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THE HISTORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IN CARICATURE
What it is and What is it?
THE HISTORY
OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
IN CARICATURE
BY
ARTHUR BARTLETT MAURICE
and
FREDERIC TABER COOPER
PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS
1904
Copyright, 1903, 1904
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
BURR PRINTING HOUSE
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
CHAPTER Page
PART I. THE NAPOLEONIC ERA
I. The Beginning of Political Caricature 1
II. Hogarth and his Times 12
III. James Gillray 19
IV. Bonaparte As First Consul 28
V. The Emperor at his Apogee 35
VI. Napoleon's Waning Power 44
PART II. FROM WATERLOO THROUGH THE CRIMEAN WAR
VII. After the Downfall 57
VIII. The "Poire" 65
IX. The Baiting of Louis-Phillipe 73
X. Mayeux and Robert Macaire 90
XI. From Cruikshank to Leech 97
XII. The Beginning of Punch 101
XIII. Retrospective 111
XIV. '48 and the Coup d'Etat 119
XV. The Struggle in the Crimea 128
PART III. THE CIVIL AND FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WARS
XVI. The Mexican War and Slavery 143
XVII. Neglected Opportunities 159
XVIII. The South Secedes 166
XIX. The Four Years' Struggle 175
XX. Nations and Men in Caricature 188
XXI. The Outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War 197
XXII. The Debacle 206
PART IV. THE END OF THE CENTURY
XXIII. The Evolution of American Caricature 231
XXIV. The Third French Republic 236
XXV. General European Affairs 245
XXVI. Thomas Nast 255
XXVII. The American Political Campaigns of 1880 and 1884 269
XXVIII. The Influence of Journalism 278
XXIX. Years of Turbulence 289
XXX. American Parties and Platforms 309
XXXI. The Spanish-American War 330
XXXII. The Boer War and the Dreyfus Case 342
XXXIII. The Men of To-day 355
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
What It Is and What Is It? Frontispiece
French Invasion of England 3
Nelson at the Battle of the Nile (Gillray) 5
Bonaparte after Landing (Gillray) 6
John Bull Taking a Luncheon (Gillray) 8
French Consular Triumvirate (Gillray) 11
Capture of the Danish Ships (Gillray) 14
The Broad-Bottom Administration (Gillray) 16
Pacific Overtures (Gillray) 19
The Great Coronation Procession (Gillray) 21
Napoleon and Pitt (Gillray) 23
Armed Heroes (Gillray) 25
The Handwriting on the Wall (Gillray) 27
The Double-Faced Napoleon (German cartoon) 29
The Two Kings of Terror (Rowlandson) 31
The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver (Gillray) 33
Napoleon's Burden (German cartoon) 36
The French Gingerbread Baker (Gillray) 38
The Devil and Napoleon (French cartoon) 39
The Consultation (French cartoon) 41
The Corsican Top in Full Flight 45
Napoleon in the Valley of the Shadow of Death (Gillray) 47
The Spider's Web (Volk) 48
The Partition of the Map 49
Napoleon's Plight (French cartoon) 50
The Signature of Abdication (Cruikshank) 52
The Allies' Oven (French cartoon) 54
The New Robinson Crusoe (German cartoon) 55
Napoleon Caged (French cartoon) 56
Restitution 58
Adjusting the Balance 60
John Bull's New Batch of Ships (Charles) 62
Russia as Mediator (Charles) 63
The Cossack Bite (Charles) 63
John Bull and the Alexandrians (Charles) 64
John Bull's Troubles (Charles) 64
The Order of the Extinguishers (French cartoon) 67
Proudhon 68
Digging the Grave 69
Le Poire (Philipon) 70
The Pious Monarch 74
The Great Nut-Cracker 75
Enfonce Lafayette (Daumier) 77
The Ship of State in Peril 79
The Pit of Taxation (Grandville) 81
The Question of Divorce (Daumier) 83
The Resuscitation (Grandville) 84
Louis Philippe as Bluebeard (Grandville) 85
Barbarism and Cholera Invading 89
The Raid 89
Mayeux (Travies) 91
Robert Macaire (Daumier) 93
Extinguished! 94
Louis Philippe as Cain 95
Laughing John--Crying John 96
The Wellington Boot 99
The Land of Liberty 103
England's Admonition (Leech) 104
The Napoleon of Peace 105
The Sea-Serpent of 1848 107
Europe in 1830 109
Honore Daumier (Benjamin) 112
The Evolution of John Bull 115
Joseph Prudhomme (Daumier) 116
The Only Authorised Lamps (Vernier) 120
Italian Cartoon of '48 121
Napoleon le Petit (Vernier) 122
The New Siamese Twins 123
Louis Napoleon and Madame France 124
The Proclamation (Gill) 125
Split Crow in the Crimea 126
Bursting of the Russian Bubble 130
General Fevrier Turned Traitor (Leech) 131
Rochefort and His Lantern 133
Brothers in Arms 134
An American Cartoon on the Crimean War 136
Theatrical Programme 138
The British Lion's Vengeance (Tenniel) 139
The French Porcupine (Leech) 141
Bank-Oh's Ghost, 1837 144
Balaam and Balaam's Ass 144
New Map of the United States 145
The Steeplechase for 1844 147
Uncle Sam's Taylorifics 150
The Mexican Commander 151
Defense of the California Bank 153
The Presidential Foot Race 153
Presidential Campaign of '56 154
No Higher Law 155
The Fugitive Slave Law 157
The Great Disunion Serpent 158
Rough and Ready Locomotive Against the Field 160
Sauce for Goose and Gander 162
Peace (Nast) 164
Virginia Pausing 166
Civil War Envelopes 167
Long Abe 168
The Promissory Note 169
The Great Tight Rope Feat 170
At the Throttle 171
The Expert Bartender 172
The Southern Confederacy a Fact 173
The Brighter Prospect 174
"Why Don't you Take It?" 175
The Old Bull Dog on the Right Track 176
Little Mac in his Great Act 178
The Grave of the Union 180
