.
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1811
- Dimensions
-
Height: 231 millimetres
-
Width: 367 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', IX, 1949)
Illustration to an article 'The Dinner at Salt Hill': The Four-in-hand Club met in Cavendish Square, seven members only; at Salt Hill they found professional coachmen and a courtesan, admitted a temporary member. The president was C. Buxton (probably Charles, 1787-1817, second son of Thomas Fowell Buxton of Essex). Cf. an article on the Club in the 'Satirist', 1 Mar. 1811: the leader of the Club is Mr. C. Buxton, the vehicles are all landeau-vis, uniform, hung high and painted yellow. The great-coats are to be worn without capes, the hats conical with small brims. See also Gronow, 'Reminiscences', 1892, ii. 108-10. For the driving mania see also No. 11700, &c. The design probably derives from Gillray's 'The Union Club', No. 9699, cf. No. 13249.
There is a second state, with the title 'Bang-up Dinner or Love and Lingo', a frontispiece to 'Lexicon Balatronicum, A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence. Compiled originally by Captain Grose . . .', 1811 (Cohn, No. 486). Plate missing from the B.M.L. copy. A later edition with the same plate is 'A Bang up Dictionary; or, the Lounger and Sportsman's Vademecum . . .' (Reid, No. 4617; Cohn, No. 46).
Reid, No. 122. Cohn, No. 732.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.12626