A Clever Wife and Nice Home. Possibly Francis Wilfrid Lawson. Source: Fun (10 December 1864): 121. Source: Suzy Covey Comic Book Collection in the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida. Click on image to enlarge it
Poor Tiffin (who used to have such poetical ideas of marriage happiness) comes home tired from business, and in want of a meal
Mrs. Tiffin (who is engaged with the promoter of the “Indian Umbrella Distributing Mission”): — “Dinner, indeed, you selfish monster, when perhaps at this very moment there’s some poor frozen-out Indian helpless in the wild desert of the Sahara without even an umbrella to shelter him.”
[Now as umbrellas are the order of the day, Tiffin feels strongly inclined to present one to somebody.
This cartoon is one of many Victorian satires on Evangelical clergy, their missionary efforts, the married women they attract, and the harm done to family life. The Rev. Stiggins in Dickens’s Pickwick Papers and Mrs. Jellby in Bleak House are perhaps the most famous of these. — George P. Landow
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Last modified 19 February 2016