William Court Gully, 'Mr Speaker'

Spy renders William Court Gully, Speaker of the House of Commons from 1895, in the studied informality that was Ward's trademark: a tall, slightly stout figure in a grey frock coat and patterned bow-tie, hands clasped behind his back, head tilted with mild self-satisfaction. The caption 'Mr Speaker' is deadpan — Gully's authority rests entirely on constitutional office rather than personal charisma, and the portrait gently underlines that. No grotesque distortion marks the face; the caricature is social rather than savage, locating Gully among the respectable Liberal lawyers who rose through Victorian public life on competence and steadiness. The plate belongs to Statesmen series No. 677, a reminder that by 1896 Vanity Fair's gallery had catalogued the entire governing class with polite, chromolithographic precision.