LADY ARCHER~ a life in caricature

L-DY A-CH-R

"The Finishing Touch"', James Gillray

Portraits are always painted of nobility, yes? It would certainly seem so. I have tried and tried to find an actual portrait of Lady Archer(Sara West), 1741-1801, but it seems that visual imagery of this lady only exists in caricature form. She was a great subject of caricaturists, both visual and literal. I'm clipping from two articles below, the first an "intro" of sorts, the second a scathing commentary compliments of "The Female Jockey Club", 1794. It seems that she actually cut quite a dashing figure in her youth. I suppose that her great crime was an attempt to extend the physical beauty of  youth via enameling and the excitement of youth via gaming.

...an explanation of enameling. This article fails to mention lead, which was a common ingredient of the time...:

http://aquaeyeshadow.blogspot.com/2012/03/martyrs-of-fashion-1902.html


"...a process highly mysterious and jealously secreted by its practisers: that of enamelling. It substitutes for the outfit of paints a small solid envelope, transparent and coloured, which covers the face with a coat of enamel. While the most successful make-up of paint cannot long resist exposure to heat, and must be renewed at least once a day, enamel lends the face a brightness that may endure for several weeks. Its inconvenience is the ceramic stiffness, the immobility in which it holds all the features while giving them a brilliant appearance. Its application, moreover, is a long and painful operation. To fix, cold, upon the skin the colouring powers, recourse must be had to acids of a dangerous character. Part of the enamelling must be done in darkness, and two or three days of interrupted treatment are indispensable for rendering the application definitive.
Grave accidents, chronic affections of the skin, often result from enamelling that has been too energetically performed. But the very risk seems to add temptation to this mysterious operation; and who would not brave it to obtain the pearly splendour which turns the visage into a piece of art pottery? Scraped, massaged, polished, electrified, a halo of blue about the large and flashing eyes, the whole face brilliant.."

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"La Belle Assemblee", James Gillray

This lady, formerly Miss West, lived to a good age—a proof that cosmetics are not so fatal as some would have us suppose. Nature had given her a fine aquiline nose, like the princesses of the House of Austria(such as Marie Antoinette), and she did not fail to give herself a complexion. She resembled a fine old wainscoted painting, with the face and features shining through a thick incrustation of copal varnish.

Her ladyship was for many years the wonder of the fashionable world, envied by all the ladies of the Court of George the Third. She had a well-appointed house in Portland Place. Her equipage was, with her, a sort of scenery. She gloried in milk-white horses to her carriage, the coachmen and footmen wore very showy liveries, and the carriage was lined with silk of a tint to exhibit the complexion to advantage...

 ...Lady Archer lived at Barn Elms Terrace, and her house had the most elegant ornaments and draperies to strike the senses, and yet powerfully address the imagination. Her kitchengarden and pleasure-ground, of five acres—the Thames flowing in front, as if a portion of the estate—the apartments decorated in the Chinese style, and opening into hothouses stored with fruits of the richest growth, and greenhouses with plants of great rarity and beauty, and superb couches and draperies, effectively placed, rendered her home a sort of elysium of luxury.

English Eccentrics and Eccentricities, by John Timbs

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HER Ladyship's figure has been for many years common to this metropolis, but the natural complexion of her face, is no more remembered, it having been so long disguised by cosmetic art, that flesh and blood seem not to form the least part of its composition. The art of painting, however, of brushing up an old decayed picture, is not the only art in which she excels. The noble dame is a perfect mistress of all our polite, fashionable arts. In the art of driving a phaeton with superior grace and dexterity ;—of shuffling the cards, and raising a cock* at Faro. (1)

"Exaltation of Faro's Daughters"', James Gillray

In the secret art of  prudent, frugal hospitality(2), as an adept in certain manual exercises, although now bending under the weight of years, she has still the PALM(3), and in all the mysteries and arts of of love, she is acknowledged to have been the paragon of her day. His late R-yal H-n-ss the D-ke of Y—k, brother to our gracious Sovereign, the most wife and most merciful prince that ever swayed a r-y-l sceptre, and uncle to our renowned Dunkirk hero, who, we are assured, is the greatest and most successful general, the world ever saw, some thirty years years ago, submitted to her chains, a voluntary captive. The E-r-ngt-ns, the St-r-rs, who have passed away, and now only present the miserable relics of worldly vanity and folly.—Those philanders of former times once led captivity captive, too happy to be bound in her fetters. Rather more advanced in age than they, she trained up those veterans in the way they should go, and they never strayed from the right path, till forced, agreeably with the order of things, to submit to fate, and yield up their places to the superior vigour and attractions of more juvenile successors.

Her Friendship with Mr H-y E-r-ngt-n, (who can boast alliance with R-y-l blood, should not the Ecclesiastical court judge proper to interfere,) is of very ancient date, and amidst the vast variety of lovers who have succeeded one after another, that gentleman has still maintained his post, and to this very hour, mighty even in his ruins, enjoys his virtuous triumph, without exciting  envy in his contemporaries, and on his last stage, displays a singular example of the most meritorious constancy and love.

