The Life of William Cobbett, Written by Himself: Pl. 1

This is the first plate in Gillray's eight plate series, The Life of William Cobbett, Written by Himself which pretends to be a kind of graphic autobiography, but is, in fact a not so veiled attack upon Cobbett himself. For the general context of the series in Gillray's work, some background about Cobbett, and the more immediate impetus for the series, see my Introduction.

The first plate establishes the approach of the rest of the series which purports to use Cobbett's own words to expose him.

Father kept the sign of the Jolly-Farmer at Farnham. I was his Pot-Boy and thought an Ornament to the profession,_at Seven Years Old my natural genius began to expand, and display'd itself in a taste for Plunder and oppression! _I robbed Orchards,_set Father's Bull-Dog at the Cats,__quarelled with all the Poor-Boys, and beat all the little Girls of the Town,_to the great admiration of the inhabitants:_who prophecied that my talents (unless the Devil was in it,) would one day elevate me to a Post in some publick-situation. ._ Vide. My own Memoirs in the Political Register for 1809.

The image appears to be an illustration of the caption. It is set before a run down Tavern, "The Olde Jolly Farmer of Farnham." A hat full of fruit at his feet suggests that the young Cobbett has recently robbed an orchard, and as described in the caption is now setting his father's bulldog upon a hapless cat while some ducks flutter away in fear. Further "Entertainment" seems be in store as three tankards from the Tavern are already linked together just waiting to be tied to the tail of another unsuspecting animal. A small poster on the outside of the Tavern advertising Cock Fights confirms that cruelty and oppression were a part of Cobbett's everyday upbringing. And the whole is seemingly substantiated by pointing to his Memoirs for verification.

The combination of images and allusion are, as Cythia Roman suggests, meant to recall the first plate of Hogarth's The Four Stages of Cruelty where (in the lower left) a dog attacks a cat, (in the lower right) a boy attaches a bone to a dog's tail, and (lower center) a boy prepares his fowl for an upcoming cock fight. We know that Hogarth's Tom Nero ends up being hanged. But Gillray's Cobbett seems unaware that the prophecies by locals in Farnham of his being elevated "to a Post is some publick-situation" foretell a similar fate for himself.

But however effective as satire, the print is, in fact, mostly fiction. There are no "Memoirs" included in Cobbett's Weekly Political Registrar for 1809. There is a long article titled "The Court Martial" which details Cobbett's activities between 1785 and 1793, but it does not mention anything about his childhood. At the time suggested by the print (when Cobbett was seven year's old), his father was still a farmer. (Cobbett Senior did not take over the Jolly Farmer until later in life.) So Cobbett was never a Pot-Boy. Details from his childhood are recorded in an earlier publication, The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine. There he does talk about visiting his grandmother in a "little thatched cottage. . . with but two windows" (Life: 2) which may have provided Gillray with some inspiration for his version of the Jolly Farmer. And there he does mention some of his first occupations, including

driving the small birds from the turnip-seed and the rooks from the pease. . . . My next employment was weeding wheat, and leading a single horse at harrowing barley. Hoeing pease follows; and hence I arrived at the honour of joining the reapers in harvest, driving the team, and holding plough.

But though the small birds in Cobbett's actual words may have become the fleeing ducks in Gillray's print, nearly everything else in this first view of Cobbett has been created for the satiric purpose of denigrating him as low-born, dishonest, cruel, and likely headed for the gallows.

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Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on The Life of William Cobbett, Written by Himself Pl. 1.
• Draper Hill, Mr. Gillray The Caricaturist, 1965, p. 117, 144n
• "William Cobbett," Wikipedia
• The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (1797)
• Cobbett's Weekly Political Register , June 17, 1809
• Cynthia Roman, James Gillray's Hogarthian Progresses, Catalog from An Exhibition at the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, 2016
• Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #358.
• Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. 365-366 .

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