Dan Snow's History Hit - Satire & Scandal in Georgian England

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Can we trace the 'British sense of humour' back to the Georgian period? It was an age of royal madness, political intrigue, the birth of modern celebrity, the French revolution, American independence and the Napoleonic Wars so the satirists of Georgian Britain had plenty to work with. In the late 18th century, artists like Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray and Isaac Cruikshank took on the establishment with cartoons, forever changing how we the public view those in power. History Hit presenter and TikTok star Alice Loxton (@history_alice) joins Dan as they look at the characters behind the 'Golden Age of Caricature' and what was going on that made these prints so popular with the masses.Alice's new book is called 'Uproar!'.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi buddy, welcome to Dan Snow's History. When I was at university we were studying the 1780s and 90s and we used as our source material satirical cartoons from the period. So brilliant were they considered to be by my history professors. They gave you a sense of what Georgians thought about their leaders and also it gave you a sense of Georgian Britain itself. What kind of country was it that allowed artists, publishers to lampoon their political leaders, their royals, their prime ministers, their MPs, their plutocrats, to regularly portray them in the most grotesque and bizarre ways? in the most grotesque and bizarre ways. Something funny was going on. Well, after a gap of 20 years or so, I get to talk about those cartoons again because on the podcast today,

we're looking at the cartoons of the late Georgian period with no other than Alice Loxton. She is the homegrown history hit breakout talent. She is a force of nature. And just when you think she couldn't get any more brilliant, she has written a book on Georgian satire. It's called Uproar. And she's coming on the podcast to talk about it.

Even Alice Loxson works in history. You know, she's super important and busy now. So it's just, I'm so lucky to get some space in her diary. We're very, very proud of what young Alice Loxson has done. She's going on to big things. This is her first book. First of many. And it is going to be a massive success.

And here she is talking about uproar and Georgian satire. Enjoy. T-minus 10. Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

Alice Logsdon, thank you for coming on the podcast. It's brilliant to be here. Thanks for having me. Well, it's exciting, isn't it? And also it's exciting because, as you know, this is my jam as well. You and I share a great love of Georgian politics. But where have you chosen to start? Where's your great age of satire beginning? Well, the book tells the story of a set of revolutionary artists. So it follows their lives from start to end. So it starts kind of mid-century when they're born

and then ends probably between 1810s and the 1820s. But of course, when they really get going, it's about the 1780s. So that's probably where the book really starts. And that's when their satire kicks off. So that's good. There was a lot to satirise in the 1780s. One of the most catastrophic periods of British history, the American colonies gone, Battle of Yorktown, Lord North hopeless, three prime ministers in a year. What an absolute scandal that would be. Is it all about talent, opportunity, timing? Are these people particularly talented? Was there a weird little cadre or was it the times they lived in made it like a bit of an open goal for lampooning politicians?

Well, it's a combination of all those things, really. The times that they lived in were brilliant for this kind of content. You know, it was one of the most dramatic periods in British history. So many challenges came their way. For example, political crisis of William Pitt, the Prime Minister being 24 years old, or the struggles that George III had with his illness or his madness. And then of course, the French Revolution, and then the rise of Napoleon and all these European wars. But within that, there was this incredible cast of characters, William Pitt, the younger, being this kind of tall, skinny, very sensible, very diligent man in the House of Commons. And then he had opposite him,

Charles James Fox, who was almost the opposite of that. And incredibly loose and would come in drunk, you know, not properly dressed, but would really charm the room. And in their own ways, they were both brilliant. And then, of course, there was George III, the kind of frugal king who was known to be a bit of a farmer, who was mocked for having a boiled egg at breakfast. And then opposite him, there was his son, who was, again, the complete opposite, almost the most despicable man that's ever sat on the throne. So we've got this brilliant cast of characters that I think Shakespeare himself would be pleased to have created. And then coupled with that are some of the most creative set of artists I think we've ever had in this country. These are the kind of people who, if they lived today, would be marketing, advertising geniuses because they would be able to

think of images that would just stay with you forever. You know, they'd be able to change great events with an image or set up great campaigns or advertising campaigns that would be the best of the century. And their names were James Gilray, Isaac Cruikshank and Thomas Ronanson, Gilray being the most famous. They created these images, which basically they were educated in a world of high art, taught at the Royal Academy schools by the likes of Joshua Reynolds. They were taught ideals of classical grandeur. And the idea was that they would go on and make great paintings that would be in the grand houses of Britain, great stately

