The narrow escape, or, Boneys grand leap ” a la Grimaldi!!

George Cruikshank

The narrow escape, or, Boneys grand leap ” a la Grimaldi!!

London, S Knight, Jan 1813

Etching

Original hand colouring

245 x 350 mm

£350

‘”No sooner had Napoleon aligted [sic], & entred a miserable house for refreshment, then a party of Cossacks rushed in after him—Never was Miss Platoff [see No. 11994] so near Matrimony!!! Had not the Emperor been very alert at Vaulting and leapt through the Window, with the nimbleness of an Harlequin, while his faithfull followers were fighting for his life, there would, probably, have been an end at once to that Grand Bubble, the French Empire”—’. Part of a wretched timber building, with the chequers sign (which in England denoted the sale of beer), fills the greater part of the design. Napoleon takes a flying leap from a rectangular opening which serves as window and is about to land on a heap of muck where a cracked chamber-pot will receive him. He is much burlesqued, and registers terror, his hair on end, his large plumed bicorne falling off. He wears jack-boots with monstrous spurs and pointed toes. A pig (left) gazes up at him. Round the corner of the building is a doorway, beside which Cossacks are spearing and sabreing unresisting French soldiers. A horizontal beam projects from the house; on it is a placard: ‘The Hole in the Wall [name of a London public house] By Jimmy Jumps from the Dunghill—Good accommodati