Gillray (James)

caricature three-quarter-length portrait of Prince William, the Duke of Clarence, later the ‘Sailor King’ William IV, an enlarged and simplified version of Gillray’s ‘Naval Eloquence’ (BM Satires 8601), issued as part of his ‘Eloquence’ series issued in late 1794. It depicts the prince looking stern to his left, dressed as a humble tar, above a berating verse, “Damn all Bond-Street-Sailors I say, a parcel of smell-smocks! they’d sooner creep into a Jordan than face the French! dam me!”. This, of course, perfectly satirises the prince, himself, as just such a vain character, alluding to his long-term affair with the actress, Mrs Dorothea Jordan, with whom he had several illegitimate Fitzclarence children, also referred to in Gillray’s earlier caricature of the subject, ‘Lubber’s Hole alias The Crack’d Jordan’, which depicts the actress as the name’s alternative meaning as slang for a chamber pot,

etching with hand-colouring, 330 x 230 mm. (13 x 9 in), a repaired tear across the lower image, and a shorter repaired tear into the centre right of the image, the sheet laid on a thin card support, [BM Satires 8653],