The Life of William Cobbett, Written by Himself Pl. 5.
This is the fifth plate in Gillray's eight plate series, The Life of William Cobbett, Written by Himself which pretends to be a kind of graphic autobiography, but is, in fact a not so veiled attack upon Cobbett himself. For the general context of the series in Gillray's work, some background about Cobbett, and the more immediate impetus for the set of plates, see my Introduction.
© Lewis Walpole Library Yale University
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The fifth plate shows Cobbett, now a private citizen (his military uniform abandoned on the floor in the foreground), standing before the General Advocate, Charles Gould with a set of "Accusations agst Capt Powell & others" in his left hand. This is not the first time, he has approached Gould because on the Judge's desk we can see "Charges by W. Cobbett against Capt Powell." But at this moment (his right hand on his breast) he is swearing an oath that that turned out to be the ultimate gift to Gillray and Cobbett's political opponents.
if my Accusation is without foundation the authors of cruelty have not yet devised the tortures I ought to endure; Hell itself, as painted by the most fiery bigot, is too mild a punishment for me.
Gillray seizes on the expression to create a dark double for Cobbett standing before the gaping mouth of the devil's pawn shop, his soul now, in effect, pledged to Beelzebub. Here is Gillray's caption to the image.
my next step was to procure a Discharge from my ever-lamented associate the Lord-Edwd Fitzgerald:_with this I returned to England, and directly set about writing "the-Soldiers-Friend"_which I nightly dropt about the Horse-Guards; and drank "Damnation to the House of Brunswick!"_more-over, I wrote 27 Letters to my Royal Master, to Mr Pitt and the Judge Advocate, against my Officers, 23 of which Letters were stolen by the public-Robbers, and never came to hand,_so that I had no means of obtaining Credit for my Charges, & procuring a Court-Martial_but_by solemnly Pledging my precious Soul to the Devil in the presence of Judge Gould for the Truth of my alegations, and my ability to support them by evidence!!!_____Vide_my own Memoirs in the Political Register 1809.'
As usual, the caption is a mix of fact and fiction. Cobbett DID request and obtain a discharge from the army. And it WAS Lord Edward Fitzgerald as Major of the regiment who wrote the letter of discharge. But there was no particular relationship between Cobbett and Fitzgerald, and, in 1791 Cobbett was, if anything, a Francophobe. But as we have seen, the mention of Fitzgerald is enough to implicate Cobbett in the Irishman's revolutionary goals. Similarly, the Soldier's Friend a pamphlet critical of the military hierarchy, which may or may not have been written by Cobbett, is enlisted as another indicator that Cobbett is aiming to "to Disorganize the Army, preparatory to the Revolutionizing it altogether" as we heard in Plate 4. And finally, Cobbett DID write 27 letters to the authorities, including letters to the the King, the Prime Minister, the Secretary of War, and the Judge Advocate— only five of which were subsequently published in the Proceedings of the Court Martial. But the letter to Gould quoted from in the speech bubble was written while Cobbett still believed that the regimental books had been secured and he still had confidence that the accumulation of evidence would prove his assertions.
© Google Books
Gillray's use of a dark double to suggest that Cobbett had made a Faustian deal with an appropriately French devil (wearing a bonnet rouge) would have appealed to Gillray's audience which was still enjoying Gothic novels and the latest phantasmagorias created with magic lanterns. But it also recalls Gillray's earlier print Doublures of Character (1798) originally designed for the Canning-led Anti-Jacobin Review. Did Gillray use a similar technique here because he knew he was working for the same customer?
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on The Life of William Cobbett, Written by Himself Pl. 5..
- Draper Hill, Mr. Gillray The Caricaturist, 1965, p. 117, 144n
- "William Cobbett," Wikipedia
- "Sir Charles Morgan (aka Gould), 1st Baronet," Wikipedia
- The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (1797)
- Cobbett's Weekly Political Register , June 17, 1809
- Proceedings of a General Court Martial,"
- Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #362.
- Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. 365-366 .
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