When he arrived in Portugal in 1787, the profligate young aristocrat and novelist William Beckford (1760-1844) had a mighty retinue in tow. It included a doctor, a tailor, a barber, and train of servants, including valets, cooks, footmen, and 24 musicians. He also took books, prints, furniture, a collapsible bed, cutlery, and plates, and he even had a picturesque flock of sheep shipped over from his home county of Wiltshire. So great was his entourage, and so long was his baggage-train, that he was once mistaken for the Emperor of Austria on his way to visit the Pope.
While some young chaps, like Beckford, were bringing their home comforts with them on the expansive and frequently debauched 18th-century equivalent of the gap year, known as the Grand Tour, others had an eye on what treasures, curios, and ideas they could haul back across the English Channel to their family seat.
The Tour was responsible for importing a great deal of European influences to Britain. One of these imports was the art of caricature, and one of its Italian practitioners had the greatest influence of all upon his British counterparts.
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