Wouski

Wouski is one of those Gillray prints that were later "suppressed" by the Victorians for being both too sexually explicit and too disrespectful of the royal family. It shows an amorous Prince William Henry, the 22 year old younger son of George III, wrapped around a buxom black woman in a hammock on board his frigate, the Pegasus, which had returned to England from Jamaica in December 1787. Gillray was almost certainly reacting to tales about the Prince's drunken escapades at bawdy houses in Barbados and the rumors of a "lady of colour" who was said to be his constant companion.

But apart from taking advantage of the gossip surrounding the royal family and the currency of slave trading issues, Gillray's print is another example of Gillray's knowledge of the popular drama of his time and his willingness to use it in establishing interpretive frames for his caricatures.

The title comes from the name of the black handmaiden to the heroine in George Colman's Inkle and Yarico, a popular comic opera first staged in August 1787 and performed over 20 times that summer. The plot of the opera provides an ironic counterpoint to the print. The story involves a mercenary English trader (Inkle), shipwrecked somewhere in the West Indies, who is saved by a beautiful native maiden (Yarico). They fall in love and Inkle initially promises to marry her when he returns to civilization. But as he gets closer to the English plantations of Barbados, the heartless and mercenary precepts of his father work to convince him that both economics and propriety would be better served by maintaining a previous engagement to Narcissa, a rich heiress, and selling Yarico to a local slave trader. Fortunately, in Coleman's opera, Inkle's better angels prevail. He regrets his attempts to sell his former lover, and eventually the two are united in marriage. The quotation accompanying the print is from another play called Theodosius, or The Force of Love (1680) by Nathaniel Lee.

—Far be the noise
Of Kings & Crowns from us whose gentle souls
Our kinder fates have steer'd another way.
Free as the forest birds we'll pair together
Without remembering who our fathers were.
And in soft murmurs interchange our souls.

Applied to Prince William's case, however, these would seem to proceed from the irresponsible force of lust and deceit, for William clearly remembered who his father was and his later opposition to attempts by William Wilberforce to abolish slavery does not bode well for any black mistress he might have brought back with him from his naval assignment. The likely end of this episode was not comedy but tragedy.

In general, Gillray has a well-earned reputation for misogyny. But here, as in Dido Forsaken, he shows an unexpected sympathy for women whose love is callously exploited by men in power.

Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on Wouski
• "Social Reform and Comic Opera: Inkle and Yarico" by Linda V. Troost from her book, The Rise of Comic Opera
• "Times Past: Prince William Henry" from The Caribbean Beat.

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