Modern Hospitality, or A Friendly Party in High Life

This is the first of at least four prints by Gillray in the 1790's satirising the gambling parties held in their homes by a small group of fashionable women collectively known as Faro's daughters. The other Gillray prints included: Exaltation of Faro's Daughters (May, 1796), Loss of the Faro Bank or the Rook's Pigeon'd (February, 1797), and Discipline a la Kenyon (March, 1797).

Gambling among the upper classes was virtually a national pastime throughout the 18th century. Most of it was done by gentlemen of means at their favorite clubs—White's if you were a Tory, and Brooks's if you were a Whig. In the 1780s and 90s, however, as the number of gambling clubs and parties increased, so did the participation of women. By 1792, according to Gillian Russell in her comprehensive and insightful essay,""Faro's Daughters": Female Gamesters, Politics, and the Discourse of Finance in 1790s Britain," the Duchess of Devonshire, for instance, had run up debts equalling if not exceeding those of that legendary spendthrift, Charles James Fox.

But it was not just as players that women began to appear at gambling houses in the 1790's. It was as bankers and dealers, the virtual owners of the game. In Modern Hospitality, for instance, we see the hook-nosed Lady Sarah Archer as banker about to rake in all the cash on the table from a mix of disappointed men and women from various walks of life including the Prince of Wales (to her immediate left), a gentleman with the sash of a chivalric order, a fat lady who may represent the Countess of Buckinghamshire, at least one clergyman, and Charles James Fox just below the cleric. It is surely no accident that in calling out the winning card ("The Knave wins all,"), Lady Archer is, in effect, desribing herself.

Gillray often created his caricatures in response to events that were "in the news" —part of the current discourse. In this case, he was probably responding to the publication by Justice Stephen Ashurst of a "Charge to the Grand Jury for the County of Middlesex" on the subject of GAMBLING which had appeared in February in the London Times, the Evening Mail and other newspapers. There Justice Ashurst sought to enlist the Grand Jury to address an evil that was, he said, "daily increasing."

The evil that I mean is that of excessive gambling, and the great number of houses that are kept on foot for that destructive vice.

Interestingly, Ashurst does not focus so much on the individual ruin that gambling brings upon the players, but, as Gillray does in his ironic title, Modern Hospitality, on the moral depravity resulting from the betrayal of a basic social contract.

. . . for certainly nothing can be more ungenerous, more unfeeling, and more immoral, than for a number of persons to meet under the semblance of friendly intercourse, and to use their utmost endeavours to reduce each other, as well as their families, to beggary and ruin.

But this perversion of hospitality is only one part of the thrust of Gillray's satire. By making Lady Archer the "Knave" of the piece, Gillray returns to, and elaborates on, a view of mature ladies of of fashion that he had been depicting in prints throughout 1791 like The Finishing Touch, La Derniere Ressource, or Van Buchells Garters, and Patent Bolsters. In those prints, he had shown them seeking out the latest craze in cosmetics or dress in a pathetic attempt to turn back the clock and maintain their power over men. Here he argues that their interest in keeping their own houses of gambling is a displacement of that same desire.

'To those earthly Divinities who charmed 20 Years ago, this Honorable method of banishing mortifying reflections, is dedicated. O Woman! Woman! everlasting is your power over us, for in youth you charm our Hearts, and in your after-years you charm away our Purses.

NOTE: In its commentary on this print, the British Museum describes the scene as taking place "at a faro-table." And from that we may infer that Lady Archer and company are playing Faro. But we would be wrong. The setup of Faro requires a game board or layout on the table consisting of 13 cards of a single suit, usually spades.

Players place their chips on one or more of the cards on the layout. They never hold cards themselves.

What we see in Modern Hospitality is closer to an older banking game called Basset. where the players begin with 13 cards each of a single suit. As we see in Gillray's print the players put their stakes on one or more of the cards before them. In the English version of Basset, punters (players) could lay down stakes from one guinea to one hundred guineas and more, upon a card. Gillray may have chosen to model his print on Basset for aesthetic reasons because the players could be spread out across the page and the stakes were clearly visible. But theater-goer as he was, he may have been more familiar with Basset because of the play by Susan Centlivre called The Basset Table.

Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on Modern Hospitality, or A Friendly Party in High Life.
• Tim Clayton, James Gillray: A Revolution in Satire p. 159-163.
• Diana Donald, The Age of Caricature, pp. 105-6.
• "Albinia Hobart," Wikipedia
• "Faro Ladies," Wikipedia
• "Faro (banking game)," Wikipedia
• How to Play Faro
• "Basset (banking game)," Wikipedia
• "William Henry Ashurst (judge)," Wikipedia
• "Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon," Wikipedia
• Gillian Russell, "Faro's Daughters": Female Gamesters, Politics, and the Discourse of Finance in 1790s Britain," Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 481-504.
• Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #425.
• Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. 212.