The Rt Honble Catch Singers
This is one of approximately ten prints about the short-lived Fox-North Coalition that Gillray produced in the 8 months of the ministry's existence (April 2 - December 18. 1783. It shows Fox and North in a convivial moment at an alehouse singing a catch of their own devising.
© Trustees of the British Museum
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FOX:
Bring every Flow'r that can be got
Pinks Hyacynths & Roses,
We two will drink out of one Pot
And Fuddle both our Noses.
NORTH:
With Treasury Juice the Pot shall Foam
For Reynard & for N---h
The People still may wish for some
And they shall have - the Froth.
The catch celebrates the corruption and disregard of duty that allows Reynard (Fox) and N___h (North) to get roaring drunk on the "juice" provided by the tax-paying public while the people whom they are elected to serve get only the insubstantial froth.
Fox is shown with the same caricatured face that Gillray used in the final version of The Coalition Dance. North is shown blowing the froth from their shared tankard, a gesture that, as in Bonus Melior Optimus, is probably meant to recall Boreas, the mythological North Wind. As always in Gillray's depiction, North is wearing the blue sash of the Order of the Garter which he received in 1772.
The froth slides down the tankard partially obscuring the engraved GR (George Rex) on the side and onto a paper labeled "Westminster Petition." suggesting perhaps a disregard of both the King and the people Fox and North were supposed to represent (Fox was, after all, the MP for Westminster.)
But though the two leaders seem to be enjoying their moment, by placing the two-handed tankard between the two men in the center of the print—each with a firm grip on a handle—Gillray draws our eyes to a future point of contention. Who will get the first or largest drink? In The Lord of the Vineyard a month earlier, Gillray was clearly betting on Fox.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on The Rt Honble Catch Singers.
- "Fox-North Coalition," Wikipedia
- "Charles James Fox," Wikipedia
- "Frederick North, Lord North," Wikipedia
- Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. 48.
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