The Lover's Dream

This wonderful print appeared in January 1795 when arrangements for the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Princess Caroline of Brunswick were already in progress. The Prince had agreed to marry the Prince in exchange for an increased allowance and the payment by Parliament of his considerable debts. Though Gillray is clearly skeptical, hopes were strong (in some quarters at least) that the officially approved marriage would enable the Prince to forswear his habits of drinking, gambling, betting, spending, and fornicating, and embrace a life of virtue (or some semblance thereof).

The Lover's Dream

The Lover's Dream [1795]
© Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

The print is cast as a dream, a format completely appropriate for this bit of wishful thinking, and one that Gillray was increasingly fond of because it gave him the freedom to arrange his figures with even fewer concessions to "realism" than usual. The subtitle is from Comus, a court masque written by John Milton in praise of chastity.

So dear to heav'n is saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream and solemn vision
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,
Till oft converse with heav'nly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on th' outward shape.
Comus 453ff

The print is effectively divided into two frames by the draped bedpost which intersects the print from top to bottom. Good influences are on the right; bad influences on the left. Princess Caroline floats into the dream as an angelic embodiment of Chastity accompanied by Cupid, the god of love with his typical bow and arrows and Hymen, the god of marriage, with his garland of fresh flowers and the controlled heat and light of his torch.

Her appearance drives "each thing of Sin & Guilt" from the mind of the Prince. On the left, from top to bottom, that includes the race-horses which were the Prince's lifelong addiction and which which were one of the many drains upon his finances.

Below them are three of George's mistresses who look back at Princess Caroline apprehensively: the matronly Mrs. Fitzherbert, to whom the Prince had been illegally married since December 1785, the more fashionably plumed Frances, Lady Jersey with whom he carried on an affair between 1794 and 1798 (before and after the marriage to Princess Caroline), and between them a younger woman, perhaps Mrs. Anna Maria Crouch a singer and actress with whom the Prince is supposed to have had a brief fling sometime before 1793.

Further below, the Prince's long-time companions in politics, gambling, and carousing, cower in guilt and fear: Charles James Fox with his proverbial dice box, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who appears as a Jewish money lender perhaps because he was so instrumental in creating, and (more recently) negotiating the payment for, the Prince's debts. And finally, one of the Prince's many drinking companions (the putti-like Lord Derby) appears as the figure of Bacchus falling from his perch astride a cask of port.

Nearer to the sleeping Prince, the King holds a sack of money labelled 150,000 Pounds per Annum, which was the major incentive for the marriage, and the queen proffers a book, The Art of getting Pretty Children expressive of the hope that this legal marriage might one day produce a legitimate heir to the British throne.

But next to the bed, appropriately set in the chamber pot, is a bottle labeled "Velnos" a syrup used to treat venereal disease, a tell-tale sign that this dream may face a rude awakening. And that, in fact, happened in spectacular fashion. Months before the nuptials took place, in an amazing instance of bad faith (even for him), the Prince arranged for his current favorite mistress to be the one of his new bride's Ladies of the Bedchamber, and had her meet the Princess when she arrived in Greenwich. And when the Prince and his bride finally came face to face three days before the wedding, both were disappointed. She thought him fat and no where near as handsome as his picture; he found her disgusting and unhygienic, demanding a stiff drink as soon as they were introduced. By most accounts, the Prince prepared himself for his wedding night by getting drunk. And many believed it was the first and last night he slept with his new wife. Within a year, the Prince made a will providing the Princess with but a single shilling, while stipulating that the bulk of his estate go to Mrs. Fitzherbert. And by 1796, he was angling for a formal separation.

However deeply ironic the subject matter, the arrangement and characterization of the figures, the detailed attention to the bedclothes and drapery, the exquisite use of etching and aquatint are all simply superb. This is Gillray at the top of his game, and there is no one who could even remotely match him for both conception and execution.

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