All Bond-Street Trembled As He Strode

There is not a lot of certainty about this portrait caricature of a fashionable young man except that it is beautifully etched in Gillray's most accomplished style. Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans in their standard commentary in the Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray identify the man as Colonel Townsend of the Grenadier Guardsman, but I have found nothing to corroborate that identification. On the other hand, Thomas McLean, in his "Illustrative Description" of the print in The Genuine Works of James Gillray, Engraved by Himself identifies him as James Duff, future Earl of Fife, who, in a number of ways, is a more likely candidate.

James Duff* was born in 1776 which would have made him approximately 26 years old in 1802, consistent with the age of the young man portrayed in the print. He was the nephew of the immensely rich 2nd Earl of Fife, and since the Earl had no legitimate heirs, was groomed from an early age to succeed his uncle. He was a taken away from his parents at the age of six and raised and educated at the direction of the Earl by a private tutor, and then subsequently at Westminster School Christ Church College, Oxford, before entering Lincoln's Inn. By 1796 he had been made a member of Brooks's, and become part of the fast and fashionable crowd surrounding the Prince of Wales. So the meticulous attention to fashion we see in the dress of the young man would have been de rigueur. It is likely through his connections with that set that he came to know Sir John Manners, a long-time friend of the Prince whose second daughter James Duff married in 1799. A portrait of James Duff by Henry Raeburn painted in 1815, some twelve years after Gillray's print shows some resemblance to the figure in All Bond-Street Trembled As He Strode.

So far as I know, the title of the print, like the identification of the subject, has also remained obscure. Neither Wright and Evans, Dorothy George, nor Draper Hill provide an explanation. So I will hazard a guess that it is intended to parody lines from Paradise Lost Book 2, line 675-6 where Death is described approaching Satan and Sin.

The monster moving onward came as fast
With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode.

Gillray was clearly familiar with the scene having parodied the confrontation earlier in one of his most daring prints, Sin, Death, and the Devil (1792). If I am right, the substitution of fashionable Bond Street for Hell and James Duff for the awe-inspiring figure of Death, a contrast of the ridiculous and the sublime, serves to underline the pettiness of the subject, the vacancy of his stare, pushing an otherwise polished and restrained portrait caricature in the direction of satire.

* There are several persons named James Duff which further complicates matters. There is James Duff, the 2nd Earl of Fife, uncle to the subject of the print. Then there is Sir James Duff, the illegitimate son of the 2nd Earl, who served in Limerick during the Irish Rebellion and was a Colonel of the 50th Regiment of Foot from 1798 until his death in 1839. Nearly all the references to James Duff in newspapers between 1799 and 1802 refer to this James Duff. Then there was James Duff, the nephew of the subject of this print, who became the 5th Earl of Fife.

Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on All Bond-Street Trembled As He Strode.
• Draper Hill, The Satirical Etchings of James Gillray, 1976, #76.
• "Bond Street," Wikipedia
• "James Duff, 4th Earl Fife," Wikipedia
• "DUFF, James, 4th Earl Fife," The History of Parliament
• The Book of the Duffs
• Lord Fife and His Factor
• Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #473.