Viscount Enfield — 'Answers Questions'

Plate 202 in the Statesmen series caricatures George Henry Byng, Viscount Enfield, a Liberal MP and Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The chromolithograph shows Enfield in strict profile, rendered in the flat, elongated manner characteristic of Carlo Pellegrini's school: exaggerated Roman nose, grey mutton-chop whiskers, and a stovepipe hat that adds comic height to an already lean figure. His dark frock coat is buttoned primly, hands clasped behind him — the posture of a man awaiting a parliamentary question he has already rehearsed. The caption 'Answers questions' is a dry parliamentary joke: Enfield served as the Commons voice for a Foreign Office unwilling to explain itself, making his fluency a polite evasion. No ethnic caricature is present; the humour is purely political and professional.