'Lord Advocate' — Edward Strathearn Gordon

Pellegrini signs this plate 'Ape' in his characteristic looping hand, lower right. The caption reads simply "Lord Advocate" — Gordon's office, not his name, as was Vanity Fair's habit with legal grandees. The caricature is a profile study in controlled contempt: Gordon hunches forward, hands thrust behind his back, dark frock coat straining at the shoulders, top hat set low. The face is the joke — an enormous hooked nose, jutting chin, and florid complexion pushed to near-mask proportions. Such exaggeration of aquiline features carried anti-Semitic coding familiar to Victorian readers, though Gordon was Scottish Presbyterian; the convention was applied broadly to any prominent, sharp-featured man whose power invited mockery. As Scotland's Lord Advocate 1874–76 under Disraeli, Gordon embodied Tory legal authority, and Pellegrini renders him pompous, myopic, and slightly ridiculous.