The Abolition Catastrophe 181
The Blockade 182
Miscegenation 183
The Confederacy in Petticoats 184
Uncle Sam's Menagerie 185
Protecting Free Ballot 186
The Nation at Lincoln's Bier (Tenniel) 187
Figures from a Triumph 189
The Diagnosis (Cham) 190
The Egerean Nymph (Daumier) 191
Paul and Virginia (Gill) 192
The First Conscript of France (Gill) 193
The Situation (Gill) 195
Louis Blanc (Gill) 197
Rival Arbiters (Tenniel) 198
The Man Who Laughs (Gill) 199
The Man Who Thinks (Gill) 200
"To Be or Not to Be" (Gill) 201
Achilles in Retreat (Gill) 202
The President of Rhodes (Daumier) 203
A Tempest in a Glass of Water (Gill) 204
A Duel to the Death (Tenniel) 205
September 4th, 1870 206
Her Baptism of Fire (Tenniel) 207
Andre Gill 208
The Marquis de Galliffet (Willette) 209
The History of a Reign (Daumier) 210
"This has Killed That" (Daumier) 211
The Mousetrap and its Victims (Daumier) 211
Prussia Annexes Alsace (Cham) 213
Britannia's Sympathy (Cham) 214
Adieu (Cham) 215
Souvenirs and Regrets (Aranda) 216
The Napoleon Mountebanks (Hadol) 217
Prussia Introducing the New Assembly (Daumier) 219
"Let us Eat the Prussian" (Gill) 220
Design for a New Handbell (Daumier) 222
Germany's Farewell 223
Bismarck the First 224
Trochu--1870 225
Marshal Bazaine (Faustin) 226
Rochefort 227
The German Emperor Enters Paris (Regamey) 228
Caran D'Ache 232
Gulliver Crispi 233
Changing the Map (Gill) 234
Poor France! (Daumier) 237
The Warning (Daumier) 238
The New Year (Daumier) 239
The Root of all Evil 240
The Napoleonic Drama 241
The French Political Situation (Regamey) 243
New Crowns for Old 245
Tightening the Grip 246
Aeolus 247
"L'Etat, C'est Moi" 248
The Hidden Hand 249
The Irish Frankenstein 250
The Daring Duckling 251
Settling the Alabama Claims 252
Gordon Waiting at Khartoum 253
The Gratz Brown Tag to Greeley's Coat (Nast) 256
Thomas Nast 257
Labour Cap and Dinner Pail (Nast) 259
The Rag Baby (Nast) 260
The Inflation Donkey (Nast) 261
The Brains of Tammany (Nast) 262
A Popular Verdict 263
The Tattooed Columbia (Keppler) 264
Splitting the Party 265
The Headless Candidates 266
On the Down Grade 267
Forbidding the Banns (Keppler) 270
The Wake (Keppler) 272
A Common Sorrow 273
Why They Dislike Him 274
The First Tattooed Man (Gillam) 275
A German Idea of Irish Home Rule 279
The New National Sexton 280
Horatius Cleveland 281
Bernard Gillam 282
Joseph Keppler 283
The John Bull Octopus 285
The Hand of Anarchy 286
The Triple Alliance 287
A Present-Day Lesson 290
Gordon in Khartoum 291
The Spurious Parnell Letters 291
Dropping the Pilot (Tenniel) 292
L'Enfant Terrible 293
William Bluebeard 294
Chinese Native Cartoon 295
Japan in Corea 296
Business at the Deathbed 297
The Start for the China Cup 297
End of the Chinese-Japanese War 298
The Chinese Exclusion Act 299
The Great Republican Circus (Opper) 300
To the Rescue 301
A Pilgrim's Progress 302
General Boulanger 303
The Hague Peace Conference 303
A Fixture 304
Group of Modern French Caricaturists 305
The Anglo-French War Barometer 307
Rip Van Winkle Awakes 310
They're Off 311
Where am I at? (Gillam) 312
The Political Columbus (Gillam) 314
Cleveland's Map of the United States (Gillam) 315
Return of the Southern Flags (Gillam) 317
The Champion Masher (Gillam) 319
The Harrison Platform (Keppler) 320
The Chilian Affair 322
A Political Tam O'Shanter (Gillam) 324
Don Quixote Bryan and the Windmill (Victor Gillam) 325
Outing of the Anarchists 326
To the Death 327
The Great Weyler Ape 328
We are the People 329
Be Careful! It's Loaded (Victor Gillam) 331
The Safety Valve 333
The Latest War Bulletin (Hamilton) 334
Spanish Cartoons of the Spanish-American War 335
The Spanish Brute (Hamilton) 337
Spanish Cartoons of the Spanish-American War 339
The Rhodes Colossus (Sambourne) 342
The Situation in South Africa (Gillam) 343
Bloody Cartography 344
Lady Macbeth 345
The Flying Dutchman 346
Oom Paul's Favorite Pastime 347
Up against the Breastworks 348
The Napoleon of South Africa 349
Fire! 350
The Last Phase of the Dreyfus Case 350
Toward Freedom 351
The French General's Staff 352
Between Scylla and Charybdis 353
Devil's Island 354
C. G. Bush 356
Willie and His Papa (Opper) 357
Homer Davenport 359
Davenport's Conception of the Trusts 361
HISTORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IN CARICATURE
PART I
THE NAPOLEONIC ERA
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING OF POLITICAL CARICATURE
While the impulse to satirize public men in picture is probably as old as satiric verse, if not older, the political cartoon, as an effective agent in molding public opinion, is essentially a product of modern conditions and methods. As with the campaign song, its success depends upon its timeliness, upon the ability to seize upon a critical moment, a burning question of the hour, and anticipate the outcome while public excitement is still at a white heat. But unlike satiric verse, it is dependent upon ink and paper. It cannot be transmitted orally. The doggerel verses of the Roman legions passed from camp to camp with the mysterious swiftness of an epidemic, and found their way even into the sober history of Suetonius. The topical songs and parodies of the Middle Ages migrated from town to town with the strolling minstrels, as readily as did the cycles of heroic poetry. But with caricature the case was very different. It may be that the