William Patrick Adam, 'The Past'

Carlo Pellegrini ('Ape') caricatures William Patrick Adam M.P. — Liberal politician and former Junior Lord of the Treasury — as a portly, side-whiskered gentleman in a black frock coat, tan trousers, and towering silk top hat, hands thrust behind his back in a posture of comfortable authority. A watch-chain crosses his waistcoat; papers peek from his breast pocket. The caption 'The Past' delivers Pellegrini's quiet political verdict: Adam was already a diminishing force, associated with the departing Gladstone ministry defeated at the 1874 general election just months before. The caricature exaggerates his girth and drooping moustache without ethnic distortion — Pellegrini's comic weapon here is irrelevance rather than identity.