homes like Reynolds did. But they didn't do that. They actually applied these skills to what was considered low art, so satire that you could buy in the streets of London. So it created this middle ground and people went mad for this. And the reason they went mad for it was because they were really brilliant images. They were so weird and surreal. We think Dali was surreal and inventive, but actually Gilray was creating these kind of weird images over a hundred years before and they were just exceptionally well executed. Their use of line and image and text and classical allegory combined with ordinary everyday humour and the way that they could capture the follies and foibles of everyday life so effectively made them some of

the most popular kind of art that was consumed of the day. Is there anything technologically going on or is it just that these people were absolutely brilliant and the times they needed satirising? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, there wasn't really any technological development. There was no reason why people couldn't have done this years before. It was the creativity of the artists using the tools that have been accessible for people for ages that really pushed it forward. They were the first ones to have this education at the Royal Academy schools and be very good at actually the craftsmanship and then applying that to humour. So I suppose that was the new

skill that was coming into the satirical art world. Definitely the thing that sold it was the creativity and the brilliance of Gilray in particular. And they're so interesting because they're very, sometimes it's sort of classical illusion and biblical quotes and hugely clever, but they're also seriously crude as well. Yeah, it's hard to talk about these prints because there were so many of them. They did satirise everyone and everything in society. So, OK, there were politicians and celebrities and ordinary people. But as you say, some of them were incredibly rude, pornographic, you could definitely say. And indeed, that was something which people didn't quite so like in the Victorian period. And we know that Prince Albert destroyed some of the

less PG ones in the Royal Collection. So that is part of the reason why they go out of fashion in the Victorian era. They suddenly look back at these Georgian satirists and think that they are the crudest and the rudest and the worst kind of artists with terrible taste. In some ways, that's why they were so brilliant at the time and why people still like them. Your work's quite challenging because we don't really think of these people as like up there as the great artists of British history. But is it the Victorians didn't include them in the kind of canon of great artists because they were seen as sort of crude and naughty? Yes, I mean, I think that's why I've written the book in that we often think of them because they

were in this world of low art, you know, because you could see them in the streets and because they weren't in grand frames. They were considered at the time and mistaken at the time for just being kind of tradesmen or craftsmen. But actually, when I look at these images, I think these are some of the greatest works that we've ever seen in this country. And I really want to raise them to the status of a great artist along with Reynolds or Turner or Gainsborough or Constable. But yeah, one of the great reasons why we don't know anything about them today is because the Victorians just decided that that late Georgian era where people almost lived life to the full and they drank a great deal and they did everything in excess. This was an age where the glass wasn't half empty or half full, it was full to the brim and overflowing. But it really went out of fashion

in the Victorian age. And it's never recovered for various reasons. You know, it hasn't really rejoined the public consciousness at any point. And I'm on a mission to reintroduce these artists to the public. This is the Gilray comeback tour. As someone that knows and loves you, I think that if Alex Lodston puts her mind to something, then I think that thing tends to happen. So get ready for everyone to see a lot of 18th century satirists back in the mainstream. Tell me about how it all happened. Were they published simultaneously across the country? How did people access these? How quickly would they turn them around? These prints were created very, very quickly after the events that they are describing. So for the political images, say there was a scandal that happened, they could turn them around within a day or two days. And I think that's what's exciting about it, because you know that they would have read a report or they might have read something in the newspaper or they would have seen the speech in the House of Commons. And immediately, as newspaper journalists do today, they run back

to the office and try and write an article, or they'll try and get it in the headlines for tomorrow's newspaper. And it was exactly the same with satirists. And what's great fun is that you can take one event, say the point where George III is suffering from his madness in 1788, 1789, there are multiple prints which come out over that period. And they're all kind of interchanging with the same ideas and playing with each other and bouncing off each other, because there are so many. And if you compare that to other kind of forms of commentary or other forms of visual commentary, paintings, which depict great events, they're much more thought through and curated and photoshopped and airbrushed whereas

these are kind of immediate reactions which makes them great fun and there are a couple of ones where you can see that they've been influenced by another print that's gone out a couple of days before and so I love thinking about the way that these artists would have been walking around London because we know where the print shops were and they would have looked at that print shop window and thought, oh, that's a good idea, and then gone home, worked away overnight, frantically trying to get it out, and then given their version of those events

and put them in the print shop window the next day. So it's a pretty exciting, fast, and very reactive process. Listen to Dan Snow's history. We'll talk about Georgian satire with the brilliant Alice Loxton. More after this. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga.

