Nelson's Victory, or Good-News Operating upon Loyal Feelings

This wonderfully ironic print purports to show the reactions of the leading Whigs to the news of Horatio Nelson's victory at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798. Before Nelson's triumph, the British war against France had been going very badly. One by one, Britain's allies in what was called the First Coalition—Spain, Holland, Prussia, Sardinia, and Austria—had all been defeated in decisive encounters and made their separate peace with the French Directory. Britain alone was left to fight against France.

At home, the Foxite Whigs seemed to delight at each new report of Britain's reverses and portrayed them as the inevitable results of Tory mismanagement. Nelson's victory changed all that, reinforcing Pitt's hold on the government, giving Britain effective control of the seas for the rest of the war, and paving the way for a second, renewed coalition of alliances against France.

By 1798 Gillray had created caricature portraits of virtually all the leading Whigs and, in many cases provided easily recognized story lines for each of them. Here in this print, he is able to take full advantage of those facts in a series of eight separate "scenes," wittily portraying reactions to Nelson's victory ranging from incredulity, denial, anger, and shock to illness, resignation, and despair—each one characteristic of a particular Whig or set of Whigs.

• The young radical Francis Burdett first appeared in Gillray's prints several months earlier as a "Messager d'Etat" in French Habits (May 21, 1798) with a trademark shock of hair falling over his brow. But in this case, his profile mirroring Buonaparte's on the wall behind him, his hair completely covers his eyes, allowing Gillray to give Burdett's incredulous reaction to "Nelson's victory" a witty double meaning,"Sure, I cannot see clear."
• Joseph Jekyll and Lord Lansdowne (aka Shelburne) were a pair. The gouty former prime minister and (in Gillray's view) perennially shifty opportunist had all but retired from politics, but his protégé Jekyll served as his eyes and ears. Lansdowne had last appeared in Gillray's work as the central schemer in "Les Membres du Conseil des Anciens in French Habits (Apri 18, 1798); and, before that in Malagrida Driving Post (March 16, 1792), eagerly hoping to resume power during an earlier crisis in Pitt's administration. Here he stops up his ears in utter denial of Jekyll's report of nine French ships captured and two burned.
• The Duke of Bedford had already appeared in many prints by Gillray including The Real Cause of the Present High-Price of Provisions (May 11, 1795) and The Generae of Patriotism. . . (Feb. 3, 1796). From the first he had been portrayed as in fact he was—enormously wealthy. In later prints such as Doublûres of Characters (Nov. 1, 1798) and The Affrighted Centaur. . . his love of horse racing is also alluded to. Here Gillray shows him sitting on on a padlocked chest with similarly locked sacks of Pounds behind him. But on the wall, we see a jockey's hat, whip and riding boots. Tearing up a newspaper with the headline "Complete Destruction of Buonaparte's Fleet, Bedford angrily insists "It's all a damn'd Lye."
• Thomas Erskine, the famous Whig lawyer and defender of radicals such as Thomas Paine, John Horne Tooke, and John Thelwall, was known for a histrionic style in defending his clients in which he would seem at times overcome by his own emotion. The style was caricatured by Annibal Scratch in A Legal Faint, i.e. a Feint (1791) and earned Erskine the nickname of the "Oratorical Swooner." Gillray had recently included him as "L'Avocat de la Republique" in French Habits May 15, 1798 and Councellor Ego, i.e. little i, myself, (October 1, 1798) portraying him as an "i" with a dot over it. In those two prints, he had skewered Erskine's relentless egotism. In this "scene," Gillray picks up on both well-known characteristics and shows Erskine before a desk full of "Republican Briefs," with news of the "Capture of Buonaparte's Dispatches" at his feet. Appearing nearly prostrate with shock and surprise, Erskine applies smelling salts to his nose murmuring "I shall faint, I. I. I.
• The Duke of Norfolk had appeared in numerous Gillray prints over the years. At first, he had been identified by his Earl Marshal's baton, but even as early as Le Cochon et ses Deux Petits (may, 1792) he could be seen with a glass of port in his hands. And after his infamous toast "Our Sovereign's Health—the Majesty of the People" at the birthday celebration for Charles James Fox, memorialized in The Loyal Toast (Feb. 3, 1798), he was increasingly identified with drunkenness (as in his portrayal as Silenus in Doublûres of Characters (Nov. 1, 1798) and the "Toast." Here Gillray shows him slobbering drunk with a broken pipe, a guttering candle and three open bottles of port at his side. In his hand he holds the news of a very different toast: "Nelson & the British Fleet." His reaction recalls his entire sad history: "What a sickening toast!"
• George Tierney and R.B. Sheridan were both Irishmen, and, with the virtual retirement of Charles James Fox to St. Anne's Hil, the leaders of what was left of the Whigs. And as the papers before and around them suggest, they had really suffered twin defeats: the "End of the French Navy" with the loss of numerous "Republican Ships," at the hands of Nelson; but also the "End of [the] Irish Rebellion" in September. And to make matters worse, the military defeat in Ireland had been succeeded by the confession of Arthur O'Connor that he and others of the United Irishmen had colluded with the French. That confession threw suspicion upon nearly all the Whigs who had previously testified to O'Connor's character, especially Sheridan and Fox, who admitted to extensive and intimate acquaintance with him. No wonder, then, that Sheridan needed to keep a low profile and "lock up my Jaw."
• It is certainly no accident that Charles James Fox should be shown wearing the revolutionary bonnet rouge and that his final word (Eclat) should be French. Since the beginning of the French Revolution, Gillray had consistently portrayed Fox as a Francophile, Jacobin, and Sans-Culotte in prints too numerous to detail. And it is consistent with Gillray's other portraits of the impulsive and emotional leader of the opposition that Fox is shown hanging himself. As early as 1782 in Ahitophel in the Dumps (July 30, 1782), he had shown Fox as Ahitophel contemplating suicide after Fox's ill-fated resignation from Shelburne's ministry. And in the two-panel contrasting print, Hanging. Drowning. (Nov. 9, 1795) Gillray shows Fox hanging himself after a major French defeat by the Austrians.

The multi-panel print had been used at least since 1791. And in Contrasted Opinions of Paine's Pamphlet published by W. Holland (May 26, 1791) it was used (as Gillray does here) to show mutiple reactions to the same object or event. By 1797, George Woodward, in particular, was using the style of multiple scenes in two tiers regularly for a variety of purposes. When Gillray uses a muti-panel print, it is usually a simple two-panel contrast, e.g. France Freedom. Britain Slavery (1789). If he uses more than two panels, it is most often to show a chronological progression, e.g. John Bull's Progress (1793) or Democracy, or a Sketch of the Life of Buonaparte (1800). But as usual, when he turns his attention to something that has already been done, as he does here, Gillray establishes a new benchmark for quality and sophistication.

Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on Nelson's Victory, or Good-News Operating upon Loyal Feelings.
• Draper Hill, Mr. Gillray The Caricaturist, 1965, Pl. #79, p. 84.
• "Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson," Wikipedia
• "Battle of the Nile," Wikipedia
• "Francis Burdett," Wikipedia
• "Joseph Jekyll (1754–1837)," Wikipedia
• "William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne," Wikipedia
• "Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford," Wikipedia
• "Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine," Wikipedia
• "Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk," Wikipedia
• "George Tierney," Wikipedia
• "Richard Brinsley Sheridan," Wikipedia
• "Charles James Fox," Wikipedia
• Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #209
• Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times p. 247.

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