man of the Stone Age, whom Mr. Opper has lately utilized so cleverly in a series of caricatures, was the first to draw rude and distorted likenesses of some unpopular chieftain, just as the Roman soldier of 79 A. D. scratched on the wall of his barracks in Pompeii an unflattering portrait of some martinet centurion which the ashes of Vesuvius have preserved until to-day. It is certain that the Greeks and Romans appreciated the power of ridicule latent in satiric pictures; but until the era of the printing press, the caricaturist was as one crying in a wilderness. And it is only with the modern co-operation of printing and photography that caricature has come into its full inheritance. The best and most telling cartoons are those which do not merely reflect current public opinion, but guide it. In looking back over a century of caricature, we are apt to overlook this distinction. A cartoon which cleverly illustrates some important historical event, and throws light upon the contemporary attitude of the public, is equally interesting to-day, whether it anticipated the event or was published a month afterward. But in order to influence public opinion, caricature must contain a certain element of prophecy. It must suggest a danger or point an interrogation. As an example, we may compare two famous cartoons by the English artist Gillray, "A Connoisseur Examining a Cooper" and the "King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver." In the latter, George III., in the guise of a giant, is curiously examining through his magnifying glass a Lilliputian Napoleon. There is no element of prophecy about the cartoon. It simply reflects the contemptuous attitude of the time toward Napoleon, and underestimates the danger. The other cartoon, which appeared several years earlier, shows the King anxiously examining the features of Cooper's well-known miniature of Cromwell, the great overthrower of kings. Public sentiment at that time suggested the imminence of another revolution, and the cartoon suggests a momentous question: "Will the fate of Charles I. be repeated?" In the light of history, the Gulliver cartoon is to-day undoubtedly the more interesting, but at the time of its appearance it could not have produced anything approaching the sensation of that of "a Connoisseur."
Gillray's Conception of the French Invasion of England.
The necessity of getting a caricature swiftly before the public has always been felt, and has given rise to some curious devices and makeshifts. In the example which we have noted as having come down from Roman times, a patriotic citizen of Pompeii could find no better medium for giving his cartoon of an important local event to the world than by scratching it upon the wall of his dwelling-house after the fashion of the modern advertisement. There was a time in the seventeenth century when packs of political playing-cards enjoyed an extended vogue. The fashion of printing cartoons upon ladies' fans and other articles of similarly intimate character was a transitory fad in England a century ago. Mr. Ackermann, a famous printer of his generation, and publisher of the greater part of Rowlandson's cartoons, adopted as an expedient for spreading political news a small balloon with an attached mechanism, which, when liberated, would drop news bulletins at intervals as it passed over field and village. In this country many people of the older generation will still remember the widespread popularity of the patriotic caricature-envelopes that were circulated during the Civil War. To-day we are so used to the daily newspaper cartoon that we do not stop to think how seriously handicapped the cartoonists of a century ago found themselves. The more important cartoons of Gillray and Rowlandson appeared either in monthly periodicals, such as the Westminster Magazine and the Oxford Magazine, or in separate sheets that sold at the prohibitive price of several shillings. In times of great public excitement, as during the later years of the Napoleonic wars, such cartoons were bought up greedily, the City vying with the aristocratic West End in their patriotic demand for them. But such times were exceptional, and the older caricaturists were obliged to let pass many interesting crises because the situations would have become already stale before the day of publication of the monthly magazines came round. With the advent of the illustrated weeklies the situation was improved, but it is only in recent times that the ideal condition has been reached, when the cabled news of yesterday is interpreted in the cartoon of to-day.
Nelson at the Battle of the Nile.
There is another and less specific reason why caricature had to await the advent of printing and the wider dissemination of knowledge which resulted. The successful political cartoon presupposes a certain average degree of intelligence in a nation, an awakened civic conscience, a sense of responsibility for the nation's welfare. The cleverest cartoonist would waste his time appealing to a nation of feudal vassals; he could not expect to influence a people to whom the ballot box was closed. Caricature flourishes best in an atmosphere of democracy; there is an eternal incompatibility between its audacious irreverence and the doctrine of the divine right of kings.
Bonaparte 48 Hours after Landing.
