Thomas Emerson Headlam, MP

Spy (Leslie Ward) renders Headlam in strict profile, a pose that flattens personality into silhouette and suits the caricaturist's art perfectly. The elderly Whig MP wears a tall silk hat, dark frock coat, and light trousers, hands tucked behind his back in the attitude of a man who has waited out many a parliamentary session. His white hair, prominent nose, and jutting chin are gently exaggerated without ethnic distortion — this is the standard Vanity Fair treatment of a respectable English gentleman grown comfortable in office. The caption, "Has kept his seat for six-and-twenty years," is the quiet sting: longevity read as inertia, a polite indictment of the unreformed Whig habit of treating a constituency seat as personal property.