Exaltation of Faro’s Daughters
Description:
An undefined crowd that disappears into the foreground of the print batter Lady Archer and Lady Buckinghamshire, chained at the Pillory, with battered with eggs and mud. Both women don large feather headpieces, heavy gold earrings, and swell dresses. Buckinghamshire is clearly the shorter and wider of the two. Their red faces, Lady Archer’s drawn and wrinkled and Lady Buckinghamshire’s round with a double-chin, are in right profile and reveal tear drops on the cheeks. A sign posted to the foundation of the wooden Pillory reads “Cure for Gambling Published by Lord Kenyon in the Court of Kings Bench on May 9, 1796.”
Copyright:
Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. Copyright, 2009.
Accession Number:
796.5.12.1
Printing Context
Exaltation of Faro’s Daughters appeared for sale or free viewing in Hannah Humphrey’s print shop on New Bond Street, May 12, 1796.Associated Events
In 1796, the Evangelical sympathizer Lord Chief Justice Kenyon, referring to illegal gambling in a civil case concerning gaming debt declared that “If any prosecutions are fairly brought before me, and the parties are justly convicted, whatever may be their rank or station in the country, though they should be the first ladies in the land, they shall certainly exhibit themselves in the Pillory” (qtd in M. George, Social Change 61-62).Associated Places
Faro’s tables: Women and men of fashionable aristocratic circles held faro’s tables at their various residences, despite the illegality of private gaming and banking. The ‘banker’ always won, and the practice could provide income for the ladies, an association at times adressed in terms of women's relative lack of recognized financial independence compared to men; the caricaturists’ satirical prints suggest other motivations as well, namely the satiation of a thirst for power over men, at the demise of younger, more beautiful women (C. McCreery, Satirical Gaze 244; D. Donald, Satirical Prints 106).Associated Texts
Gaming was a popular vehicle for satirizing the moral transgressiveness of wealthy aristocrats--especially the women notorious for it--throughout the 1790s. Gillray’s The Loss of the Faro-Bank; or –The Rook’s Pigeon’d and Modern-Hospitality, -- or – A Friendly Party in High Life, and Discipline a la Kenyon also satirize Lady Buckinghamshire, Lady Archer & co. for their gambling habit and gaming lifestyle. Faro's Daughters, or The Kenyonian Blow up to Gamblers by Isaac Cruikshank is modeled after and published one week following Exaltation of Faro's Daughters.Subject
Lady Archer and Lady Buckinghamshire, chained at the Pillory, are being battered with eggs and mud by an undefined crowd that disappears into the foreground of the print. Both women don large feather headpieces, heavy gold earrings, and swell-dresses. Buckinghamshire is clearly the shorter and wider of the two. Their red faces, Lady Archer’s drawn and wrinkled and Lady Buckinghamshire’s round with a double-chin, are in right profile and reveal tears. A sign posted to the foundation of the wooden Pillory reads “Cure for Gambling Published by Lord Kenyon in the Court of Kings Bench / May 9, 1796.”Theme
Red cheeks identify the face painting practiced by old aristocratic women and often satirized in the era's social caricature, especially notoriously by and with Lady Sarah Archer. Her deformed beak-like nose, also a particularity to her caricaturized persona, further exaggerates her age and rapaciousness. The ostentatious gold earrings comprise another part of the older women’s “costume,” which in its exaggerated depiction points to the women's own overdone appearance.Significance
Gaming was a fundamental part of late eighteenth-century culture, and was especially practiced by the highest and lowest classes: William Cowper asserted that “Conversation among people of fashion is almost annihilated by universal card-playing” (qtd. in M.D. George, Social Change 61). Women were seen as particularly complicit in supporting this vice, and caricaturists made use of this notoriety to point to a correlated cultural issue: gaming offered older women a means to pursue power over younger men, frustrated as they were in their physically unappealing state and infertility. In this sense, gaming threatened the order of society and family by blurring the public and private spheres, and encouraged the notion of singer older women, such as Lady Archer, as not only unappealing but also dangerous. Moral reformers also felt threatened by the way gambling mixed class distinctions (D. Donald, Satirical Prints 106)—a point made explicitly here by the masses swelling around the Pillory to which aristocracy is bound.Function
Gillray’s print entertains and engages the public by exposing the vices of the aristocracy and both figuratively (in the print) and literally (at the print shop window) allowing the masses to mock and condemn them. With the ironic discrepancy between “Exaltation” and public shaming, the leveling, jurisdictional function of caricature is made extremely explicit. In the same vein, by “trying” two of the most notorious of “Faro’s daughters," in the print, it exposes the moral reformers, most obviously Lord Kenyon, to the public eye as well: their threat will either prove empty or meaningful, and in either case the public will be able to judge the judges.Bibliography
Donald, Diana. The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.Featured in Exhibit:
From the Collection:
Engraver:
Delineator:
Image Date:
12 May 1796
Publisher:
Hannah Humphrey
