The Treasury Bench

One of Vanity Fair's rare triple portraits, this chromolithograph by Théobald Chartran — one of the magazine's less frequent contributors — seats three Liberal grandees on the green leather of the Commons front bench. At left, a glowering William Ewart Gladstone, freshly returned as Prime Minister after his Midlothian triumph, hunches in characteristic brooding concentration. Centre, the Marquess of Hartington — heir to Devonshire, Whig aristocrat — sprawls with papers across his lap. Right, Joseph Chamberlain of Birmingham leans forward, pointing, the radical arriviste beside inherited rank. The caption, 'Babble, Birth and Brummagem,' skewers each man in a word: Gladstone the orator, Hartington the peer, Chamberlain the provincial manufacturer — an uneasy coalition ministry rendered as a study in mutual impatience.