Arthur Montagu Brookfield, 'East Sussex'

Leslie Ward ('Spy') renders Colonel Arthur Montagu Brookfield, Conservative MP for East Sussex, in the idiom of Vanity Fair's Statesmen series (plate 700). The full-length chromolithograph shows a trim, mustachioed gentleman mid-stride in a dark frock coat and grey trousers, brown gloves clutched around a top hat in one hand and a bamboo cane trailing from the other — the complete equipment of a late-Victorian gentleman of consequence. The caption reads simply 'East Sussex.' No ethnic caricature is present; Ward's mild distortions — the slight elongation of the torso, the brisk self-satisfied stride — are class caricature rather than personal malice, gently mocking a soldier-politician who embodied respectable Tory Sussex rather than any dramatic political cause.