The Jubilee
The Jubilee [August 1782] is a sequel to Dame Rat and Her Poor Little Ones which had appeared in late March. In that print Francis Seymour-Conway (Lord Hertford) had lost his job as Lord Chamberlain and his wife and family (Dame Rat and her little ones) were busily attempting (without success) to curry favor with the new Foreign Secretary, Charles James Fox.
How soon do fortunes change! The death of Rockingham on July 1st allowed the King to appoint a new First Minister, in this case Lord Shelburne whom Fox hated. Subsequently resigning in protest, Fox claimed that it was against his principles to participate in a ministry whose policies were constitutionally dangerous. He had expected (or hoped) that he would be followed by a significant number of the other ministers. In this, however, he was sorely disappointed, finding himself, as it were, hung out to dry. And in a particularly galling turn of events, one of the ministers who defied his expectations and even defended the appointment of Shelburne against Fox's attacks was Lord Hertford's brother, General Henry Seymour-Conway.
©National Portrait Gallery, London
In this print, therefore, what we see is Fox on a gibbet, inscribed "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" which (in this context) could be translated "How fleeting is the world's glory!" Dancing around Fox are Lord Hertford (in the center of the print, holding on to the coat tails of his brother), General Conway (blindfolded in military uniform), Lord Shelburne (with two faces), and (continuing counter-clockwise) other members of Lord Hertford's family. With only this much in mind, we might almost call this print Dame Rat's Revenge. The text bubbles from members of the Hertford/Conway family all express varying degrees of relief and delight at Fox's fall from grace:
LORD HERTFORD: (looking decidedly self-satisfied)
All my prayr's are not in vain
For I shall have my Place again.
LADY HERTFORD:
"He! He! He! - well - I always said that Dismal would come to be Hang'd - Ha! Ha! Ha!
EDWARD CONWAY (In ministerial garb):
The Year of Jubillee is come
He's gone to his Eternal home.
In keeping with this interpretation, Gillray might have been aware that the old testament notion of jubilee included not only a celebration but the restoration of alienated lands to their former owners. And indeed the Earl Hertford DID get his job back as Lord Chamberlain.
But Gillray has not left it quite as simple as that. This jubilee is being orchestrated by Lord Shelburne who had an unenviable reputation as crafty, deceitful, and (as Gillray portrays him here) two-faced. And though in his own text bubble, General Conway disputes the assertion made by Fox's ally, Edmund Burke, that he (Conway) is a political innocent, Gillray seems to disagree. The blinded Conway is being literally led by the nose by the devilish Shelburne who says:
Unthinking Fools! - who will as tenderly be led by the Nose, as Asses are - but if he (at whose overthrow they rejoice) scourged them with Whips! they shall find I will chastise them with Scorpions!"
The implication is that while Lord Hertford and his family may be rejoicing now at being restored to their petty privileges on the coat tails of General Conway, they have sold their souls to a devil. This critique seems to be further supported by the subtitle of the print from the Book of Numbers (23:10): "Let me die the death of the Righteous - and let my latter end be like his" (the Patriarch Jacob, who died without reaching the Promised Land). Taken by itself, this seems to be a further jab at the Hertfords and Conways, and an unexpected compliment to Fox for taking the moral high road, preferring to "die the death of the righteous" even if it meant being excluded from office.
But then we realize that these words were spoken by Balaam, who, like Fox, subsequently betrayed the principles he claimed to espouse.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on The Jubilee
- "Jubilee" Wikipedia
- "Jacob" Wikipedia
- "Balaam" Wikipedia
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