Patience on a Monument

This odd and unusual print purports to represent a monument containing a profile image of Lady Cecilia Johnston as Patience sitting, lost in thought, on a large, golden, close stool. Behind her a putto (likely Hymen, the god of marriage) holds his nose with one hand, and the torch of Hymen (inverted) in the other. In front of her is a skull with crossed bones and a ghostly face looking up at her. In her hand, there is a slightly shredded paper labelled "Tranquility." Beneath the central image of the monument is an inscription between two classical columns containing a slightly altered version of some lines from Alexander Pope's Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day. To finish off the complex fiction presented here, the print pretends to have been "Engraved from a Modern Antique in the Possession of the General."

Patience on a Monument

Patience on a Monument [September 19, 1791]
© Trustees of the British Museum

What are we to make of all this? One's first impulse is to see the print as simply one more in a line of attacks on Lady Cecilia that began with an untitled portrait caricature by Gillray in 1780, and continued with St. Cecilia (1782) and La Belle Assemblée (1787). All of these Gillray prints include the same strikingly angular and unattractive profile we see here and the last two allude to Lady Cecilia's pretensions to musical skill (St. Cecilia was the patron saint of music), and her desire to be seen as beautiful in spite of her age (she would have been 64 in 1791). But the attack upon this "Modern Antique" would seem to be more than usually cruel if the point was simply to make fun of General Johnston's constipated wife. It would also largely ignore the presence of Hymen, the skulls, and the allusions to Shakespeare and Pope.

The title, Patience on a Monument, comes from a speech by Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night comparing the differences between men and women in their expressions of love. In that speech Viola tells of an imaginary sister, who, like Viola herself, could not speak openly of her love, but instead

. . .pined in thought.
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument.
Smiling at grief. . . II.iv.ll 17—114.

If Lady Cecilia is to be seen like Viola, she would then be grieving, but constrained to silence, like the frozen image of Patience on funerary monuments. The torn paper in her hand might suggest a Tranquility that has now been shredded. The image of Hymen holding his nose with his torch inverted might suggest that the stink has something to do with her marriage. And the skull and crossed bones might suggest a kind of death at least for Lady Cecilia.

But as so often in Gillray's prints, there is a second frame through which to read the action, in this case provided by lines adapted from Alexander Pope's Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day that appear between the two columns beneath the image and to which Gillray directs us: "Vide St. Cecilia's Day. One of its functions, of course, is to identify the woman in the print as the "divine Cecilia," one of Lady Johnston's nick-names among her friends. But Gillray has made some significant changes in the lines. The actual lines from Pope's poem appear below.

By Music minds an equal temper know,
Nor swell too high, nor sink too low. . .
Music the fiercest grief can charm,
And Fate's severest rage disarm:
Music can soften pain to ease
And make despair and madness please. . .
This the divine Cecilia found,
And to her Maker's praise confin'd the sound. ll. 22—23 and 118—125.

In each case where Pope mentions "Music," Gillray substitutes "Patience," and whereas Pope's St Cecilia "to her Maker's praise confin'd the sound," Gillray's Cecilia "to her Husband's ears confind the sound." Was Lady Cecilia forced to become a model of patience, softening "pain to ease," by some significant marital indiscretion on the part of her husband?

The few bits I've been able to find out about Lady Cecilia's marriage to General James Johnston suggest that she was a fond and loyal wife and that he was a good and faithful huband. But we also hear that he was among the handsomest men of his day, and 18th century men, especially soldiers, were not noted for their chastity. Indeed, there is an astonishingly frank letter to Horace Walpole from Lady Cecilia in May of 1762, just recently engaged to the Major-General James Johnston, that suggests that she had no expectations of faithfulness from men, not excluding her Irish future husband. She is responding to Walpole's request for a model hero for his novel Castle of Otronto.

You cannot guess my concern when I found I was to give you a pattern hero for your romance, because I was certain I have not an idea worthy your pen nor know a man perfect enough to be the hero of your history. The latter I own a mistake occasioned by suffering my first thoughts to wander far from my own country, and fixing on a hero who I conceive has every requisite for a modern attachment, but who I doubt would fail in romantic constancy, as I have heard Orondates and those gentlemen were all male Lucretias, and I am terribly afraid my hero, if occasion offered, would not follow the example of Joseph. The heroes of our days preach us a doctrine they do not practise and presume we are to be contented with the constancy of their hearts. Indeed in all my search after perfection I find none but the charming description you have drawn of the adorable pearl worthy of a place in your romance.

Although famously outspoken regarding other people's faults, Lady Cecilia seems to have been successfully guarded and reticent about missteps of her own and those of her husband. In Gillray's The Power of Beauty published about six months after Patience on a Monument, there is a clear implication of sexual infidelity—this time on the part of part of Lady Cecilia herself— which could be regarded as payback (Isaac Cruikshank has a print about the same episode called The Reversement), but in both cases, if there was any real basis for scandal, the details were confined to the General's ear. And even if there were some unkind remarks prompted by Gillray's prints, they could easily have been dismissed as the animosity of ill-bred caricaturists.

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