John Palmer Brabazon ('Bwab'), Vanity Fair, 1886

Carlo Pellegrini ('Ape') presents Lieutenant-Colonel John Palmer Brabazon in profile, striding left with a cane held loosely behind his back — the patrician ease of a cavalry officer who has never hurried for anyone. He wears a dark frock coat, high collar, and silk top hat; a neat moustache anchors the caricaturist's signature exaggeration of his jutting chin and prominent nose. The caption 'Bwab' is the nickname Brabazon earned for his affected upper-class lisp — he reportedly could not pronounce his own name clearly. Pellegrini mines that affectation for gentle social satire: here is the English gentleman-soldier rendered as pure ornament, elegant and slightly absurd, the Army as a finishing school for the well-connected.