"flying horses" depicted in 1721

Sun Aug 14 02:51:17 UTC 2011

The Hogarth print is, I believe, intended as a satirical condemnation
of the speculators and embezzlers of the circa 1720 South Sea Bubble
(see, e.g., Wikipedia "South Sea Company").  My guess is that Hogarth
turned the downward-pointing spokes of the fair ride into
upward-pointing ones, and had the horses and therefore riders facing
outward, iin order to construct a device of public display and
humiliation, an analog to the stocks of medieval through early modern
times.  Face-to-face, in other words.  (Thus Hogarth probably had no
intention of creating a money-making device.)

For the predecessors of Ferris wheels, going back to the 17th century
(and for a couple of early illustrations), see Wikipedia's article
"Ferris Wheels", "Early History".  (It uses the term "pleasure
wheels".)  According to Wiki, they were "turned by strong
men".  Presumably the same motive force was used for the early
"flying horses".  (The Hogarth print shows a lever near the base,
projecting out on both sides.)

Joel

At 8/13/2011 09:30 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>Searching Google for "rowlandson bartholomew fair" will turn up various
>versions of a plate by George Rowlandson from 1808 from a book; (perhaps
>earlier as a separate print).  There is a ribbed contrivance in the lower
>left that my source says is a flying horses.  Very likely, but none of the
>versions I can find are quite clear enough to show people riding it.  Can't
>image what else it could be. though.
>On the right side of the print, in the middle distance, there is a
>ferris-wheel like ride, and in the foreground something like a carriage body
>on a swing.
>
>My source is Thomas M. Garrett's dissertation on pleasure gardens in NYC, up
>to 1865, p. 229, footnote.
>
>As for the Hogarth print, I have that in a fine large page collection of his
>etchings, published by Dover decades ago.
>There is a hallucinatory element to the print, which probably affects the
>representation of the flying horses.  In particular, the ride is pretty high
>above the heads of the people, and would have required a very tall ladder to
>mount and dismount.  Hard to suppose that a ride requiring that could be a
>paying proposition.
>Hogarth represents the horses as all facing outward, unlike modern
>merry-go-rounds, but perhaps the point of the ride was not the sense of a
>chase after the horse in front of you, but the view outward over the heads
>on the crowd & seeing the whole fair.  There's a ride at Coney Island right
>now, one sort of like the revolving restaurants at the top of tall
>buildings, but without the bad meals.  A large round room is slowing raised
>a hundred feet or so on a central column, rotated, and then lowered again.
>  The point is the view, not any sense of giddiness from speedy movement.
>
>In any event, it seems that flying horses (the thing) existed from the
>early-mid 18th C, though the name is only found in the late 18th C.
>This also raises the question -- "begs the question", in modern parlance --
>what was the Ferris wheel called, before Mr Ferris?
>
>Is no one going to rummage about and find an earlier origin than the late
>1930s of symbolically catching the brass ring?
>
>GAT
>
>On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> > As Judith Anderson Stuart wrote [on another list], a 1721 print
> > containing a carousel with what could be called "flying horses" (they
> > are up in the air!) appears in the Wikipedia article "William Hogarth
> > - The South Sea Scheme".  I wonder how true it is to (amusement?)
> > devices of the time.  For example, I can't imagine it being
> > comfortable for country fair patrons to mount. And it reminds me more
> > of a device of torture (I assume that was intentional to
> > Hogarth?).  There was, of course, "riding the horse", "riding the rail".
> >
> > Several points interest me, assuming this carousel is to some degree
> > true to life:
> > 1)  If I am seeing the Wikipedia image correctly, this "Wheel Ride"
> > was turned by manpower via a bar extending through the axle on both sides
> > 2)   There are definitely horses being ridden ... although I'm not
> > sure all the mounts are horses.
> > 3)   The horses are not on chains, so they do not "fly" out as the wheel
> > turns.
> >
> > Joel
> >
> > At 8/12/2011 09:45 AM, John Dussinger wrote:
> >
> >> Postscript to my last:
> >>
> >> It just dawned on me (sorry Dawn!) that we can see these "flying
> >> horses" in Hogarth's "South Sea" print of 1721. The caption on top
> >> of the ride's post, "Who'l Ride," is similar to Lovelace's mimicry
> >> of the hawkers at the fair: "Who rides next! Who rides next!"
> >> Richardson may have had his friend's print in mind while
> >> categorizing libertines as gamblers destructive of the state. I wish
> >> that I could reproduce this print here. I have it hanging in my study.
> >>
> >
> > ------------------------------**------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
>--
>George A. Thompson
>Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
>Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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