William Beauclerk, 10th Duke of St Albans

Plate 218 in Vanity Fair's Statesmen series, captioned "Hereditary Grand Falconer" — the ancient ceremonial title the Beauclerk family held by royal patent. The caricature, drawn by Melchiorre Delfico rather than the magazine's better-known hands, presents the Duke in side profile: reddish hair and a trim Vandyke beard, dark frock coat, light striped trousers, and patent shoes. The pose is amiable rather than satirical — hands tucked behind, a faint smirk. The joke is gently aristocratic: a peer whose chief public distinction is a feudal office with no practical function, smiled at rather than skewered. A coronet floats in the upper-right corner, underlining the hereditary absurdity the caption already implies.