ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

'Fitz' — W. Fitzherbert, President, Cambridge University Athletic Club

Leslie Ward · Vanity Fair, 26 March 1896, chromolithograph by Leslie Ward ('Spy')

'Fitz' — W. Fitzherbert, President, Cambridge University Athletic Club
Ward's plate presents Fitzherbert in three-quarter profile, a young, rosy-cheeked athlete caught mid-pause on a grass strip. The joke is sartorial and physical at once: beneath a voluminous brown double-breasted overcoat — the gentleman's warming robe of the Victorian track — he wears only running whites, bare legs visible where the coat falls open. His hands are pocketed, chin lifted with the easy confidence expected of a Cambridge club president. The caption reads simply *Fitz*. The comedy is social, gently mocking the sporting amateur's pretension to both athletic vigour and patrician dignity simultaneously.

Leslie Ward Public domain