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Harry Furniss's M. P.'s in Session (1889) collects his Punch cartoons of Victorian parliamentarians, presenting them as a "Parliamentary Portrait Gallery" with a satirical edge. The volume's frontispiece shows Mr. Punch as a cartoonist dismissing familiar models and demanding "new 'character'!"—a clue to Furniss's method: he exaggerates physical and behavioral quirks to expose political personas. The title page announces a "Splendid Collection of Parliamentary Portraits, mostly done by 'The Other Fellows,'" a dig at rival artists, while the subtitle "The Speaking Likenesses speak for themselves and for the Artists" underscores the dual role of caricature as both mimicry and commentary.
Furniss's cartoons rely on a vocabulary of posture and attribute. "Commons summoned to Upper House" shows MPs as actors in a "new conservative comedy company trying to look as much as possible like the old public favourites," reducing party realignments to theatrical imitation. A caption for Henry Chaplin quotes the Standard praising "force of character" and "masculine ability" over "sparkling or elaborate rhetoric," yet the accompanying image likely undercuts that solemnity. The section "Some of the heads of the government—1882" and the note that "Viscount Wolmer said:—'he saw hon. members toss their heads'" prompt Furniss to depict MPs literally losing or misplacing their heads—a visual pun on composure and authority.
The volume frames Parliament as a stage. "Principals of the new conservative comedy company" and "The Royal Westminster Academy" (a parody of the Royal Academy) treat legislative proceedings as performance and exhibition. "Getting Gladstone's collar up" isolates a trivial physical detail to imply agitation or pride. The index lists MPs with dates of Punch publication, reinforcing the serial, episodic nature of the satire. Furniss's "Parliamentary Index, 1882-1888" catalogues over a hundred figures, from Joseph Arch to Arthur Balfour, each assigned a specific issue—a record of who was deemed newsworthy and how often they were caricatured.
The book's back matter advertises other Punch publications, including John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character and Punch's Victorian Era, situating Furniss's work within a commercial ecosystem of illustrated humor. The ads boast of "Imperial Quarto" format, limited editions, and destroyed plates—marketing scarcity while the cartoons themselves mock political pretension. This tension between art as commodity and art as critique echoes the volume's own hybrid identity: a gallery of "speaking likenesses" that both flatter and deflate their subjects. The reader is left to gauge how much of Furniss's ridicule is affectionate and how much is barbed.
Readers should approach M. P.'s in Session as a period artifact that rewards attention to its visual-verbal interplay. The captions often quote or paraphrase parliamentary speech, while the drawings exaggerate gesture and setting. Comparing the index's frequency of appearance with the cartoons' treatment may reveal which MPs Furniss found most ripe for satire. The volume's structure—a gallery of individual portraits—invites browsing rather than linear reading, making it a useful resource for studying late-Victorian political culture and the conventions of magazine caricature.
Furniss’s cartoons made me chuckle at Westminster’s theatre, yet I kept thinking of Sheridan’s own stage-managed speeches, the same vanity dressed in different wigs. That old Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan — Volume 01 — Background and Themes gave me a similar ache—politicians as actors, trying so hard to be remembered, then fading into ink.
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