"Modern Hospitality, or, a Friendly Party in High Life"' by James Gillray

When there is a falling off of lovers; when a conscious decay of nature promises no return of those courtships and flatteries so lavishly offered to youth and beauty, other substitutes are explored. The mind must be occupied, and gaming is a noble field for avarice (which is the vice of age) to work in. Female vanity never dies, and when personal charms are faded, nor adorers to be met, still it delights in dissipated scenes, and finds a resource in the spectacles of a theatre, or in the tumultuous croud and distractions of a gaming house. Never was there a more fervent devotee, than this noble lady has uniformly been through life, to pleasure ; never, did any person labour more indefatigably to fill up the wrinkled deformities of nature, with the impotent remedies of art; but all is labour in vain the remedy worse than the disease, it chiefly consisting of mercurial and a variety of pernicious ingredients, often inflicting palsies and other most fatal maladies: nor in another sense, does it ever answer the purpose intended, exciting disgust, instead of stimulating desire: a revolting melancholy instance of which, we have now before us—a PAINTED SEPULCHRE. If the sex were only anxious to appear beautiful in their own eyes, to please themselves, doubtless, they would be free to choose their own ornaments, and to dress themselves out after their own fashion and caprice; but if it be men whom they aspire to please, if it be for them that they daub and varnish their complexions, I have collected the opinions of mankind, and I promise on the part of the great majority, if not of all, that the use of paint renders women hideous and disgusting, that it withers and disguises them, that men hate as much to behold the female countenance thus plaistered, as to see false teeth in the mouth, or balls of wax in the jaw; that they decidedly protest against every artifice employed to disfigure the sex.

"Six Stages of Mending a Face"' Thomas Rowlandson

If women were by nature, what they make themselves appear by art; were they to lose in an instant the bloom of youth; should their complexions become naturally and suddenly as leaden and wan, as they are rendered by the destructive minerals they employ, they would be inconsolable. Nevertheless, such continues the stupid, pernicious practice, in all the higher circles of polished society.

It is a glorious custom in Britain, amongst the great, for the daughters of nobility, to be presented at court, and initiated into all the virtuous enjoyment of the beau monde, as soon as they have attained a certain number of years; but our antique dame kept back her lovely daughters, nor ushered them into society, till compelled to do so, till the young ladies had bidden adieu to their mama's house, without notice, and committed themselves to other protection.

This reluctance on her part to make known her OFFSPRING, the fruits of honest and lawful love, has also been assigned to a different cause.—Her ladyship being to enjoy the interest of their fortunes while they remained unmarried, it has been wickedly reported, that her conduct was influenced in this business, by the above sordid ungenerous motive.

"Discipline a la Kenyon"' James Gillray

The motive however, is immaterial. The widow's income was certainly very much reduced by her daughters' marriages, and as it is rather a painful talk to curtail those luxuries, which custom has rendered essential to existence, it became necessary to strike out some plan of reparation, for this decrease of property, whereby me might be able still to keep up her former splendid appearance, and set the envy of gossip malignity at defiance. The fecundity of her brain supplied an adequate remedy. A  faro bank was to be the happy instrument of renovation, and Plutus has crowned her most sanguine hopes.

"The Loss of the Faro Bank", James Gillray

In the temple of virtue, which she inhabits, a happy freedom reigns, and it is only to be lamented, as a partial drawback on the pleasure derived from the profits of her bank, that so perfect is the liberty which there exists that she is treated with as little respect, and with as sovereign contempt by her honourable and  noble noble guests, as if she were, what most assuredly she is not—a prostituted mistress of the vilest gaming brothel. So true it is, that there scarcely exist any uses, without their abuses. But when great benefits flow from any system, little petty evils that may attend it, are scarcely felt, and if the grand object be fulfilled, a few trifling rebuffs and hard words are not deserving of notice. Besides, sensibility is not very quick or irritable at a gaming table, except on that point, wherein the mind is immediately engaged, and provided money replenishes the bank, my Lord's abuse makes very little impression on my lady's sentiment.

Characters of this description are not unfrequently devout. Her Ladyship, in the year 1793, was seized with an alarming paralytic complaint, since which time, her piety shines conspicuous, and religion is blended with her other devotions; yet it is to be sincerely regretted, that her religion consists more in outward visible show than in inward spiritual grace and that if her theory be just, her practice is miserably imperfect, so that all her piety and faith neither procure her friendship, love, or respect.

We now bid adieu to this hackneyed female veteran, whose whole life, it must seriously be admitted, has been consumed in one unvaried round of vapid or c-m-n-l pursuits; who threatened as she now is by approaching infirmities, cannot command one endearing reflection to cheer and console her, and who is about to quit this mortal stage, without being able morally to say, "I have performed one good or generous action."

(1) * An expression much used at the intricate and pleasant game of Faro, and a practice never omitted, when an opportunity offers.

(2) * It is a general complaint amongst our elegant muscadins and muscadines who frequent her Ladyship's assemblies and punt at her bank, that when lemons are dear, she makes her lemonade of cream of tartar, which is apt very much to agitate their noble intestines, and to produce a most unpleasant effect in the company.

(3) It must here be observed that her Ladyship's little lovely virgin sister M—fs W-t, long disputed the preeminence with her in this truly ingenious and popular art,and with whom the victory remained, was left fpr arbitration, to that pink of chivalry, that favourite of the fair, that all competent judge, the illustrious and puissant chevalier of the B-ck R—d, who after repeated trials, impartially pronounced their merits to be so equal, that it was impossible for him to decide between them.

 Not A-ch-r's bible can secure her age,

Her threescore years are shuffling with her page,

 While death stands by, but till the game is done,

 To sweep that stake, in justice long his own."

source: "The Female Jockey Club", by Charles Pigott

"The Royal Joke, or Black Jack's Delight", James Gillray