Pigmy Revels: Laughter For The Languid, Fun For The Feeble In A Boxwood Drum

By Stephen J. Gertz

The Lillipution  Museum is a panorama, in boxwood drum format, "calculated to create joy for the juvenile, laughter for the languid, fun for the feeble, sauce for the serious, and mirth for the melancholy: containing wit without indecency, humour without vulgarity, mirth without malice, and satire without personality."

In short, it's meant for the bored desperate to feel blithe; the jaded in search of jolly; the zoned-out seeking zip; the depressed a dose of daffy; the gloomy, glee; the glum, glow.

It was originally issued as Pigmy Revels; All Alive at Lilliput by George Moutard "Mustard George" Woodward in 1800-1801 as eight colored double-page plates etched by Francis Sansom and Thomas Rowlandson, each measuring 13 x 18 5/8 inches with three strip views of grotesques on each, forming a continuous series between brown wash borders.

 

Here, the three strips to those plates have been cut apart and horizontally joined to form one long, continuous strip, the whole "In three parts, forty feet long."

Yet, given that mounting a forty-foot long strip onto a drum of this size (1 5/8 in. diam.) is impossible, I  speculate that publisher S.W. Fores used whatever of the original plates and their strips that remained from the original 1800-1801 edition, not necessarily all of them, to create this drum-edition panorama, comprised of five sections from the original. A collector reports that his copy differs from the one under notice. It is probable that no two are exactly alike.

The Lillipution Museum was published without date. One section of this copy is watermarked "J. Whatman Turkey Mill" without date, which may have been lost when the original plates were sliced in three. The copy that sold at Sotheby's in 1976 was watermarked 1820; a few sets of  may have been restruck.

Publisher S.W. Fores established his print shop, located at 3 Piccadilly, in 1783. "In 1795 Fores moved to larger premises at no. 50 Piccadilly, on the corner of Sackville Street. The number was changed to 41 about 1820..." (DNB). We can tentatively date The Lillipution Museum to c. 1819-1820).

- You was born under the Planet Venus Miss you are very fond of the men.
- Speak low good woman, my friend will hear You
- Aye! I thought she wasn't pulling my husband about for nothing

It is only slightly less scarce than the 1801 edition. OCLC notes only three copies, at Princeton, Harvard, and Toronto Public Library, with only four copies at auction since 1976.

The 1801 edition is similarly found in only three libraries worldwide and has only been seen once at auction since 1976.

 

I've had more than a few panoramas pass through my hands but only one other in boxwood drum, W.H. Mason's Brighton (Ackermann, 1833). Publication of boxwood drum panoramas was confined to c. 1819 - 1833 with most dated within the 1820s. Abbey, in Life in England, records only fourteen (a few others scrolled but not within a drum ). 

MASON, W.H. Brighton. Ackermann, 1833.

Despite protection within sturdy drums these panoramas are fragile. I suspect that many in the past were pulled open with a little too much vigor, the paper ripped, and  at some point they were tossed. Few have survived without some sort of damage. Simply drawing the panorama out by its wooden post and spooling it back via the wood screw at top will guarantee that edges will, over time and sooner rather than later, become worn with small tears.

Boxwood drum panoramas are beautiful little objects, Lilliputian little or otherwise.

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[ROWLANDSON, Thomas, engraver]. [WOODWARD, George Moutard, designer]. The Lillipution Museum or, Panoramic representation of Pigmy Revels: calculated to create joy for the juvenile, laughter for the languid, fun for the feeble, sauce for the serious, and mirth for the melancholy : containing wit without indecency, humour without vulgarity, mirth without malice, and satire without personality. London: S.W. Fores No. 50 Piccadilly, n.d. [c. 1819].

First edition in drum panorama, a strip of hand-colored engravings. Hand-colored titlepage wrapped around drum. Original boxwood drum measures 5 inches tall x 1 5/8 inches diameter. Image strip 3 3/4 x 80 inches (10 x 203 cm).

Cf. Abbey, Life 462.
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Of related interest, re: Edward Moutard Woodward:

The Story of Nobody, By Somebody, Illustrated By Someone.

The Annals of Sporting, 1809; Or, Take This Horse And Shove It!
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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The Annals Of Sporting, 1809; Or Take This Horse And Shove It!

By Stephen J. Gertz

Titlepage.

In 1809, the great caricaturist, Thomas Rowlandson, engraved plates after designs by two other celebrated caricaturists, Henry Bunbury and George Moutard Woodward, for Annals of Sporting, a satire of contemporary sporting anecdotes by "Caleb Quizem Esq." Sporting anecdotes as a literary genre would not recover until refreshed by Pierce Egan, his fundamental contributions to sports journalism collected as Sporting Anecdotes in 1823.

How to Vault from the Saddle

In 1808, the year before Annals of Sporting was published, Rowlandson engraved the plates after Bunbury designs for the first collected edition of The Annals of Horsemanship and The Academy For Grown Horsemen, both satires by "Geoffrey Gambado" originally appearing in the late 18th century. The author of its text,  the pseudonymous Gambado, has been tentatively identified as the antiquary and lexicographer Francis Grose, best known for his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785).

The True Method of sitting on a Horse Mathematically Delineated.

