"The Duchess of St. Albans, immensely fat, florid, and bejewelled, and a stout elderly naval officer wearing loose wide trousers, and apparently doing hornpipe steps, his hands on his hips, dance side by side with rollicking abandon. The others of the set: one man and two ladies on the left and one lady and two men on the right dance rigidly erect, and watch the central pair with hauteur; the men are dandies, the women slim and fashionable. The duchess has a swirling paradise-plume in her towering loops of hair, above tossing ringlets."--British Museum online catalogue
Alternative Title:
Run neighbours, run, St. Albans is quadrilling it
Description:
Title etched below image., Print signed using William Heath's device: A man with an umbrella., British Museum curator's note: The naval officer is (unconvincingly) identified by E. Hawkins as Sir George Warrender (1782-1849), a Huskissonite M.P. who was never in the navy; he was a Lord of the Admiralty 1812-22; he appears, in back view, in a "Sketch of a Ball at Almack's, 1815" (Gronow, 'Reminiscences', 1892, ii, frontispiece). Perhaps Lord Amelius Beauclerk (1771-1806), her husband's uncle. Cf. 'Croker Papers', 1884, ii. 200., and Watermark: 1827.
Publisher:
Pub. by T. McLean, 26 Haymarket
Subject (Geographic):
England
Subject (Name):
St. Albans, Harriot Mellon, Duchess of, 1777?-1837, Beauclerk, Amelius, 1771-1846, and Warrender, George, 1782-1849
Subject (Topic):
Clothing & dress, Dandies, British, Obesity, Balls (Parties), and Dance