And yet the best type of caricature should not require a high degree of intelligence. Many clever cartoonists over-reach themselves by an excess of cleverness, appealing at best to a limited audience. Of this type are the cartoons whose point lies in parodying some famous painting or a masterpiece of literature, which, as a result, necessarily remains caviare to the general. There is a type of portrait caricature so cultured and subtle that it often produces likenesses truer to the man we know in real life than a photograph would be. A good example of this type is the familiar work of William Nicholson, whose portrait of the late Queen of England is said to have been recognized by her as one of the most characteristic pictures she had ever had taken. What appeals to the public, however, is a coarser type, a gross exaggeration of prominent features, a willful distortion, resulting in ridicule or glorification. Oftentimes the caricature degenerates into a mere symbol. We have outgrown the puerility of the pictorial pun which flourished in England at the close of the seventeenth century, when cartoonists of Gillray's rank were content to represent Lord Bute as a pair of boots, Lord North as Boreas, the north wind, and the elder Fox with the head and tail of the animal suggested by his name. Yet personification of one kind and another, and notably the personification of the nations in the shape of John Bull and Uncle Sam and the Russian Bear, forms the very alphabet of political caricature of the present day. Some of the most memorable series that have ever appeared were founded upon a chance resemblance of the subject of them to some natural object. Notable instances are Daumier's famous series of Louis Philippe represented as a pear, and Nast's equally clever, but more local, caricatures of Tweed as a money-bag. It would be interesting, if the material were accessible, to trace the development of the different personifications of England, France, and Russia, and the rest, from their first appearance in caricature, but unfortunately their earlier development cannot be fully traced. The underlying idea of representing the different nations as individuals, and depicting the great international crises in a series of allegories or parables or animal stories--a sort of pictorial AEsop's fables--dates back to the very beginning of caricature. In one of the earliest cartoons that have been preserved, England, France, and a number of minor principalities which have since disappeared from the map of Europe, are represented as playing a game of cards with some disputed island possessions as the stakes. In this case the several nations are indicated merely by heraldic emblems. The conception of John Bull was not to be evolved until a couple of centuries later. This cartoon, like the others of that time, originated in France under Louis XII. The further development of the art was decisively checked under the despotic reign of Louis XIV., and the few caricaturists of that time who had the courage to use their pencil against the king were driven to the expedient of publishing their works in Holland.
John Bull taking a Luncheon.
An impressive illustration of the advantage which the satirical poet has over the cartoonist lies in the fact that some of the cleverest political satire ever written, as well as the best examples of the application of the animal fable to politics, were produced in France at this very time in the fables of La Fontaine.
The French Consular Triumvirate.
CHAPTER II
HOGARTH AND HIS TIMES
From Holland caricature migrated to Great Britain in the closing years of the seventeenth century--a natural result of the attention which Dutch cartoonists had bestowed upon the revolution of 1688--and there it found a fertile and congenial soil. The English had not had time to forget that they had once put the divine right of kings to the test of the executioner's block, and what little reverence still survived was not likely to afford protection for a race of imported monarchs. Moreover, as it happened, the development of English caricature was destined to be guided by the giant genius of two men, Hogarth and Gillray; and however far apart these two men were in their moral and artistic standards, they had one thing in common, a perennial scorn for the House of Hanover. Hogarth's contemptuous satire of George II. was more than echoed in Gillray's merciless attacks upon George III. The well-known cartoons of "Farmer George," and "George the Button-Maker," were but two of the countless ways in which he avenged himself upon the dull-witted king who had once acknowledged that he could not see the point of Gillray's caricatures.
Although Hogarth antedates the period covered by the present articles by fully half a century, he is much too commanding a figure in the history of comic art to be summarily dismissed. The year 1720 marks the era of the so-called "bubble mania," the era of unprecedented inflation, of the South Sea Company in London, and the equally notorious Mississippi schemes of John Law in France. Popular excitement found vent in a veritable deluge of cartoons, many of which originated in Amsterdam and were reprinted in London, often with the addition of explanatory satiric verses in English. In one, Fortune is represented riding in a car driven by Folly, and drawn by personifications of the different companies responsible for the disastrous epidemic of speculation: the Mississippi, limping along on a wooden leg; the South Sea, with its foot in splints, etc. In another, we have an imaginary map of the Southern seas, representing "the very famous island of Madhead, situated in Share Sea, and inhabited by all kinds of people, to which is given the general name of Shareholders." John Law came in for a major share of the caricaturist's attention. In one picture he is represented as assisting Atlas to bear up immense globes of wind; in another, he is a "wind-monopolist," declaring, "The wind is my treasure, cushion, and foundation. Master of the wind, I am master of life, and my wind monopoly becomes straightway the object of idolatry." The windy character of the share-business is the dominant note in the cartoons of the period. Bubbles, windmills, flying kites, play a prominent part in the detail with which the background of the typical Dutch caricature was always crowded. These cartoons, displayed conspicuously in London shop windows, were not only seen by Hogarth, but influenced him vitally. His earliest known essay in political caricature is an adaptation of one of these Dutch prints, representing the wheel of Fortune, bearing the luckless and infatuated speculators high aloft. His latest work still shows the influence of Holland in the endless wealth of minute detail, the painstaking elaboration of his backgrounds, in which the most patient examination is ever finding something new. With Hogarth, the overcharged method of the Dutch school became a medium for irrepressible genius. At the hands of his followers and imitators, it became a source of obscurity and confusion.
