Captain Morris
Personally, I doubt that this print is by Gillray. To me the etching style and the faces of Fox and Sheridan look more like Rowlandson's work than Gillray's. But I include it in my catalogue because M. Dorothy George and Thomas Wright both attribute it to Gillray. Who am I to argue with two such luminaries? Assuming, then, that it IS by Gillray, the print is the first of two which features the popular singer/songwriter Captain Charles Morris performing cabaret style before an appreciative audience in which the only identifiable members are Whigs. The other, later, print featuring Morris is Homer Singing his Verses to the Greeks and that one is certainly by Gillray.
© Trustees of the British Museum
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After returning from military service in the American war (hence the Captain), Morris was part of the gambling, drinking, and whoring crowd that surrounded the Prince of Wales in the 1780s and '90s. He was a member of numerous convivial clubs and societies including the exclusive Beef-Steak Society, the Anacreontick Society, the Humbug, Harmonic, and Prince's Society, presided over (naturally) by the Prince of Wales. And according to the London World for November 25th 1789, he was appointed Vice-President of the club "and was, as usual, the soul of the [group]." As Vic Gatrell notes in his City of Laughter, Morris' songs celebrated the life of the libertine with an emphasis on drink, sex, and the city.
The caption of the print is part of the first stanza of "Drinking Song."
When the fancy stirring Bowl
Wakes its World of pleasure,
Glowing visions gild my Soul,
And Life's an endless treasure.
The song's refrain is:
Then who'd be grave
When wine can save
The heaviest soul from sinking,
And magic grapes
Give Angel shapes
To every girl we're drinking?
If the evidence of two prints is sufficient, it appears that Morris performed his songs from a semi-seated position with one leg forward and the other back, and drank and toasted as he performed.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on Captain Morris.
- "Morris, Charles," Wikisource
- Songs Political and Convivial by Charles Morris
- Vic Gatrell, "Chapter 10: The Tree of Life," City of Laughter, 2006, pp. 295-300
- Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times p. 118
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