'Little Bo-Peep' — Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery

Spy renders Rosebery in the characteristic Vanity Fair mode: the head enlarged to caricature scale, the body trim in a dark frock coat with a flamboyant buttonhole bloom, one hand resting on a leather-strewn desk, the other cocked at the hip. The caption 'Little Bo-Peep' is a pointed joke — Rosebery, once Liberal Prime Minister (1894–95), had drifted from his party without quite resigning its leadership, losing his sheep and not knowing where to find them. By 1901 he was a political ghost, admired and irrelevant: wealthy, horse-racing, wreathed in prestige, awaiting a Liberal Imperialist revival that never fully arrived.