"The Capture of the Danish Ships."
While Hogarth is rightly recognized as the father of English caricature, it must be remembered that his best work was done on the social rather than on the political side. Even his most famous political series, that of "The Elections," is broadly generalized. It is not in any sense campaign literature, but an exposition of contemporary manners. And this was always Hogarth's aim. He was by instinct a realist, endowed with a keen sense of humor--a quality in which many a modern realist is deficient. He satirized life as he saw it, the good and the bad together, with a frankness which at times was somewhat brutal, like the frankness of Fielding and of Smollett the frankness of the age they lived in. It was essentially an outspoken age, robust and rather gross; a red-blooded age, nurtured on English beef and beer; a jovial age that shook its sides over many a broad jest, and saw no shame in open allusion to the obvious and elemental facts of physical life. Judged by the standards of his day, there is little offense in Hogarth's work; even when measured by our own, he is not deliberately licentious. On the contrary, he set an example of moderation which his successors would have done well to imitate. He realized, as the later caricaturists of his century did not, that the great strength of pictorial satire lies in ridicule rather than in invective; that the subtlest irony often lies in a close adherence to truth, where riotous and unrestrained exaggeration defeats its own end. Just as in the case of "Joseph Andrews," Fielding's creative instinct got the upper hand of the parodist, so in much of Hogarth's work one feels that the caricaturist is forced to yield place to the realistic artist, the student of human life, carried away by the interest of the story he has to tell. His chief gift to caricature is his unprecedented development of the narrative quality in pictorial art. He pointed a road along which his imitators could follow him only at a distance.
"Bonaparte and his English Friends--The Broad Bottom Administration."
With the second half of the eighteenth century there began an era of great license in the political press, an era of bitter vituperation and vile personal abuse. Hogarth was one of the chief sufferers. After holding aloof from partisan politics for nearly half a century, he published, in 1762, his well-known cartoon attacking the ex-minister, Pitt. All Europe is represented in flames, which are spreading to Great Britain in spite of the efforts of Lord Bute, aided by his Highlanders, to extinguish them. Pitt is blowing upon the flames, which are being fed by the Duke of Newcastle from a barrow full of Monitors and North Britons, two scurrilous papers of the day. The bitterness with which Hogarth was attacked in retaliation and the persistence of his persecutors resulted, as was generally believed at the time, in a broken heart and his death in 1764.
An amazing increase in the number of caricatures followed the entry of Lord Bute's ministry into power. They were distinguished chiefly by their poor execution and gross indecency. As early as 1762, the Gentleman's Magazine, itself none too immaculate, complains that "Many of the representations that have lately appeared in the shops are not only reproachful to the government, but offensive to common-sense; they discover a tendency to inflame, without a spark of fire to light their own combustion." The state of society in England was at this time notoriously immoral and licentious. It was a period of hard living and hard drinking. The well-known habits of such public figures as Sheridan and Fox are eminent examples. The spirit of gambling had become a mania, and women had caught the contagion as well as men. Nowhere was the profligacy of the times more clearly shown than in the looseness of public social functions, such as the notorious masquerade balls, which a contemporary journal, the Westminster Magazine, seriously decried as "subversive of virtue and every noble and domestic point of honor." The low standards of morals and want of delicacy are revealed in the extravagance of women's dress, the looseness of their speech. It was an age when women of rank, such as Lady Buckingham and Lady Archer, were publicly threatened by an eminent judge with exposure on the pillory for having systematically enticed young men and robbed them at their faro tables, and afterward found themselves exposed in the pillory of popular opinion in scurrilous cartoons from shop windows all over London.
Pacific Overtures.
CHAPTER III
JAMES GILLRAY
At a time when cheap abuse took the place of technical skill, and vulgarity passed for wit, a man of unlimited audacity, who was also a consummate master of his pencil, easily took precedence. Such a man was James Gillray, unquestionably the leading cartoonist of the reign of George III. Yet of the many who are to-day familiar with the name of Gillray and the important part he played in influencing public opinion during the struggle with Napoleon, very few have an understanding of the dominant qualities of his work. A large part of it, and probably the most representative part, is characterized by a foulness and an obscenity which the present generation cannot countenance. There is a whole series of cartoons bearing his name which it would not only be absolutely out of the question to reproduce, but the very nature of which can be indicated only in the most guarded manner. Imagine the works of Rabelais shamelessly illustrated by a master hand! Try to conceive of the nature of the pictures which Panurge chalked up on the walls of old Paris. It was not merely the fault of the times, as in the case of Hogarth. Public taste was sufficiently depraved already; but Gillray deliberately prostituted his genius to the level of a procurer, to debauch it further. From first to last his drawings impress one as emanating from a mind not only unclean, but unbalanced as well--a mind over which there hung, even at the beginning, the furtive shadow of that madness which at last overtook and blighted him. There is but one of the hallmarks of great caricature in the work of Gillray, and that is the lasting impression which they make. They refuse to be forgotten; they remain imprinted on the brain, like the obsession of a nightmare. While in one sense they stand as a pitiless indictment of the generation that tolerated them, they are not a reflection of the life that Gillray saw, except in the sense that their physical deformity symbolizes the moral foulness of the age. Grace and charm and physical beauty, which Hogarth could use effectively, are unknown quantities to Gillray. There is an element of monstrosity about all his figures, distorted and repellent. Foul, bloated faces; twisted, swollen limbs; unshapely figures whose protuberant flesh suggests a tumefied and fungoid growth--such is the brood begotten by Gillray's pencil, like the malignant spawn of some forgotten circle of the lower inferno.
