When Anstey returned to a burlesque of Bath society a decade later in "An Electoral Ball", it allowed him to embroider on some of his earlier themes. Thus Simkin's shocked account of female hairdressing in "Letter XII" of the Guide was expanded to outright farce in "An Election Ball" and had an immediate effect. In Samuel Hoare's conversation piece portrait of him (see above), his daughter is shown trying to draw his attention to the extravagant doll in her hand, in reality the kind of lay figure sent from Paris to guide dressmakers in the latest styles. Though she seems to distract him from composition, she is also serving as muse, for the doll's fantastic hairstyle is just such as, judging from the pattern of lines on his manuscript, Anstey went on to describe in the poem: "To a cap like a bat / (Which was once my cravat) / Part gracefully patted and pinn'd is, / Part stuck upon gauze/ Resembles mackaws/ And all the fine birds of the Indies."