The Hopes of the Party Prior to July 14th

This incredibly dark and daring print may have been intended as a companion to A Birmingham Toast, as Given on the 14th of July, a kind of before and after view of the second anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. Both were published by S.W. Fores at a time when most of Gillray's work was being done for Hannah Humphrey (only seven of forty-three prints in 1791 were published by Fores). Both are oversized prints (~20x14 inches). Both feature the same set of protagonists—Fox, Sheridan, Priestley, Horne Tooke, and Sir Cecil Wray. Indeed it was the first time the latter three appeared in any Gillray print, let alone all together. And both prints make specific reference to what would previously have seemed unthinkable: the execution of the King and the overthrow of the government. Especially in this print The Hopes of the Party, we see Gillray doing for the first time what he was to do again and again as the threat of the French Revolution became stronger— portraying in powerful and intensely graphic detail a French-style revolution not just as a metaphor but as a reality occuring in the streets of London.

The Hopes of the Party Prior to July 14th

The Hopes of the Party Prior to July 14th [July 19, 1791]
© Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Beinecke Library:

What had changed? Approximately a month earlier (June 20-21, 1791), the French King and his wife had tried to escape Paris to join with counter-revolutionary forces massing at the French border. The couple were apprehended at Varennes and imprisoned in the Tuileries Palace and eventually brought to trial and executed. Gillray had created prints on the first of these events: French Democrats Surprising the Royal Runaways (June 27, 1791) and The National Assembly Petrified. The National Assembly Revivified (June 28, 1791). Since then Gillray and his audience would have had access to almost daily reports from Paris of the debates in the National Assembly. Was the King's flight an attack upon the new French constitution? Could the King be charged with a criminal offense? Was a constitutional monarchy with this King even possible? More than a year before the execution of King Louis XVI in January 1793, Gillray seems already to have anticipated the outcome, and imagined a similar scenario playing out in England.

A cheering crowd has gathered before a raised scaffold set up in front of the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand. Prime Minister William Pitt and Queen Charlotte hang from the lamposts in front of the tavern, while Charles James Fox, the leader of the Whigs, serving as executioner, prepares to deliver the death blow to a confused and pathetic George III. As he himself explains in the accompanying text, Fox is masked to hide his identity like the executioner of Charles I. Gillray portrays him as anxious not so much about killing the King, but of doing a poor job of it. Fox is assisted (from left to right) by Horne Tooke, a recent opponent of Fox (identified by the paper extending from his pocket—Petition of Horne Tooke). His words are a version of those spoken by the similarly side-switching courtier Doodle in the adaptation of Fielding's Tragedy of Tragedies by Kane O'Hara.

Sure such a day
so renown'd so victorious
Such a day as this was never seen;
Courtiers so gay,
And the mob so uproarious–
Nature seems to wear an universal grin.

On the other side of Fox, we have the dissenting minister, philosopher and scientist, Joseph Priestley (identified by his minister's robes and the treatise in his hand, "Priestley on a Future State." In his speeech bubble, he offers "consolation" based on the assumption that the afterlife is nothing but "an religious imposition." and suggesting that this coup d'etat should be seen as another "glorious revolution" like the one that banished James II and brought in William and Mary. In front of Priestley, and holding the King's head is Richard Brinsley Sheridan (often called "Joseph" an allusion to Joseph Surface the hypocritical antagonist in Sheridan's School for Scandal. At this time he was a reliable ally of Fox and (from Gillray's point of view) his constant partner in crime. Behind Sheridan and wishing to push to the front is Sir Cecil Wray (identified by the "Plan of Chelsea Hospital" in his pocket and the cask of "Small Beer" in his arms). Wray had made himself infamous by proposed economies at Chelsea Hospital and a tax on maid servants that seemed to target the most vulnerable.

As horrific as the sight of five Whigs preparing to chop the King's head off, there are other details in the print which are even more perverse and disturbing. One is the obscene position of Pitt and Queen Charlotte, who had been seen as allies during the King's periods of insanity. Well aware that one of the physiological effects of hanging is an erection, Gillray portrays the Prime Minister as figuratively joined with his bare-breasted Queen in death. Meanwhile the position of Horne Tooke between the King's legs on the other side of the print provides a further obscene commentary on what is being done to the King.

But perhaps the wildest and most perverse detail concerns Sir Cecil Wray with a small keg and what looks to me like a ladle, standing just behind Sheridan aka "Joseph."

Here do give me a little room Joseph that I may be in readiness to catch the droppings of the Small Beer when it is tapp'd; I never can bear to see the Small Beer wasted Joseph!

The "droppings" that he wishes to catch by pushing forward past Sheridan can only be the King's blood which is about to be tapped by the executioner's blade.

It is no wonder that Gillray's caption asks to be delivered "From such wicked Crown & Anchor-dreams." For what Gillray shows in startling detail is a nightmare of brutality and perversion, a world turned upside-down where even Britannia floating above the burning Temple Bar, the ceremonial gate to the City of London, seems to have become a turncoat, masking her trident with a bonnet rouge.

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