Fox and sheridan officiate at the wedding of lady lucy stanhope and an apothecary who is made up of medical implements. The bride is a pretty girl wearing a feathered hat from which a transparent veil falls over her face. Stanhope (left), without breeches, and wearing a bonnet-rouge, stooping in profile to the right, pushes her towards the bridegroom who is placing a ring on her finger; from his coat-pocket protrudes a three-masted vessel flying a tricolour flag (see bmsat 8640). The bridegroom, taylor, is also a sansculotte; his posteriors are formed of a syringe, his body is a mortar, from which issues a pestle supporting a bonnet-rouge. His arm is made of two medicine-phials. Fox stands full-face behind the altar balustrade holding open paine's 'rights of man' (see bmsat 7867, &c). He wears surplice and bands. Sheridan stands (right) in profile to the left, reading from 'thelwal's lectures' (cf. Bmsat 8685), he wears a lay coat with bands; both wear bonnets-rouges. On the wall which forms a background, and immediately above fox, is a large picture, 'shrine of equality': three men wearing bonnets-rouges officiate at a guillotine; the blade is about to fall on a man wearing a ducal coronet; other peers stand (right) waiting their turn. On the ground by the guillotine lie coronets which have just been chopped off. 4 march 1796
hand-coloured etching. Date: 1796. Dimensions: Height: 361 mm; Width: 259 mm. Medium: paper. Depicted People: Charles James Fox. Collection: British Museum. Democratic leveling; Alliance a la Françoise; or the Union of the Coronet & Clyster pipe. (BM J,3.21)
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