fig. 10 James Gillray (printmaker), A Sale of English Beauties in the East Indies (1786), published by William Holland, London, etching and aquatint, 41.7 x 53.0 cm, British Museum, London
fig. 12 ‘Lady Termagant Flaybum’, title page to Madame Birchini's DANCE: A MODERN TALE: WITH CONSIDERABLE ADDITIONS, and Original Anecdotes collected in the Fashionable Circles (9th? edition, London, c.1800?) printed for ‘George Peacock’
Among the paraphernalia scattered in the foreground of Gillray’s version are Leake’s pills and surgeon’s tools for the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. The foppish auctioneer stands on a podium of British manufactured birches for flagellation. Beside that is a box marked for ‘the instruction of military gentlemen’ which is the bibliography of this image. Some of the texts it lists are: Pucelle, Fanny Hill, Crazy Tales, Female Flagellants, and Birchini’s Dance.
This (fig. 12) is the text to which Gillray’s image refers. Like many works of obscene literature of this period precise details of publication are difficult to find but this volume was printed for George Peacock—very likely a pornographer’s pseudonym—in the shadow of one of London’s two royal patented theatres, Drury Lane. Madame Birchini’s Dance is a poem in which a member of the hereditary nobility is taken to Paris by his young wife and whipped by an Opera dancer in order to help improve his performance. The quotations on the frontispiece link the text to other performing arts—the opera—and the literature of enlightenment—Rousseau.