"The Great Coronation Procession of Napoleon."
It would be idle to dispute the far-reaching power of Gillray's genius, perverted though it was. Throughout the Napoleonic wars, caricature and the name of Gillray are convertible terms; for, even after he was forced to lay down his pencil, his brilliant contemporaries and successors, Rowlandson and Cruikshank, found themselves unable to throw off the fetters of his influence. No history of Napoleon is quite complete which fails to recognize Gillray as a potent factor in crystallizing public opinion in England. His long series of cartoons aimed at "little Boney" are the culminating work of his life. Their power lay, not in intellectual subtlety or brilliant scintillation of wit, but in the bitterness of their invective, the appeal they make to elemental passions. They spoke a language which the roughest of London mobs could understand--the language of the gutter. They were, many of them, masterpieces of pictorial Billingsgate.
"Napoleon and Pitt dividing the World between Them."
There is rancor, there is venom, there is the inevitable inheritance of the warfare of centuries, in these caricatures of Gillray, but above all there is fear--fear of Napoleon, of his genius, of his star. It has been very easy for Englishmen of later days to say that the French never could have crossed the Channel, that there was never any reason for disquiet; it was another matter in the days when troops were actually massing by thousands on the hills behind Boulogne. You can find this fear voiced everywhere in Gillray, in the discordance between the drawings and the text. John Bull is the ox, Bonaparte the contemptible frog; but it is usually the ox who is bellowing out defiance, daring the other to "come on," flinging down insult at the diminutive foe. "Let 'em come, damme!" shouts the bold Briton in the pictures of the time. "Damme! where are the French bugaboos? Single-handed I'll beat forty of 'em, damme!" Every means was used to rouse the spirit of the English nation, and to stimulate hatred of the French and their leader. In one picture, Boney and his family are in rags, and are gnawing raw bones in a rude Corsican hut; in another we find him with a hookah and turban, having adopted the Mahometan religion; in a third we see him murdering the sick at Joppa. In the caricatures of Gillray, Napoleon is always a monster, a fiend in human shape, craven and murderous; but when dealing with the question of this fiend's power for evil, Gillray made no attempt at consistency. This ogre, who through one series of pictures was represented as kicked about from boot to boot, kicked by the Spaniards, the Turks, the Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians, in another is depicted as being very dangerous indeed. A curious example of this inconsistency will be found in placing side by side the two cartoons considered by many to be Gillray's best: "The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver," already referred to, and "Tiddy-Doll, the great French gingerbread Maker, Drawing out a new Batch of Kings." The "pernicious, little, odious reptile" whom George the Third is holding so contemptuously in the hollow of his hand, in the first caricature, is in the second concededly of European importance.
"Armed Heroes."
"The Handwriting on the Wall."
CHAPTER IV
BONAPARTE AS FIRST CONSUL
For the first decade of the nineteenth century there was but one important source of caricature, and one all-important subject--England and Bonaparte. America at this time counted for little in international politics. The revolutionary period closed definitely with the death of Washington, the one figure in our national politics who stood for something definite in the eyes of Europe. Our incipient naval war with France, which for a moment threatened to assign us a part in the general struggle of the Powers, was amicably concluded before the close of the eighteenth century. Throughout the Jeffersonian period, national and local satire and burlesque flourished, atoning in quantity for what it lacked in wit and artistic skill. Mr. Parton, in his "Caricature and Other Comic Art," finds but one cartoon which he thinks it worth while to cite--Jefferson kneeling before a pillar labeled "Altar of Gallic Despotism," upon which are Paine's "Age of Reason," and the works of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Helvetius, with the demon of the French Revolution crouching behind it, and the American Eagle soaring to the sky bearing away the Constitution and the independence of the United States, and he adds: "Pictures of that nature, of great size, crowded with objects, emblems, and sentences--an elaborate blending of burlesque, allegory, and enigma--were so much valued by that generation that some of them were engraved upon copper."
"The Double-Faced Napoleon." From the collection of John Leonard Dudley, Jr.
France, on the contrary, the central stage of the great drama of nations, might at this time have produced a school of caricaturists worthy of their opportunity--a school that would have offset with its Gallic wit the heavier school of British invective, and might have furnished Napoleon with a strong weapon against his most persistent enemies, had he not, with questionable wisdom, sternly repressed pictorial satire of a political nature. As the century opens, the drama of the ensuing fourteen years becomes clearly defined; the prologue has been played; Napoleon's ambition in the East has been checked, first by the Battle of the Nile, and then definitely at Aboukir. Henceforth he is to limit his schemes of conquest to Europe, and John Bull is the only national figure who seems likely to attempt to check him. The Battle of the Nile was commemorated by Gillray, who depicted Nelson's victory in a cartoon entitled "Extirpation of the Plagues of Egypt, Destruction of the Revolutionary Crocodiles, or the British Hero Cleansing the Mouth of the Nile." Here Nelson is shown dispersing the French fleet treated as crocodiles. He has destroyed numbers with his cudgel of British oak; he is beating down others; a whole bevy, with hooks through their noses, are attached by strings to the iron hook which replaced his lost forearm. In the distance a crocodile is bursting and casting fire and ruin on all sides. This is an allusion to the destruction of the Orient, the flagship of the Republican Admiral, the heroic Brueys, who declined to quit his post when literally cut to pieces.
