Edward Hawke Locker's Cards on Cards

[anteros_lmc]

Last week, over on following_sea, I mentioned a reproduction set of cards I've acquired recently illustrated by Edward Hawke Locker in 1799. Locker was a talented watercolourist and Royal Naval administrator who served as Edward Pellew's personal secretary while he was Commander in Chief of the East India station. (Anyone who has read Landsman Hay, Robert Hay's account of his naval service in India, might remember the author's lifelong affection and admiration for Locker.)

Locker's deck of cards is ingenious as it features "cards in cards" - the suit of the card is hidden in the illustration. Many of the cards feature caricatures of popular figures of the day and unsurprisingly sailors feature prominently. There's a fascinating little booklet that accompanies the pack which notes that "A popular verse expresses feminine preference for sailors and contempt for soldiers. Locker does not go so fas as this, but there is a warmth and liveliness about his portrayal of naval figures which is absent from his military models." So here are the nautical highlights of Locker's cards in cards, with descriptions from the booklet.

On the 4 of Hearts we see a blind sailor with his dog begging in the street bearing a notice addressed "To the Human".	Another sailor this time with a wooden leg, on the Ace of Hearts, holds a notice on a pole inscribed "Naumachia - Silver Street, St Dunstan's" and offers leaflets to passers by. One can reasonably deduce that the figure is advertising an entertainment, possibly a revival of the Roman sport of Naumachia or mock sea battles, the word originally coming form the Greek. St Dunstan's is close to Fleet Street in London.
The King of Diamonds shows and alltogether more cheerful and able-bodied seaman. He appears to be just hoem form sea carrying a sack or kitbag inscribed "El Thetis". Many ships, particularly in the Mediterranean where the navy had been so active in that year, must have been named after this marine divinity, so it seems likely that the saior is celebrating his acquisition of some loot.	The 8 of Clubs illustrates a fortune-tellers in a somewhat unusual costume offering to cut a pack of cards for a pigtailed sailor.
It is difficult to understand why Locker is not better known as his keen sardonic caricaturists eye seems at least as mordant as his of his more celebrated contemporaries. Happily he almost certainly includes in the pack a wry portrait of himself on the Queen of Clubs. A sketch of his father in the Victoria and Albert Museum shows a marked similarity of feature. One feels from his approach to his subjects that he pretends to identify himself more with that, obviously impoverished, artist than with the gentlemanly painter appearing in a pastiche of Gainsborough's work on the 7 of Clubs.

Comments

[nodbear.livejournal.com]

They are wonderful - something so affectionate about them = wonder if they are any of them Cullodens ?

Rather nice to see the navyboy ones together in a group...for me the sad one of the blind sailor reduced to begging is the most moving.
A reminder that some of our servciemen and women end up on the streets still.

And for smiles the eager lad on leave waiting to have his fortune taken = sorry, told:)

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

What fun!