Caricature and Other Comic Art Part 21

[Ill.u.s.tration: Family of the Extinguishers--Caricature of the Restoration. (Paris, 1819.)]

To the Order of the Weather-c.o.c.k succeeded, in 1819, when priestly ascendency at court was but too manifest, the Family of the Extinguishers. In the picture given below, the reader has the pleasure of viewing some of the family portraits, and in another he sees members of the family at work, rekindling the fire and extinguishing the lights.

The fire was to consume the charter of French liberty and the records of science; the lights are the men to whom France felt herself indebted for liberty and knowledge--Buffon, Franklin, D'Alembert, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Montaigne, Fenelon, Condorcet, and their friends. Above is the personified Church, with sword uplifted, menacing mankind with new St.

Bartholomews and Sicilian Vespers. Underneath this elaborate and ingenious work was the refrain of Beranger's song of 1819, ent.i.tled "Les Missionnaires," which was almost enough of itself to expel the Bourbons:

"Vite soufflons, soufflons, morbleu!

eteignons les lumieres Et rallumons le feu."

The historian of that period will not omit to examine the songs which the incomparable Beranger wrote during the reign of the two kings of the Restoration. "Le peuple, c'est ma Muse," the poet wrote many years after, when reviewing this period. The people were his Muse. He studied the people, he adds, "with religious care," and always found their deepest convictions in harmony with his own. He had been completely fascinated by the "genius of Napoleon," never suspecting that it was Napoleon's lamentable _want_ of ability which had devolved upon the respectable Louis XVIII. an impossible task. But he perceived that the task _was_ impossible. There were two impossibilities, he thought, in the way of a stable government. It was impossible for the Bourbons, while they remained Bourbons, to govern France, and it was impossible for France to make them any thing but Bourbons. Hence, in lending his exquisite gift to the popular cause, he had no scruples and no reserves; and he freely poured forth those wonderful songs which became immediately part and parcel of the familiar speech of his countrymen.

Alas for a Bourbon when there is a Beranger loose in his capital!

Charles X. attempted the Bourbon policy of repression, and had the poet twice imprisoned. But he could not imprison his songs, nor prevent his writing new ones in prison, which sung themselves over France in a week.

Caricature, too, was severely repressed--the usual precursor of collapse in a French government.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Jesuits at Court. (Paris, 1819.)

"Quick! Blow! blow! Let us put out the lights and rekindle the fires!"]

The end of the Restoration, in 1830, occurred with a sudden and spontaneous facility, which showed, among other things, how effectively Beranger had sung from his garret and his prison. The old king in 1824 had his wish of dying in his own bed, and is said to have told his successor, with his dying breath, that he owed this privilege to the policy of tacking ship rather than allowing a contrary wind to drive her upon the rocks. He advised "Monsieur" to pursue the same "tacking policy." But Monsieur was Comte d'Artois, that entire and perfect Bourbon, crusted by his sixty-seven years, a willing victim in the hands of Jesuit priests. In six years the ship of state was evidently driving full upon the rocks; but, instead of tacking, he put on all sail, and let her drive. At a moment when France was in the last extremity of alarm for the portion of liberty which her const.i.tution secured her, this unhappy king signed a decree which put the press under the control of the Minister of Police, and the rest of the people of France under Marshal Marmont. Twenty-one days after, August 16th, 1830, the king and his suite were received on board of two American vessels, the _Charles Carroll_ and the _Great Britain_, by which they were conveyed from Cherbourg to Portsmouth. "This," said the king to his first English visitors, "is the reward of my efforts to render France happy. I wished to make one last attempt to restore order and tranquillity. The factions have overturned me." The old gentleman resumed his daily ma.s.s, and found much consolation for the loss of a crown in the slaughter of beasts and birds. Louis Philippe was King of the _French_, by the grace of Lafayette and the acquiescence of a majority of the French people.

Caricature, almost interdicted during the last years of the Restoration, pursued the fugitive king and his family with avenging ridicule.

Gavarni, then an unknown artist of twenty-six, employed by emile de Girardin to draw the fashion plates of his new periodical, _La Mode_, gave Paris, in those wild July days of 1830, the only political caricatures he ever published. One represented the king as an old-clothes man, bawling, "Old coats! old lace!" In another he appeared astride of a lance, in full flight, in a costume composed of a priest's black robe and the glittering uniform of a general; white bands at his neck, the broad red ribbon of the Legion of Honor across his breast, one arm loaded with mitres, relics, and chaplets, with the scissors of the censer on the thumb, on the other side the end of a sabre, and the meagre legs encompa.s.sed by a pair of huge jack-boots. Another picture, called the "Lost Balloon," exhibited the king in the car of a balloon, with the same preposterous boots hanging down, along with the Duc d'Angouleme clinging to the sides, and the d.u.c.h.ess crushing the king by her weight. The royal banner, white, and sown with fleurs-de-lis, streamed out behind as the balloon disappeared in the clouds.