Another cartoon by Gillray which belongs to this period is "The French Consular Triumvirate Settling the New Constitution." It introduces the figures of Napoleon and his fellow-consuls, Cambaceres and Lebrun, who replaced the very authors of the new instrument, Sieyes and Ducos, quietly deposed by Napoleon within the year. The second and third consuls are provided with blank sheets of paper, for mere form--they have only to bite their pens. The Corsican is compiling a constitution in accordance with his own views. A band of imps is beneath the table, forging new chains for France and for Europe.
"The Two Kings of Terror." After a cartoon by Rowlandson.
In England, the Addington ministry, which in 1801 replaced that of William Pitt, and are represented in caricature as "Lilliputian substitutes" lost in the depths of Mr. Pitt's jack-boots, set out as a peace ministry and entered into the negotiations with Napoleon which, in the following March, resulted in the Peace of Amiens. Gillray anticipated this peace with several alarmist cartoons: "Preliminaries of Peace," representing John Bull being led by the nose across the channel over a rotten plank, while Britannia's shield and several valuable possessions have been cast aside into the water; and "Britannia's Death Warrant," in which Britannia is seen being dragged away to the guillotine by the Corsican marauder. The peace at first gave genuine satisfaction in England, but toward the end of 1802 there were growing signs of popular discontent, which Gillray voiced in "The Nursery, with Britannia Reposing in Peace." Britannia is here portrayed as an overgrown baby in her cradle and fed upon French principles by Addington, Lord Hawkesbury, and Fox. Still more famous was his next cartoon, "The First Kiss this Ten Years; or, the Meeting of Britannia and Citizen Francois." Britannia, grown enormously stout, her shield and spear idly reposing against the wall, is blushing deeply at his warm embrace and ardent expressions of joy: "Madame, permit me to pay my profound esteem to your engaging person, and to seal on your divine lips my everlasting attachment!!!" She replies: "Monsieur, you are truly a well-bred gentleman; and though you make me blush, yet you kiss so delicately that I cannot refuse you, though I was sure you would deceive me again." In the background the portraits of King George and Bonaparte scowl fiercely at each other upon the wall. This is said to be one of the very few caricatures which Napoleon himself heartily enjoyed.
From now on, the cartoons take on a more caustic tone. Britannia is being robbed of her cherished possessions, even Malta being on the point of being wrested from her; while the bugaboo of an invading army looms large upon the horizon. In one picture Britannia, unexpectedly attacked by Napoleon's fleet, is awakening from a trance of fancied peace, and praying that her "angels and ministers of _dis_grace defend her!" In another, John Bull, having waded across the water, is taunting little Boney, whose head just shows above the wall of his fortress:
If you mean to invade us, why make such a rout?
I say, little Boney, why don't you come out?
Yes, d---- you, why don't you come out?
In his cartoon called "Promised Horrors of the French Invasion; or, Forcible Reasons for Negotiating a Regicide Peace," Gillray painted the imaginary landing of the French in England. The ferocious legions are pouring from St. James's Palace, which is in flames, and they are marching past the clubs. The practice of patronizing democracy in the countries they had conquered has been carried out by handing over the Tories, the constitution, and the crown to the Foxite reformers and the Whig party. The chief hostility of the French troops is directed against the aristocratic clubs. An indiscriminate massacre of the members of White's is proceeding in the doorways, on the balconies, and wherever the republican levies have penetrated. The royal princes are stabbed and thrown into the street. A rivulet of blood is running. In the center of the picture is a tree of liberty. To this tree Pitt is bound, while Fox is lashing him.
[Illustration: The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver.
"You may have seen Gillray's famous print of him--in the old wig, in the stout, old, hideous Windsor uniform--as the King of Brobdingnag, peering at a little Gulliver, whom he holds up in his hand, whilst in the other he has an opera-glass, through which he surveys the pygmy? Our fathers chose to set up George as the type of a great king; and the little Gulliver was the great Napoleon."--Thackeray's "Four Georges".]
The increasing venom of the English cartoons, and their frequent coarse personalities, caused no little uneasiness to Bonaparte, until they culminated in a famous cartoon by Gillray, "The Handwriting on the Wall," a broad satire on Belshazzar's feast, which was published August 24, 1803. The First Consul, his wife Josephine, and the members of the court are seated at table, consuming the good things of Old England. The palace of St. James, transfixed upon Napoleon's fork; the tower of London, which one of the convives is swallowing whole; the head of King George on a platter inscribed: "Oh, de beef of Old England!" A hand above holds out the scales of Justice, in which the legitimate crown of France weighs down the red cap with its attached chain--despotism misnamed liberty.
CHAPTER V
THE EMPEROR AT HIS APOGEE
For the next year parliamentary strife at home, fostered by Pitt's quarrel with the Addington ministry on the one hand and his opposition to Fox on the other, kept the cartoonists busy. They found time, however, to celebrate the coronation of Napoleon as Emperor in December, 1804. Gillray anticipated the event with a cartoon entitled "The Genius of France Nursing her Darling," in which the genius, depicted as a lady with blood-stained garments and a reeking spear, tosses an infant Napoleon, armed with a scepter, and vainly tries to check his cries with a rattle surmounted by a crown.
