3-008-389 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Honeywood introducing the Bailiffs to Miss Richland as his friends", by W. P. Frith, R.A., in the Sheepshanks Collection, Kensington Museum, 1862. Engraving of a painting. 'We all recognise in this picture the admirable scene in Goldsmith's comedy of "The Goodnatured Man," where the improvident hero is reduced to the awkward necessity of introducing the two bailiffs who have come to pay their unwelcome addresses to him to Miss Richland as his friends. The young spark, however, carries it off with a high hand and matchless nonchalance. "Two of my very good friends," he says, "Mr. Twitch and Mr. Flanigin. Pray, gentlemen, sit, without ceremony." Miss Richland, a little puzzled at the strange appearance of the bailiffs, equipped in all the conventional, grotesque attire of their class, and having shrewd misgivings on their real calling and the nature of their business, says (aside), "Who can these odd-looking men be? I fear it is as I was informed." She nevertheless drops a curtsey in acknowledgment of the first salutation of the visitors, one of whom resorts, of course, to the weather as a theme upon which to mumble a few words - "Pretty weather, very pretty weather, for the time of year, Madam".' From "Illustrated London News", 1862.