The Pic-Nic Society was a London club devoted to theatrical entertainment, lavish dinners, and gambling. The Pic-Nics notoriety invited scandal and satire. Burney’s The Pic-Nic Orchestra is a knock-off of James Gillray’s The Pic-Nic Orchestra. Caricatures...
Hickey’s Memoirs included a picnic luncheon in Westminster Abbey during the coronation of George III in September 1762. His memory of the coronation is humorous if it’s true. Many of Hickey’s memories are lascivious, and he was regarded as a rake....
Rowlandson’s Undertakers Regaling is a jibe at Robert Blair’s pious and maudlin “The Grave.”* Rowlandson does not mention Blair, but his audience would have recognized the allusion to his well-known and well-anthologized poem. Appended to...
Spilsbury does not use picnic (if she even knew the word) to describe the luncheon because it was not yet in everyday use. However, The Drinking Well in Hyde Park (1802) reminds us that the park has long been a popular gathering place for socializing and leisure....
![James Gillray and the Pic Nics (1801-1803)]()
Picnic, the English phonetic spelling of pique-nique, owes its introduction in English parlance to the Pic Nics, a London club that had a brief run from 1801-1803. We remember the Pic Nics because James Gillray lampooned and mocked them. We recognize that this was...
Among the Pic Nic Society anecdotes is its sponsorship of a balloon launch. In London. In July 1802, the Pic Nics called an ad hoc meeting to watch and cheer Jacques Garnerin’s successful launch of a hot air balloon from Ranelagh Gardens. See: Universal Magazine of...
Rowlandson’s Hunt the Slipper, Pic-Nic Revels satirizes the Pic-Nics, a society of Dilettanti (amateur actors), gamblers, and gourmands who briefly flourished 1802-3. The rules of the Society are framed on the wall: Ici on boit, on danse, on rit! Et quelquefois on...
Williams’s Peep into Tottenham Street, or Dilettanti Performers in Training is a knockoff of Gillray’s caricature Dilettanti Theatrical;-or-a Peep at the Green Room. Vide Pic-Nic Orgies (Tottenham Street was the location of the rooms the Pic Nics rented for their...
From 1780-1820, “Dilettanti,” or amateur theater aficionados, organized theater groups. Among the most passionate, Louise Craven, Margravine of Ansbach, who wrote plays, produced and acted in them, persuaded her doting husband, the Margrave of Ansbach, to...
Gillray’s caricature Dilettanti Theatrical; or a Peep at the Green Room. Vide Pic-Nic Orgies lampoons the Pic Nic Society. For a brief time, the Pic Nics were one of Gillray’s prime targets, and his satire Blowing up the Pic Nics helped to hound the society into...