Rowlandson, Gillray's clever and more artistic contemporary, commemorated the event itself in a clever cartoon, "The Death of Madame Republique," published December 14, 1804. The moribund Republique lies stretched upon her death-bed, her nightcap adorned with the tricolored cockade. The Abbe Sieyes, in the role of doctor, is exhibiting the Emperor, portrayed as a newborn infant in long clothes. John Bull, spectacles on nose, is regarding the altered conditions with visible astonishment. "Pray, Mr. Abbe Sieyes, what was the cause of the poor lady's death? She seemed at one time in a tolerable thriving way." "She died in childbed, Mr. Bull, after giving birth to this little Emperor!"
Napoleon's Burden. From a German cartoon of the period.
This was followed on the 1st of January by a large satirical print by Gillray, of "The Grand Coronation Procession," in which the feature that gave special offense was the group of three princesses, the Princess Borghese, the Princess Louise, and the Princess Joseph Bonaparte, arrayed in garments of indecent scantiness, and heading the procession as the "three imperial Graces." The English caricatures of this period relating to the new Emperor and Empress are as a rule not only libelous, but grossly coarse. At the same time, the political conditions of the times are cleverly hit off in "The Plum Pudding in Danger; or, State Epicures Taking on Petit Souper," published February 26, 1805, which depicts the rival pretensions of Napoleon and Pitt. They are seated at opposite sides of the table, the only dish between them being the Globe, served up on a shallow plate and resembling a plum pudding. Napoleon's sword has sliced off the continent--France, Holland, Spain, Italy, Prussia--and his fork is dug spitefully into Hanover, which was then an appanage of the British crown. Pitt's trident is stuck in the ocean, and his carver is modestly dividing the Globe down the middle.
During the summer of 1805 the third coalition against France was completed, its chief factors being Great Britain, Russia, and Austria. A contemporary print entitled "Tom Thumb at Bay" commemorates the new armament. Napoleon, dropping crown and scepter in his flight, is evading the Austrian eagle, the Russian bear, and the Westphalian pig, only to run at last pell-mell into the gaping jaws of the British lion. It is somewhat curious that the momentous events of the new war--the annihilation of the French fleet at Trafalgar, the equally decisive French victory at Austerlitz--were scarcely noticed in caricature, and a few exceptions have little merit. But in the following January, 1806, when Napoleon had entered upon an epoch of king-making, with his kings of Wurtemburg and Bavaria, Gillray produced one of his most famous prints. It was published the 23d of January (the day that Pitt breathed his last), and was entitled "Tiddy-Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Baker, Drawing out a new Batch of Kings, His Man, 'Hopping Talley,' Mixing up the Dough." The great gilt gingerbread baker is shown at work at his new French oven for imperial gingerbread. He is just drawing from the oven's mouth a fresh batch of kings. The fuel is shown in the form of cannon-balls. Holland, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Venice and Spain are following the fate of the French Republic. On top of the chest of drawers, labeled respectively "kings and queens," "crowns and scepters," "suns and moons" is arranged a gay parcel of little dough viceroys intended for the next batch. Among them are the figures of Fox, Sheridan, Derby, and others of the Whig party in England.
The French Gingerbread Baker.
In the comprehensive and ill-assorted Coalition ministry which was formed soon after Pitt's death, the caricaturists found a congenial topic for their pencils. They ridiculed it unmercifully under the title "All the Talents," and the "Board Bottomed" ministry. A composite picture by Rowlandson shows the ministry as a spectacled ape in the wig of a learned justice, with episcopal mitre and Catholic crozier. He wears a lawyer's coat and ragged breeches, with a shoe on one foot and a French jack-boot on the other. He is dancing on a funeral pyre of papers, the results of the administration, its endless negotiations with France, its sinecures and patronages, which are blazing away. The creature's foot is discharging a gun, which produces signal mischief in the rear and brings down two heavy folios, the Magna Charta and the Coronation Oath, upon its head.
"The Devil and Napoleon." From an anonymous French caricature.
This ministry's futile negotiations for peace with France are frequently burlesqued. Gillray published on April 5 "Pacific Overtures; or, a Flight from St. Cloud's 'over the water to Charley,'" in which the negotiations are described as "a new dramatic peace, now rehearsing." In this cartoon King George has left the state box--where the play-book of "I Know You All" still remains open--to approach nearer to little Boney, who, elevated on the clouds, is directing attention to his proposed treaty. "Terms of Peace: Acknowledge me as Emperor; dismantle your fleet, reduce your armies; abandon Malta and Gibraltar; renounce all continental connection; your colonies I will take at a valuation; engage to pay to the Great Nation for seven years annually one million pounds; and place in my hands as hostages the Princess Charlotte of Wales, with others of the late administration whom I shall name." King George replies: "Very amusing terms, indeed, and might do vastly well with some of the new-made little gingerbread kings; but we are not in the habit of giving up either ships or commerce or colonies merely because little Boney is in a pet to have them." This cartoon introduces among others Talleyrand, O'Conor, Fox, Lord Ellenborough, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Moira, Lord Lauderdale, Addington, Lord Henry Petty, Lord Derby, and Mrs. Fitzherbert.
Shortly afterward, on July 21, 1806, Rowlandson voices the current feeling of distrust of Fox in "Experiments at Dover; or, Master Charley's Magic Lantern." Fox is depicted at Dover, training the rays of his magic lantern on the cliffs of Calais. John Bull, watching him, is not satisfied. "Yes, yes, it be all very fine, if it be true; but I can't forget that d--d Omnium last week.... I will tell thee what, Charley, since thee hast become a great man, I think in my heart thee beest always conjuring."