It is not necessary to invite pity for the misfortune and woe which painter and engraver have already rendered so palpable. What ruthless town has our poor wanderer reached that has had the heart to treat him with this ignominy and cruelty? If, now, it had been a vulgar modern ear-torturing organ-grinder, we might very likely have laughed at his calamity. But that an itinerant musician of this order, a vocal performer of solos with accompaniment of the dulcet guitar, a direct descendant and representative of bard, and troubadour, and minniesinger—a gentleman who (so well accordant with the romance of his songs and serenades) wears the hat and leather and mantle of a cavalier—stay, what if it even be a lover in disguise planning an elopement!—that such a one, we say, should be seized and so vilely confined, exposed to the jeers, snowballs, and worse missiles of irreverent boys and men, as to common "vagrant" is really too bad. That, further, this should happen in winter's cold and snow, and, as the title seems to imply, that he is left forgotten in the secure though scant shelter of the halting-place where unwillingly he put up
—his foot, at all events—left to face a bitter night and certain frost-bite, is, we repeat, really too bad. His guitar seems to be thrown beyond his reach, and likewise broken, or he might, while waiting, appropriately rehearse a wait's carols at this season. But a suspicion here strikes us—was it because his last night's music failed to "soothe the savage Puritanical breasts" of some of the older burghers of the corporation, or because, instead of hymns and carols, he sang songs of Belial, that he is here punished? Stopping at this note of interrogation to question the engraver's work, we discover to our embarrassment that the "notice" placard to "vagrants" is signed the Lord Protector." So some of our comments may be widely misplaced: an unlucky Cavalier of musical tastes, or perhaps reduced by losses and reverses in the Royalist cause to wander as mendicant minstrel, is the victim of Roundhead vengeance. This simply is the painter's idea, and it is a happily-conceived and highly-suggestive one; but we will not be tempted to run the risk of again misdirecting the reader's ingenuity.
Source: The Illustrated London News, Vol. LIV, Feb 6, 1869, p.142
"Left out in the Cold" by J. Ritchie, from the Winter Exhibition at the French Gallery, Pall Mall"