The Anti-Anarchist Bomb-proof Clockwork Substitute Ruler (1898)

Punch (October 29, 1898): 203.


IN the gallery of the Fine-Art Society may be seen a number of drawings made in Spain by Mr. E. George, the able architectural etcher and draughtsman. As might be anticipated, they are almost entirely architectural. They are brilliant and broad, limpid in their tones and pure in their tints, but somewhat hard and over-defined even for sunlit Spain. The most artistic of them seem to be No. 10, ‘The City Gate, Salamanca’; ‘A Convent, Salamanca’ (17); ‘San Pedro, and Old Houses, Vitoria’ (21); and ‘The Golden Tower, Seville ’ (44). In the same place the firm has collected nearly two hundred drawings in black and white, made by Mr. E. T. Reed for “Mr. Punch.” These include not only personal satires with queer names, such as we reviewed with much, but qualified admiration when they were republished in a volume, but a large proportion of more witty examples and designs made in a strain of genuine humour, such as that delicious piece which shows the Duke of Devonshire listening to the reading of speeches of the Marquis of Hartington (4) and ‘Britannia a la Beardsley’ (22), which is no caricature. ‘The Anti-Anarchist Bomb-proof Clockwork Substitute Ruler’ (55), a dummy President wisely put forward by the police of Chicago to receive any bombs and bullets that might be going, is first rate; so is ‘Irish Members at Windsor, in Armour’ (64), and ‘The Rev. Arthur Balfour at the Foreign Office’ (72). Mr. Reed is understood to be preparing a large series of illustrations of the ways and manners of the County Council, the Asylums Board, and the School Board of London, each on a field day.


The Athenaeum no. 3743 (July 22, 1899): 138.

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Independent scholar, translator and archivist.