print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.9438
- Title
- Object: Something like emigration.
- Description
-
A cart seen from behind and stacked high with treasure-chests approaches the shore beside a signpost pointing 'To Hanover'; a man-of-war lies at anchor. In the back of the cart sit Eldon and the Bishop of (?) Exeter, both resentfully dejected; each holds a paper, one inscribed 'Decapitation Charles', the other 'Abdication James'. The chests are marked either with a coronet or a mitre, the topmost with a crown. On this stands a large royal crown flanked by a sceptre and by a flag on which is the White Horse of Hanover.
Beside the cart (right) walks the Queen in back view, fashionably dressed and with a large purse inscribed '£100,000' hanging from her pocket; she takes by the hand a little boy in hussar uniform, probably Prince George of Cumberland. They walk beside a high wall on which are two bills: 'Deception A Tragedy— Promise A Farce'; 'To Let A Family Mansion at Windsor Also the largest House in Parliament Stt'. Two profiles are silhouetted like cast shadows on the wall; one is of the King, H.L., top-hatted, and gazing up (as in BM Satires No. 16686, reversed) at the playbill at which the other silhouette points with a menacing forefinger.
On the left of the cart walks Wellington as a wagoner in a smock and holding a long whip. He turns his head to John Bull, a countryman, who stands by the roadside watching the departure. The latter says to the Duke with a knowing smile 'What! b'ye going?' Beside him is a milestone: 'II—I Miles'. Inconspicuous on the horizon, like a partly submerged sun, is the upturned profile of William IV, faintly irradiated. May 1832
Lithograph
- Production date
- 1832
- Dimensions
-
Height: 285 millimetres
-
Width: 371 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', XI, 1954)
Hobhouse told Francis Place that there was a project of the Queen "to which with much persuasion the King had acceded, to leave the country clandestinely and run away to Hanover". Add. MS. 27794, fo. 88. Cobbett writes, 'Pol. Reg.', 19 May 1832: "To describe the agitation in London, and the anger of the people against the Lords, the Bishops, Wellington, and particularly against the King is a task that no tongue or pen can perform. . . . A cry for a republic was pretty nearly general; and an emigration to Hanover formed the subject of a popular and widely-circulated caricature." For emigration see also Nos. 17082, 17124.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.9438
