An Irish Stew : Dizzy and the Grand Old Man.
Book Description
[ANON] Peace With Honour. Late c19th political manuscript booklet in illustrated card wraps. Pp 24, written in a tidy hand in ink on rectos only, three four line stanzas to a page.
The front wrap shows Benjamin Disraeli surrounded by wild primroses (the primrose was his favourite flower and Queen Victoria would often send him bunches of them from Windsor and Osborne House) surmounted by a coronet, and a laurel wreath tied with a ribbon bearing the words “Peace With Honour”. The rear wrap has an ink drawing of William Gladstone, surrounded by a circle of pipes, axes, jam pots, and an Irish Stew pot, above a four line verse:
He’d lop the British Oak,
The Lion too he’d slay,
And bid Britannia smoke
A yard of Irish clay.
The poem is titled G.O.M. [Gladstone’s nickname was “Grand Old Man”] and ends referencing Disraeli as “Beaconsfield The Great” [Beaconsfield was his adopted Earl’s title].
The style of the poem is mock-heroic, and relates to the political and personal clashes between the two politicians who had an intense dislike for each other. In the general election of 1 April 1880, the Conservative party under Benjamin Disraeli ,and a favourite of the Queen, was heavily defeated by the Liberals [Whigs] under the leadership of William Gladstone- which suggests an approximate date for the work. We have searched for the poem online but cannot find references to it, or quotes from it, which might suggest that it is original and unpublished.
Author
Anon
Date
Circa 1880
Publisher
Unpublished manuscript
Illustrator
Illustrated wraps
Condition
Very Good
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