BIG ears, curvaceous noses, unkempt coifs, and knobby knees are sometimes the details we remember best about political figures, even if we never saw them in person. These traits, more so even than their policies, are what endure in our minds. Such was the case, too, in early 19th-century England, when caricaturists of the day, notably the popular illustrator James Gillray (1756–1815), depicted the facial and bodily features of Napoleon and William Pitt the Younger (twice the nation’s prime minister, including its youngest, at age 24).
For Gillray’s 1805 depiction of the ongoing spoils of wars among the continental armies of Napoleon and those of Britain, the artist drew a succulent plum pudding that he shows the two leaders carving eagerly. Gillray’s hand-colored etching The Plumb-pudding in danger is included…
