A sight such as this surely never was seen
Who the Deuce would not gaze at the A _ _ of a Q _ _ _ n?
What prospect so charming! What scene can surpass
The delicate sight of her M_ _ _ _ _ _ _ A_ _?
H. Howard (1762)
This post is about an eighteenth-century queen, a zebra, and an ass and it starts in 1761.
In this year, King George III (1738-1820) of Great Britain married Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744-1818). As with all royal weddings everyone and anyone presented the newlyweds with gifts. Sir Thomas Adams (1738 – April 1770), a baronet and officer in the royal navy who was sailing back to Britain from the East Indies, collected two zebras from the Cape as a gift for the new queen. On his return in 1762, he presented the queen with the one remaining zebra (unfortunately, the other had died on the voyage). She was delighted with the beast and kept it in the grounds of Buckingham House (now Buckingham Palace).
The zebra attracted a lot of attention and soon many people flocked to see it grazing at the royal residence. The Queen’s Guard even tried charging people to see it, even though entry was meant to be free and because of the large crowds of people, pickpockets had rich pickings. The zebra – a wild animal – lived up to its wild reputation and would kick and bite and this put paid to any attempts to tame it so that it could pull a carriage. Needless to say, the animal was popular, so much so, that George Stubbs (1724-1806), more famous for painting horses was commissioned to paint the zebra.
It wasn’t long, however, before the political cartoonists and satirists used the zebra to mock politicians and even the queen. The broadsheet authors took the zebra and made it an ass, a striped ass, and then the Queen’s Ass, producing ass-related ballads, cartoons and satires. Check out the verse at the start of this blog – a treasonous ditty described by its author as a “new humous allegorical song.”
Broadsheet: The Queen’s Ass, H. Howard (1762).
Courtesy of the British Museum
I doubt these authors knew that the ass was a distant relative of the zebra. What they did know however, was that salaciousness sells and this was the time when the word ass was being associated more with arse (bottom); ass would soon be replaced by the word donkey to avoid offending English sensibilities. There is no record of what the Queen thought of these rude, irreverent sketches, no doubt she was busy with her 15 children. Her biographer, John Watkins, diplomatically glossed over the matter of the zebra, merely stating that, “a female zebra attracted much notice and excited considerable amusement,” preferring to focus on the queen’s role as a mother, loyal wife, queen, and her charitable endeavours.
The following images are some broadsheets featuring the Queen’s Ass, courtesy of the British Museum.
The Queen’s _____, featuring her son, the Prince of Wales
Hand-coloured etching, 17 April 1787.
A Rebuke to H. Howard’s ballad, The Queen’s Ass – obviously, not everyone was amused.
Etching, London: 1762.
