Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb - cehum - Universidade do Minho

172
GEORGINA ABREU
From the point of view of early nineteenth-century print culture,
Hone’s satires represented a breakthrough. In Aspersions Answered (Hone,
1824: 49), Hone claimed that his ‘little pieces’ had created ‘a new era in
the history of publication’ by combining engraving on wood and type on a
single page, which enabled the production of cheap illustrated texts. Hone
adopted this innovation in the 1819 satire Th e Political House that Jack
Built (Hone, 1971: 35-58), with great success, and used it again in 1820 in
two equally successful pamphlet satires Th e Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder, A
National Toy (Hone, 1971:167-85) and Non Mi Ricordo! (Hone, 1971: 193-
205), composed in partnership with George Cruikshank.
Th e Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder was published in early August 1820,
and ran to forty-four editions in the four months aft er its publication. It
also came out in two French editions and, like most Hone’s satires, inspired
numerous loyalist imitations (Wood, 1994: 172; Bowden, 1975, 320-2). [18]
Th e theme of the wronged wife reached one of its most successful versions
in the satiric depiction of a decadent, debauched King, ‘a burning shame’,
and a Parliament dubbed as the ‘House of Incurables’. Th e line, ‘I shall get
rid of her, and I’ll then get another!’ (179) refl ects the opinion that George
IV was a capricious, deceitful husband, moved by selfi sh reasons and not
by moral principles. Cruikshank’s design for the concluding section, ‘Degradation’,
shows a disgraced George IV ‘exposed [...] for all men to see’ and
turned into a victim of ‘the laughter of triumph, the jeers of the world’
(185).
Th e satiric depiction of the King and of the prosecutors of the Queen is
also carried out in celebration of the press, symbolised by a printing-press
depicted inside an eye, the eye of God, who sees everything. It ‘sees the rat
Leech [Leach, Vice-Chancellor] turn towards Milan’s walls, [...] / sees Him,
for who they work the treacherous task, / With face, scarce half conceal’d,
behind their mask’. Th e King is ‘fat, fi ft y-eight, and frisk, still a beau [...] /
Led by a passion, prurient, blind, and batter’d, / lame, bloated, pointless,
fameless, age’d and shatter’d / creeping, like Guy Fawkes, to blow up his wife’
(181). Th e press is ‘our moral sun’ and a source of knowledge and power.
Th e image of the printing press inside an eye is directly linked to the
eighteenth-century print satires developed out of the Gunpowder plot and
18 Th e Radical Ladder (Anon., 1971: 211-35) was one of them. It was published in October 1820
and printed for the ‘Loyal Association’ to ‘Th e Loyalist and Anti-Radical Magazine’. It is a longer
text than the radical satire (24 pages, whereas Hone’s satire has 18), but it has only one illustration
on the frontispiece, by George Cruikshank in which the Queen, followed by the radicals, is
at the top of the ladder setting fi re to the crown, the head of the political system.
Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb 172 05-01-2012 09:38:28