'Court Roll' — Charles Isaac Elton, 1887

Ward's caricature of Charles Isaac Elton — barrister, antiquary, and Conservative MP — turns the subject's considerable girth into the entire visual argument. Elton stands in strict profile, top-hatted and frock-coated, belly straining against a tight waistcoat, one hand cocked on his hip with the air of a man accustomed to holding the floor. The caption 'Court Roll' is a legal pun: Elton was a specialist in real-property and manorial law, and 'court rolls' were the medieval tenure records central to his scholarship. No ethnic caricature is present; the comedy is purely corporeal, in the Victorian tradition of equating physical amplitude with comfortable self-importance. Spy's signature appears lower right.