And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes,

who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Were they friends with each other or were they vicious competitors?

How did it all work? Well, that's a great question. The reason that I was attracted to this subject was that I realised that because they're all dated and there were so many of them we know exactly when they were produced and we know that there were a lot of them produced and they're all very close to each other kind of Piccadilly, Strand, Bond Street and lots of them were working with the same print shop owners and they were commissioned by the same people so I know that they would have been crossing paths all the time the question is were they competitors or were they good friends I think that they wouldn't have been crossing paths all the time. The question is, were they competitors or were

they good friends? I think that they wouldn't have been necessarily particular rivals. I mean, this is kind of speculation because we don't know that much about it. We do know that they went to the pub together. There's an episode where Rowlandson and Gilray go to the pub together and that's recorded, but there's not that much evidence or original sources about what they were up to in their lives. It can be quite hard to work that out. But my sense is that they were creating this new kind of genre together. And they were working with so many of the same people, they were kind of overlapping so much that they probably would have been kind of friendly, I think. Sounds like me and Tom Holland, fellow podcast host.

Right, exactly. Yeah, you get all the history podcasters together. Exactly. Yeah, that's a good analogy. Was it loved by all sections of Georgian society or did the ruling class hate it and try and close down print shops and get rid of it all and suppress it? So, in general, people loved these prints because of the quality of what the content was. And one account records it as veritable madness when the next print was put up. You know, this was a real kind of Beatlemania of the day. But of course, for those who were actually satirised, as is the case today,

perhaps that was less comfortable. And there are some cases of people being quite unhappy with the way that they're depicted. But having said that, in general, people have kind of accepted it. I mean, there are episodes where Charles James Fox, who is perhaps the greatest victim of Gilray's acerbic wit, once walks into Hannah Humphrey's print shop, who was the print shop owner. And he looks at them and he thinks, oh dear, you know, there I am again, but kind of buys a few and then walks out. Or we know that the royals collected them and had them at their breakfast table and they were the subject of many of these prints. There are some cases of politicians desperate

to be in the prints because it was seen as a mark of you're in the political bubble, you're in the political world. We know that George Canning, who later became Prime Minister, he had this real effort to try and be in a Gilray print, and he didn't want to kind of be too obvious about it. So he tried to make all these kind of chance meetings and happened to bump into Gilray. So he created these things like, I'll drop off that painting for you so that I can happen to bump into Gilray at his house. There's some hilarious accounts of when he keeps expecting that he's going to be in a print and he isn't. And there are accounts of when he suddenly realizes he's not and he falls about crying all over the place. This is what the original source says. But eventually Gilray does put him in a print, but it's not in the kind of way that you might expect to be depicted. It's not

particularly dignified because the very first appearance of Canning is him hanging from a lamppost in Piccadilly. So maybe Gilroy's having a bit of a joke with him there, but I'm sure Canning was delighted. He's finally made it as kind of a mark of approval, a mark that you're important enough to be featured. So it's a real mix as it is today with cartoons. I mean, I once talked to George Osborne about this because he was at this Gilray event and he said, obviously, he's been a feature of many quite brutal cartoons and he's also commissioned them. He was saying that, you know, it is kind of, Mark, that you're worth talking about if you're featured yourself. What are some of your favourites? I mean, I love the predictable ones

as a non-expert like you, but I love William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte chopping up the world where Napoleon is taking Europe and Pitt seems to be taking the rest of the world. And it's called,

it's something about the plum pudding, isn't it? That's it. Whether or not it's super funny anymore, I don't know if the humour is endured, but it's just a brilliant image of the early 19th century and the attempt by Pitt and Napoleon to come to an understanding. Absolutely. I mean, let's talk about that one,

because some people have said this is the most famous cartoon that's ever been made. It's an image of William Pitt, who was the Prime Minister and Napoleon. And it's actually on the cover of my book. You know, that's the one that we went for to really summarise these artists. I'm so predictable. I'm so predictable. No, not at all. I mean, it is the one that if I say to people, I've read a book about Gilray, you know, they've often never heard of Gilray. But if I show them that picture, then they suddenly kind of know what I'm talking about. So it is familiar to people. And it depicts these two characters, and they appear to be cutting up a plum pudding, a steaming plum pudding, which was a popular

