Title: A WILD ELEPHANT LED BETWEEN TWO TAME ONES
Materials: paper
Techniques: lithograph
Production person: Print made by John Doyle (HB)
Published by: Thomas McLean
Production place: London, England
Date: Feb 16, 1830
Schools/Styles: British satire

[British Museum Satires 16038]


Description
No. 47. Wellington (left) and Peel (right) lead Lord Ellenborough forward; he distractedly rumples his curls, exclaiming, 'What shall I do?' At his feet is a copy of 'The Times'. Wellington: 'Control your grief my dear Friend—you have been indiscreet, but you shall not lose your Place—Assume a bold front as I am wont to do—There is nothing like carrying things with a high hand'. Peel: 'Be consoled, G—B—[Bankes] says he has hit upon a nice little device which he hopes will bring you off with the C.....ns'.


Curator's comments
(Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', XI, 1954)
A personal letter from Ellenborough, President of the India Board, to Sir John Malcolm, Governor of Bombay, a year earlier, appeared in 'The Times' in January and was debated in the Commons on 5 Feb. and subsequently. 'Parl. Deb.', N.S. xxii. 124-6. In this he said that Sir J. P. Grant, a judge of the Supreme Court in Bombay, who had quarelled with Malcolm, would be "like a wild elephant led away between two tame ones", i.e. between two other judges whose appointment he announced, and alluding to the method of training elephants in India. Ellenborough was attacked as unsuited to his post, and defended by Bankes on 5 and 9 Feb. Ibid., pp. 127-34, 279-95; Ellenborough, 'Pol. Diary', ii. 184, 187; Greville, 'Memoirs', 1938, i. 365 f. The remark was long remembered against Ellenborough, e.g. in HB's No. 760, Feb. 1843, where he is ". . . an Old Tame Elephant running wild!!!" See Nos. 16040, 16060, 16650, 17037, 17106.

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