3-021-000 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Persuading Papa", by J. Pettie, A.R.A., in the Exhibition at the Gallery, 7, Haymarket, 1869. Engraving of a painting. 'Suppose by the introduction of a playbill or ticket for the Ranelagh...it had been intimated that these frolicsome young damsels were wheedling an evidently good-natured and pliable papa...in order to make him dance attendance on their pleasures as escort and protector. Suppose, by some letter or other love-token, we had been made to believe that those wicked confederates were setting forth in the most favourable light to papa - gay enough himself, we warrant, in his early days - the propriety of conduct and general eligibility of some handsome but notoriously gay young cavaliers...Suppose papa was...called upon to pay some unauthorised or unexpected "little bill" for dresses, millinery, embroideries, laces, trinkets, gimcracks, or what not; or as being teased into admiration of and ruinous extravagance in purchasing one or more of those articles...there is no end to supposititious possibilities while young ladies' fancies run on everything attainable or unattainable, possible or impossible, in the universe, or while papas weakly listen to the cajoleries of offspring that are the special pride and delight of their lives'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.