dish at the time. But actually, this isn't a plum pudding. What we're actually looking at when you look closely is the globe, the great globe itself. And you can see that Pitt's cutting up a great slice of ocean that represents Britain's naval power at the time. And then Napoleon's got his own slice, which is Europe and Great Britain is right in the middle. So it's this allegory really for these great nations and their insatiable appetites, carving up the world, taking control of all these other parts of the world. Because of that, it's been used again and again and again by modern cartoonists. And they just replace it with other characters. So Trump, Thatcher, Cameron, Johnson, May, Putin, everyone has been in this image. And it's been used again and again. And the plum pudding has been replaced itself by the COVID virus or the AstraZeneca vaccine or a great baked bean.

So it's been useful for cartoonists ever since, really. Was this only in Britain? Were they allowed to do this in places on the continent? No. So this is what's really interesting is that the rules were much more lax here. And foreign visitors were often shocked at the fact that there could be a print shop opposite a royal palace. And in that print shop, they would post hideous images of the royals, and they could get away with it. And they weren't told off. And that was just allowed and accepted. This wasn't allowed in other countries. The rules were just far stricter. And it did create this image,

I think, in lots of British people's minds about Britain being this great bastion of freedom and liberty, whether that's true or not is another matter. But in other countries, they were really celebrated. There's a German magazine called London and Paris, where they loved hearing all the details about Hannah Humphrey's print shop and the latest Gilray print and the latest account of who was buying what. And it was a source of great fascination for other nations, really. Alice, let me just stop you there, because we should talk about Hannah Humphrey. Who's she and what's she got to do with the artists? Hannah Humphrey was an entrepreneurial woman. She was quite an impressive woman, really. And

she owned a print shop of her own. She was the one who did, really. And she owned a print shop of her own. She was the one who did the business. Okay, so we have these artists who are really chaotic, and they drink a lot, and they're kind of hard to deal with in lots of ways. But Hannah Humphrey is the one who's got the print shop, who commissions the prints, who does the deals, and she's selling it at the front. And I often think about her as the agent behind the scenes who really makes things happen. She's a bit like a kind of Simon Cowell figure. If these artists are the pop stars that get all the credit, Hannah Humphrey's behind the scenes making it happen. What's a real shame about her is that there isn't much recorded about her,

perhaps because she's a woman, perhaps this often happens to women in history. And so when you're writing a history book, it's quite hard to talk about her a lot because there aren't really that many original sources. But if you were making a movie, say, where you could fill in these gaps, then Hannah Humphrey would be at the very center of it. She could be the main character, making all of these things happen, running this empire. of it. She could be the main character making all of these things happen, running this empire. And it's really impressive to read about her and to see what she was up to, because you don't think about the reality, perhaps, of these prints being sold. And that was actually a big job to do, to keep all of these things under control. So Hannah Humphrey is a great woman. Let's finish by saying Britain has continued to have like a really celebrated and

dynamic satirical cartoon culture and it goes on right until this day. I mean are today's cartoonists the direct descendants really of this golden era that you're describing? Oh absolutely they really are and they would say so themselves. I've asked lots of them and they you know the first thing they say is Gilray's hero. And they not only use the visuals and the lines and the text in the same way that the Georgian satirists kind of established, but they actually use the same images. And so lots of prints you'll look at in the newspapers by people like Gerald Scarfe or Martin Rosen will say at the bottom, this is after Gilray or the original of Gilray. So they're totally indebted to Gilray. And it's not just cartoons, it's all sorts of kind of satire in media. So thinking about Have I Got News For You or Private Eye or Spitting Image, it's that kind of acerbic humour that still

survives. And even Spitting Image, the creators of that said that they owed Gilray a royalty payment for how much they were influenced by Gilray's work and how much Gilray's work shaped what they created. So Gilray's work, it definitely survives within cartoons today. But I think, you know, you could trace a lot of what we perceive as Britishness and British sense of humor to these artists. And in so many ways, we are the children of Gilrae. And I just hope that this book sets on course people's interests and delight in this period of history.

It sure will, Alice Loxton. You bring all the enthusiasm and knowledge to it that has made you so famous. So thank you very much indeed. What's the book called? So it's called Uproar and it's out now. Good luck with it. Thank you so much, Dan.