"The text consists of sixteen letters to, and answers by C. Quizem. The first letter relates the amusing story of a sportsman mistaking his wig for a hare, and bang went the contents of the gun, and the fancied hare lay prostrate!" (Chute).

Only here are wigs considered fair game for hopeless hunters; they rarely provide much skill to fell and, significantly, don't bite when wounded. This holds true for all known species.

Game Wigs.

A Long Bob; A Short Bob.
A Black Scratch; A Physical Tie.
A Sir Cloudesley Shovel; A Three Tier.

"The text, in the form of letters, is a satire on sporting anecdotes and cockney sportsmen..." (Mary Dorothy George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, vol. 8, no. 11479A).

The Bucephalus Riding Academy for grown Gentlemen.

The author behind the pseudonym "Caleb Quizem Esq." remains unknown. Considering that Rowlandson and Bunbury had earlier collaborated on the two Gambado volumes satirizing horsemanship and that Francis Grose was, apparently, responsible for the volumes' text*, it would seem reasonable to presume that Grose wrote the text to Rowlandson and Bunbury's Annals Of Sporting. The portrait engraving of Quizem, with its references to Gambado and Annals of Horsemanship, certainly suggests it.

However, after checking Grose's pulse I learned that not only is he indeed defunct but that he died in 1791, eighteen years before Annals Of Sporting. He thus seems an unlikely candidate for its authorship. Unless, of course, he shows up as one of the ringleaders of the looming zombie invasion and stakes his claim as Quizem, inquisitor of correspondents amongst the sporting set.

Hounds.

The Black Straddler [and] The short legg;d Shag Hound.

The deliriously amusing plates in Annals Of Sporting include: The Bucephalus Riding Academy for grown Gentlemen (frontispiece); How to Vault from the Saddle; The True Method of sitting on a Horse Mathematically Delineated; How a Man may Shoot his own Wig; The Maid of Mim; Costume of Hogs Norton” (two plates); Game Wigs (two plates); Hounds (two plates); Mathematical Horsemanship (six plates); Fashionable Furniture at Hogs Norton (two plates); and The Bailiffs Hunt (eight plates).

Caleb Quizem Esq.

Note volumes on book stand:
Annals of Horsemanship and Tristram Shandy.

Further note portrait in background of "Geoffrey Gambado,"
i.e. Francis Grose, who wrote the text to Annals of Horsemanship;
Henry Bunbury designed its engravings.

Commonly rebound, the book is rather rare in the publisher's boards (original price 10s. 6d).  "Caleb Quizem" appears to have written only one other book,  another satire titled Economy: a Pindaric Tale in Three Parts (1811).

"First edition of a coloured-plate Sporting-book, which is esteemed on account of its humorous plates by Rowlandson..." (Schwerdt).

"The Rowlandson colour-plates are most humorous" Chute).

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[ROWLANDSON, Thomas, engraver. BUNBURY, Henry and George Moutard Woodward, artists]. QUISEM, Caleb (pseudonym). The Annals of Sporting. By Caleb Quizem Esq. and his Various Correspondents. London: Thomas Tegg, 1809.

First edition. Twelvemo (6 3/4 x 4 in; 171 x 105 mm). [10], 104 pp., untrimmed. Hand-colored fold-out frontispiece engraved by Thomas Rowlandson after Henry Bunbury, hand-colored vignette title of a rider falling from Pegasus, and twenty-six hand-colored etched plates by Thomas Rowlandson after Henry Bunbury, George Moutard Woodward, and possibly others.

Publisher's original printed boards. Publisher's advertisements printed on rear board within ornamental border.

Not found in Abbey, Tooley, nor, surprisingly, Siltzer.

Schwerdt II, pp. 119-120. Chute 533. Grego, Rowlandson the Caricaturist, p. 178.  Falk, p. 216. Grolier, Rowlandson 63.
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*“Gambado is said to have been Francis Grose, compiler of  A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” (Riely, John C.  Horace Walpole and ‘the Second Hogarth’, in Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, Autumn, 1975).
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, currently offering this title, with our thanks.
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Of related Interest:

When Horses and Human Keisters Collide.

The Story Of Nobody, By Somebody, Illustrated By Someone.
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The Finest Map of the Holy Land, 1572

by Stephen J. Gertz

ORTELIUS, Abraham. Palestinae sive totius terra epromissionis.
[Antwerp, 1572]
Copper-engraved map, fully hand-colored.
348 x 465 mm.
Latin text on verso.
Laor 540.

A beautiful hand-colored copy of Ortelius' map of Palestine (Israel) from the 1572 Latin edition of Theatrum orbis terrarum (Antwerp: In Officina Plantiniana, Auctoris aere et cura),  considered to be the sum and  summit of sixteenth century cartography, will be auctioned at Bonhams-NY on Thursday, December 9, 2010.

Lower cartouche.

Upper cartouche.

The Theatrum orbis terrarum (Theater of the World), the first true atlas, went through twenty-five revised and expanded editions before Ortelius' death in 1598. From the original seventy maps in the 1570 first edition, it  had grown to include 167 maps within its thirty-fifth edition issued in 1612.

World map from Theatrum orbis terrarum.

The world has never looked so attractive, nor Israel so tranquil.

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Images of map of Palestine courtesy of Bonhams.

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