English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. Graham Everitt

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СКАЧАТЬ in Queen Anne Street, who apparently unable to realize the fact that competent men could have the effrontery to reject his “monologue,” refused to accept the verdict of the committee. A few evenings afterwards, the audience and the company were electrified by an unexpected sensation. Busby and his son sat in one of the stage boxes; and the latter, to the amazement of the audience, stepped at the end of the play from his box upon the stage, and began to recite his father’s nonsense, as follows:—

“When energizing objects men pursue, What are the prodigies they cannot do?”

      The question remained unanswered; for Raymond, the stage Dr. Busby’s “Monologue.” manager, walked at this moment upon the stage accompanied by a constable, and gave the amateur performer into custody. It is said that his father, not content with this failure, actually made an attempt to recite the “monologue” from his box, until hissed and howled down by the half laughing, half indignant audience. The circumstance is commemorated by an admirable pictorial satire entitled, A Buz in a Box, or the Poet in a Pet, published by S. W. Fores on the 21st of October, in which we see the doctor gesticulating from his box, and imploring the audience to listen to his “monologue.” Young Busby, seated on his father’s Pegasus (an ass), quotes one of the verses of the absurd composition, while the animal (after the manner of its kind) answers the hisses of the audience by elevating its heels and uttering a characteristic “hee haw.” By the side of Busby junior stands the manager (Raymond), apologetically addressing the audience. Certain pamphlets lie scattered in front of the stage, on which are inscribed (among others) the following doggerel:—

“A Lord and a Doctor once started for Fame, Which for the best poet should pass; The Lord was cried up on account of his name, The Doctor cried down for an ass.” “Doctor Buz, he assures us, on Drury’s new stage No horses or elephants there should engage; But pray, Doctor Buz, how comes it to pass, That you your own self should produce there an ass?”

      Dr. Busby was a person desirous of achieving literary notoriety at any amount of personal inconvenience. He translated Lucretius, and is said to have given public recitations, accompanied with bread and butter and tea; but in spite of these attractions, the public did not come and the book would not sell, facts which a wicked wag of the period ridiculed, by inserting the following announcement in the column of births of one of the newspapers: “Yesterday, at his house in Queen Anne Street, Dr. Busby of a stillborn Lucretius.”

The medical profession is ridiculed in a satire published in 1813. 1813: Doctors Differ, or Dame Nature against the College.19 Four physicians have quarrelled in consultation over the nature of their patient’s malady, and the proper mode of administering to his relief. Unable to convince one another, they wax so warm in argument that they speedily proceed from words to blows. “I say,” shouts one (beneath the feet of the other three), “I say it is an exfoliation of the glands which has fallen on the membranous coils of the intestines, and must be thrown off by an emetic.” “I say,” says another, raising at the same time his cane to protect his head, “I say it is a pleurisie in the thigh, and must be sweated away.” “You are a blockhead!” cries a third, furiously striking at him with his professional cane. “I say it is a nervous affection of the cutis, and the patient must immediately lose eighteen ounces of blood, and then take a powerful drastic.” “What are you quarrelling about?” asks a fourth, arresting the downfall of his professional brother’s cane. “You are all wrong! I say it is an inflammation in the os sacrum, and therefore fourteen blisters must be immediately applied to the part affected and the adjacents.” The table is down, and the prescriptions of the learned doctors covered with the ink which flows from the ruined inkstand. The amused patient (whom nature has meanwhile relieved of the cause and effect) watches the combat from the adjoining bedroom, and makes preparations to retreat and save both his “pocket and his life.”

      The year 1814 was marked by the bursting of one of the most 1814. extraordinary religious bubbles with which England has ever been scandalized. The person identified with and responsible for the craze to which we allude, was Joanna Southcott, the daughter of Joanna Southcott. a farmer residing at the village of Gettisham, in Devonshire, where she herself was born in the month of April, 1750. At the time, therefore, the imposture was made patent to such of her deluded followers as retained any remnants of the small stock of common sense with which nature had originally endowed them, Joanna was sixty-four years of age.

      The village girl appears to have been a constant reader of the Scriptures, which she studied with so much enthusiasm, that a strong religious bias was established, which took almost entire possession of her mind. Still, no marked peculiarity was manifested until after she had attained forty years of age, at which time we find her employed as a workwoman at an upholsterer’s shop at Exeter. The proprietor being a Methodist, the shop was visited by ministers of that persuasion, and Joanna, with her “serious turn of mind,” was not only permitted to join in their discussions, but was regarded by these harmless folk somewhat in the light of a prodigy. To a mind predisposed to religious mania (for it would be unjust to stigmatize Joanna altogether as a wilful impostor) the result was peculiarly unfortunate; she was visited with dreams, which she quickly accepted as spiritual manifestations, instead of being, as they really were, indications of a disordered digestion.

      Two years afterwards Joanna retired from secular business, and set up as a prophetess at Exeter. She declared herself to be the woman spoken of as “the bride,” “the Lamb’s wife,” the “woman clothed with the sun.” The county lunatic asylum might have done good at this point; but its wholesome discipline, unfortunately, was not resorted to. She published in 1801 her first inspired book, “The Strange Effects of Faith,” which absolutely brought five “wise men of Gotham” to inquire into her pretensions from different parts of England. Three of these learned pundits were Methodist parsons, and these three parsons declared themselves satisfied that the mission of Joanna was a divine one. It is needless to add that in England, no matter how absurd the nature of a so-called divine mission, it is safe and certain to attract believers; and by the year 1803 the doctrines of Joanna Southcott were eagerly swallowed by numerous simpletons in various parts of the country.

      Thus fortified, Joanna issued a manifesto, in which she stated her calling and pretensions: we set it out in all the original baldness of its composition:—

      “I, Joanna Southcott, am clearly convinced that my calling is of God, and my writings are indited by His Spirit, as it is impossible for any spirit but an all-wise God, that is wondrous in working, wondrous in wisdom, wondrous in power, wondrous in truth, could have brought round such mysteries, so full of truth, as is in my writings; so I am clear in whom I have believed, that all my writings came from the spirit of the most high God.”

      Joanna was clear in whom she believed, and her followers were equally “clear” in their belief in Joanna. This incoherent nonsense was signed in the presence of fifty-eight simpletons, all of whom expressed their confidence in the inspired mission of their precious prophetess.

      Her disciples rapidly increased, and she visited in her apostolic character, Bristol, Leeds, Stockport, and other large centres, obtaining numerous converts everywhere. Among them was the celebrated engraver, William Sharp; and to the last this man, who out of his calling was the veriest simpleton living, and who had swallowed successively the doctrines of Richard Brothers, Wright, Bryan, and Joanna, believed in the divine mission of this unincarcerated lunatic.

      Although Joanna did not (like Joseph Smith) discover a book, she discovered a seal, which one of her disciples is said to have picked up in a dust-heap at Clerkenwell. With this miraculously acquired talisman the spirit ordered her to “seal up the people,” and as “the people” were limited to one hundred and forty-four thousand, and each of the elect had to pay a sum varying at different times from a guinea to twelve shillings, СКАЧАТЬ