Portraiture and British Gothic Fiction: The Rise of Picture Identification, 1764–1835

2. The Politics of Picture Identification

The Politics of Picture Identification c h a p t e r t w o A portrait of real authenticity we know is truth itself and calls up so many collateral ideas, as to fill an intelligent mind more than any other species of painting. —Samuel Johnson, qtd. in Horace Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting (1782, 547) In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the middle classes were impinging on aristocratic power and property, as they had been since the Renaissance : so much so, that Vicesimus Knox—headmaster, minister, and scourger of aristocrats (1752–1821)—rejoices in 1793: Since the first institution of nobility, a new race of nobles . . . has arisen among us. . . . Commerce, manufacturers, and our East Indian connections have raised great numbers to princely opulence and princely state, whom the ancient nobility would have retained in the humblest obscurity as vassals. (Personal Nobility 114) However, these are not princes, but princely through wealth. Similarly, when Knox asserts that “there is many a nobleman, according to the genuine idea of nobility, even at the loom, at the plow, and in the shop and many more in the middle ranks of mixed society” (“Illustrious Birth” 58), these are adjectival, metaphorical rather than nominative, actual nobles. Although he mandates that “the t h e p ol i t ic s of p ic t ur e ide n t i f ic at ion 37 nobility of civil establishment must yield to the nobility of nature and virtue” (Personal Nobility 116), his metaphorical noblemen remain at the loom, at the plow, and in the shop, while noblemen of “civil establishment” reside in their mansions, on their estates, and in the House of Lords. By the year 1820, the radical author William Cobbett indicates that middleclass encroachments on upper-class power had extended beyond adjectives and metaphors to occupation of the landed seats that are its economic and symbolic bases: Great progress has already been made in transferring the estates from the ancient gentry and nobles to the men of paper. In my native parish, Weaverly Abbey, formerly the seat of Sir Robert Rich, is now the seat of a Mr. Thompson, a wine merchant, and Moore Park, rendered famous by being the seat of Sir William Temple, is now the seat of a Mr. Timson, a spirit merchant. (770–1, emphasis in original) Men of paper become men of property; knights cede to tradesmen in bloodless battles; ancestral spirits yield to “a spirit merchant.” Even so, there are limits to how far a Timson or Thompson can impinge on aristocratic positions. The titles of duke, marquis, viscount, and baron—titles that come with a seat in the House of Lords—can be neither bought nor earned. Even Knox concedes that “wealth, in a free country, will give power and power, every real privilege of nobility but the title” (Personal Nobility 114). When the bourgeoisie cannot claim lineal identities in esse, they do so in posse. Counterpoising Fundholders to Landholders, Cobbett documents that the former have a great taste, in general, for family memorials. They soon get coats of arms and they seem to have an instinct that leads them to the possession of ancient seats . . . Fundholders will . . . form very good families. They have a natural taste for the thing . . . do you not see how soon they fill their houses with “old family pictures” [?] . . . The curious matter to ascertain, in such cases, would be where the old family pictures were kept while the successive heads of the family were shop-men or shoeblacks . (769–70, emphasis in original) “My Father’s Portrait” (anon. 1823) ascertains the “curious matter” when its nouveau riche buys portraits to fictionalize a genealogy: “‘I have just,’ said he, laughing , ‘made a purchase of a whole family. I have bought of a picture-dealer a father, a mother, two uncles, three aunts, and half a dozen ancestors, of whom you know I am somewhat deficient’” (507). Because the portraits do not represent distinguished men and women, he commissions an artist to construct them as such: 38 p or t r a i t ur e a nd b r i t is h g ot h ic f ic t ion [M]ake of these five portraits an archbishop, a president of parliament, a colonel, a captain of the navy, and a lieutenant of dragoons . . . make of these three ladies (the aunts) a canoness, a...