French Habits: Les Membres du Conseil des Anciens

This is the second in a series of twelve plates in which Gillray portrays members of the Whig opposition wearing the new ceremonial robes designed by Jacques-Louis David for the prominent public officials of the French Directorate.

French Habits: Les Membres du Conseil des Anciens

French Habits: Les Membres du Conseil des Anciens [April 18, 1798]
© Trustees of the British Museum

Here he assigns the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Shelburne (aka the Marquess of Lansdowne), and the Duke of Grafton to advisory roles in the revolutionary Council of Ancients. According to the English version of the French pamphlet, Dresses of the Representatives of the People. . ., the Council of the Ancients "examines the resolutions sent up to it from that of the Five Hundred."

Directed by moderation, prudence, experience and wisdom, which are the attributes of old men, they adopt only those wise measures which can be useful to the country.

In this remarkably sparse and understated caricature with the three old Whigs dressed in the robes of the Council of Ancients set against a virtually blank background with no further commentary, Gillray obviously depends upon his reader's knowledge of the character of the three men to appreciate the irony of their role in this "new" order.

The Duke of Norfolk was notoriously drunken and slovenly. Gillray was later to portray him as Silenus in Doublures of Characters (1798). And in The Union Club (1801) Norfolk is the central drunken figure sprawled on the floor in the foreground. Moderation and prudence were hardly the hallmarks of his character. Most recently, he had become notorious for his remarkably ill-advised toast at the birthday celebration for Charles James Fox which Gillray memorialized in the ironic Loyal Toast (Feb. 1798). That toast ("Our Sovereign...the Majesty of the People") and the comparison of Fox to George Washington resulted in his loss of significant sinecures and privileges previously granted by the Crown.

Shelburne (after 1784, the Marquess of Lansdowne) was often compared to Malagrida, the Spanish Jesuit accused of high treason and later executed for heresy. See Gillray's Malagrida & Conspirators, Consulting the Ghost of Oliver Cromwell (1782) and Malagrida Driving Post (1792). He had experience (having been active in politics since the 1760s), but, even more, a reputation for secretiveness and duplicity that may explain his conspiratorial expression in this print.

At the time of French Habits (April 1798), the Duke of Grafton was an elder statesman among Whigs, having been Prime Minister/First Lord of the Treasury as long ago as 1768. Since 1794, however, he had been appearing regularly among the gang of Whigs sympathetic to France, including Fox, Sheridan, Norfolk, Stanhope, Erskine and others whom Gillray had pilloried in print after print. In The Eruption of the Mountain. . . (1794) he had appeared as a French dog wearing a bonnet rouge. In The Real Cause of the Present High Cost of Provisions (1795) he was shown herding cattle towards waiting French ships. And in Patriotic Regeneration (1795), he was again shown wearing the bonnet rouge, but this time busily burning the Magna Charta and Holy Bible as Pitt is condemned by the revolutionary court.

In portraying the robes of these new members of the Council of Ancients, Gillray, as usual, follows the French version most closely with its longer violet robe, white cloak, and white edged scarlet sash. He even borrows the book held closely to the chest by Shelburne/Lansdowne. But he differs from both French and English versions in several small details, providing, for instance, a scarlet hem for the violet robe.

French and English Versions of the robes prescribed for the Council of Ancients

French and English Illustrations
of the Robes Prescribed for the Council of Ancients [1796/97]

Sources and Reading

NEXT: French Habits 3

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