Bandelures
Similar in style and created for the same publisher S.W. Fores, Bandelures is a sequel to Gillray's earlier prints about the Prince's relationship with Mrs. Fitzherbert. In Wife and No Wife (1786), he had portrayed the Prince's supposedly secret continental marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert, and in The Morning After (1786) he had shown their immediate post marriage and post coital languor. In Bandelures we catch up with this "Prince's Progress" after five intervening years with the Prince sleepy, bored, and playing with a fashionable French toy (a bandelure or yo-yo) while supposedly betrayed by the woman and friend he depended upon.
© Trustees of the British Museum
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Both earlier Gillray prints had a distinctly Hogarthian feel to them with the principal figures set in an interior space with surrounding objects providing the framework for interpreting the scene. And with Bandelures, that indebtedness to Hogarth continues. The Prince reclines on a sofa playing with a bandelure assuming a pose reminiscent of Plate 3 of the Rake's Progress. And like Tom Rakewell in Hogarth's print, the Prince is rewarded for his profligate behavior by being duped by the very woman whose arm surrounds him. Behind him (a la Hogarth) are a series of objects which provide an allusive commentary: a bust of the Roman emperor Claudius, whose wife, Messalina, was notoriously unfaithful; a dice box, a statue of Bacchus, and a decorative panel of a horse race—alluding to the Prince's gambling, drinking, and horse racing addictions respectively.
© Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University
Directly above Sheridan is a picture of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife. In that story, Joseph resists the charms of Potiphar's wife out of a natural integrity and a respect for his friend and employer. But in contrast, Sheridan is shown aggressively fondling Mrs. Fitzherbert's breast, and the somewhat awkward and angry manner in which he presses his face up to hers is likely meant to recall Judas' betrayal of Christ in numerous prints and paintings.
Already implicitly compared to Messalina, Mrs. Fitzherbert would seem to be sufficiently satirized by Gillray already. But he also shows her with a royal tiara with the princely plumes and inscription "Ich diene" or "I serve." Besides alluding to her queenly aspirations, the tiara provides a further damning comment on her behavior here. She serves. . .two men at once.
According to Draper Hill, the impetus for Gillray's print may have been rumors of something going on between Sheridan and Mrs. Fitzherbert that explained his extended stay in Brighton with the Prince and Mrs. Fitzherbert. house. That rumors were rampant is certainly supported by the extended quote included in the subtitle of the print.
Fond Fool, arouse! shake off this childish Dream,
Behold Love's falsehood, Friendship's perjur'd troth;
Nor sit & sleep, for all around the World
Thy shame is known, while thou art blind.
It is certainly true that for at least two years, Sheridan and his wife had been leading virtually separate lives. He had been carrying on a quite public affair with Lady Duncannon; she had responded with a flirtation with the Duke of Clarence and by March 1791, a more discreet affair of her own with the handsome and charismatic Lord Edward FitzGerald. But Gillray's print is almost certainly unfair to Mrs. Fitzherbert who seems to have been more faithful and chaste than the Prince deserved, and is extremely unlikely to have allowed the sort of behavior from Sheridan that Gillray shows.
But if the whole image is based on outwardly plausible but tawdry rumor, Gillray's print is certainly consistent with the cruder and more sensational edge in other Fores-commissioned prints.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on Bandelures
- Draper Hill, Fashionable Contrasts, 1966, #52
- Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #48
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