Alwyne Frederick Compton, 'North Bedfordshire'

Spy's chromolithograph presents Lord Alwyne Frederick Compton — D.S.O., D.L., M.P. for North Bedfordshire — in three-quarter profile, rendered in the magazine's characteristic mild exaggeration rather than savage distortion. He wears a dark frock coat over pinstriped trousers, a watch-chain crossing his waistcoat, and a silk top hat that slightly enlarges his already upright bearing. His hands are clasped at the chest with studied self-possession. The caption 'North Bedfordshire' anchors him to his constituency rather than his title, a Vanity Fair habit of locating landed gentlemen in their electoral terrain. The plate belongs to the magazine's gentler mode of satirising the comfortable Tory squirearchy of late-Victorian and Edwardian England.