Winding up to a pitch the Automaton Scaramouch, --or-- Harlequin Courier's Delight

This political caricature depicts Queen Caroline as a puppet of her lover Bartolomeo Pergami (aka Bergami). Dorothy George describes the print as follows:

Bergami, mustachioed, whiskered, and alluring, in a tight-fitting harlequin’s suit over which is a short gold-laced jacket, sits on a tall stool, holding up a life-like puppet representing the Queen. He grasps it by the waist, and pulls a ribbon, making arms and legs fly up. She smiles delightedly down at him, her ringlets flying. She wears the décolletée over-dress . . . open to show frilled and spotted drawers. Bergami, part courier, part Harlequin, has a heavy queue of hair hanging from his black curls and wears a peaked cap with a big gold tassel. A heavy postilion’s whip projects from his pocket. He is directed to the l., towards an open French window and a vine trellis, with a view of Lake Como. He raises his r. leg, looking over his l. shoulder, away from his puppet. On the floor are the courier’s discarded pistol, powder-flask, holster, and saddle; behind his chair are portmanteaus, one inscribed B . B. A large book propped against a decanter inscribed A Boire is: Hop Step and Jump, or, every man his own Courier. List of Postes on the high road from Dunghill, to Barona. A partly dropped curtain (r.) reveals two figurines embracing below a shelf of books. The carpet is patterned with hearts. (191)

This politically satiric print, produced after the unsuccessful trial of Queen Caroline for divorce on the grounds of adultery, depicts Queen Caroline as a puppet of her lover Bartolomeo Pergami (aka Bergami), dressed as a Harlequin, at her estate at Lake Como, Italy. Queen Caroline is depicted as the popular jointed puppet known as a pantin, but the title makes reference to a supposed theatrical performance in which she appeared as an automaton (see "Associated Texts"). Scaramouch is a stock figure in Italian pantomine, like the harlequin or Columbine. Caroline’s exposed and fleshy body and her masculine face are particularly exaggerated but still similar to other caricatures of the Queen. Pergami is dressed as a harlequin, in reference to a supposed performance in which the Queen appeared as Columbine and Pergami’s brother played the harlequin. He is identifiable by his appearance: Bergami “was six foot three with a fine masculine physique, a mass of curly black hair and a luxurious dangling moustache” (Robins 62). The naked figures in the background represent statues of Adam and Eve at Villa D’Este which figure several times in the trial testimonies (George 191). The title of the book in the print references Barona, the residence Caroline purchased for Pergami, also referred to in the trial as Villa Bergami (The Important and Eventful Trial 65). Another witness testified that during a journey from Naples to Rome, Pergami served as the Queen’s courier, riding alongside the carriage. At one point in the journey, he approached the Queen for something to drink (“A boire, madame?”), upon which request she gave him a bottle of wine (The Important and Eventful Trial 531-32).

Queen Caroline’s trial marks one of the most infamous political moments in Romantic-era England, and was the subject of numerous prints, caricatures, satiric ballads, poems, and other media. In this anti-Caroline print, Caroline is depicted as a puppet manipulated by her lover, but her joyful expression and indecent dress, as well as his knowing glance, render her lewdly complicit. In the spirit of the often scandalous and humorous trial testimony, this print foregrounds the sexual relationship with the couple’s wide-open legs, the suggestively extending string, the whip, the naked embracing statues, and the gun in the corner. Although Caroline is depicted as a puppet, the print’s title describes her as an “automaton,” both referring to her supposed theatrical performance as a woman who could be “[wound] up to anything,” and transferring control from the puppet-master to the self-generated automaton machine (The Important and Eventful Trial 660).

Queen Caroline’s trial brought the issue of the morality of female sexuality to the forefront of public discussion and satire (cf. Clark, “Queen Caroline and Sexual Politics...”). The idea of woman as android was an important metaphor during the Romantic period, and one that Caroline seems to have satirized in her Villa D’Este play. If such a performance did occur, she would have been echoing numerous other images and texts that imagined a woman’s body, mind, sexuality, and education as automated and disturbingly mimetic (Park 24-26). The discourse on female bodies as automata was both influenced by and generative of the production of automata in the period, which became increasingly gendered female in the nineteenth century (Wise 163). In this print, however, as in Caroline’s supposed performance, the metaphor is turned on its head so that the automated female body becomes powerfully self-motivated and sexually explicit. Caroline is not a passive doll or puppet, as the dandy is depicted in The English Ladies Dandy Toy, but a joyful participant in her lover’s string-pulling. This has obvious political resonances; however, it also illustrates, first, the instability of the automaton as a consistent metaphor, and second, the complexity of the mechanized body.

As a political caricature, the print harshly satirizes the Queen. The Cruikshanks and the caricaturists around them did not present a unified anti- or pro-Queen stance, but took advantage of the trial's publicity and scandal to create satiric prints drawn from court testimonies.