These were the only political caricatures ever published by the man whom Frenchmen regard as the greatest of their recent satirical artists. He cared nothing for politics, and had the usual attachment of artists and poets to the Established Order. Having aimed these light shafts at the flying king in mere gayety of heart, because every one else was doing the same, he soon remembered that the king was an old man, past seventy-three, as old as his own father, and flying in alarm from his home and country. He was conscience-stricken. Reading aloud one day a poem in which allusion was made to a white-haired old man going into exile with slow, reluctant steps, his voice broke, and he could scarcely utter the lines:

"Pas d'outrage au vieillard qui s'exile a pas lents.

C'est une piete d'epargner les ruines.

Je n'enfoncerai pas la couronne d'epines Que la main du malheur met sur ses cheveux blancs."

As he spoke these words the image of his old father rose vividly before his mind, and he could read no more. "I felt," said he, "as if I had been struck in the face;" and ever after he held political caricature in horror.

This feeling is one with which the reader will often find himself sympathizing while examining some of the heartless and thoughtless pictures which exasperated the elderly paterfamilias who was now called to preside over demoralized France. Louis Philippe was another good-natured Louis XVIII., _minus_ divine right, _plus_ a large family.

With all the domestic virtues, somewhat too anxious to push his children on in the world, a good citizen, a good patriot, an unostentatious gentleman, he was totally dest.i.tute of those picturesque and captivating qualities which adventurers and banditti often possess, but which wise and trustworthy men seldom do. In looking back now upon that eighteen years' struggle between this respectable father of a family and anarchy, it seems as if France should have rallied more loyally and more considerately round him, and given him too the privilege, so dear to elderly gentlemen, of dying in his own bed. One-tenth of his virtue and one-half his intellect had sufficed under the old _regime_.

But since that lamentable and fatal day when the priests wrought upon Louis XIV. to decree the expulsion of the Huguenots, who were the _elite_ of his kingdom, France had been undergoing a course of political demoralization, which had made a const.i.tutional government of the country almost impossible. Recent events had exaggerated the criminal cla.s.s. Twenty years of intoxicating victory had made all moderate success, all gradual prosperity, seem tame and flat; and the reduction of the army had set afloat great numbers of people indisposed to peaceful industry. Under the Restoration, we may almost say, political conspiracy had become a recognized profession. The new king, pledged to make the freedom of the press "a reality," soon found himself face to face with difficulties which Bourbons had invariably met by mere repression. Republicans and Legitimists were equally dissatisfied.

Legitimists could only wait and plot; but Republicans could write, speak, and draw. A considerable proportion of the young, irresponsible, and adventurous talent was republican, and there was a great deal of Bohemian character available for that side. It was a time when a Louis Napoleon could belong to a democratic club.

Caricature speedily marked the "citizen king" for her own. Napoleon had employed all his subtlest tact during the last ten years of his reign in keeping alive in French minds the base feudal feeling, so congenial to human indolence and vanity, that it is n.o.bler to be a soldier than to rear a family and keep a shop. In his bulletins we find this false sentiment adroitly insinuated in a hundred ways. He loved to stigmatize the English as a nation of shop-keepers. He displayed infinite art in exalting the qualities which render men willing to destroy one another without asking why, and in casting contempt on the arts and virtues by which the waste of war is repaired. The homely habits, the plain dress, the methodical ways, of Louis Philippe were, therefore, easily made to seem ridiculous. He was styled the first _bourgeois_ of his kingdom--as he was--but the French people had been taught to regard the word as a term of contempt.

Unfortunately he abandoned the policy of letting the caricaturists alone. Several French rulers have adopted the principle of not regarding satire, but not one has had the courage to adhere to it long. Sooner or later all the world will come into the "American system," and all the world will at length discover the utter impotence of the keenest ridicule and the most persistent abuse against public men who do right and let their a.s.sailants alone. The chief harm done by the abuse of public men in free countries is in making it too difficult to expose their real faults. How would it be possible, for example, to make the people of the United States believe ill of a President in vilifying whom ingenious men and powerful journals had exhausted themselves daily for years? Nothing short of _testimony_, abundant and indisputable, such as would convince an honest jury, could procure serious attention. From President Washington to President Grant the history of American politics is one continuous proof of Mr. Jefferson's remark, that "an administration which has nothing to conceal has nothing to fear from the press."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Charles Philipon.]

When Louis Philippe had been a year upon the throne appeared the first number of _Le Charivari_, a daily paper of four small pages, conducted by an unknown, inferior artist--Charles Philipon. Around him gathered a number of Bohemian draughtsmen and writers, not one of whom appears then to have shared in the social or political life of the country, or to have had the faintest conception of the consideration due to a fellow-citizen in a place of such extreme difficulty as the head of a government. They a.s.sailed the king, his person, his policy, his family, his habits, his history, with thoughtless and merciless ridicule. A periodical which has undertaken to supply a cloyed, fastidious public with three hundred and sixty-five ludicrous pictures per annum must often be in desperation for subjects, and there was no resource to Philipon so obvious or so sure as the helpless family imprisoned in the splendors and etiquette of royalty. Unfortunately for modern governments, the people of Europe were for so many centuries preyed upon and oppressed by kings that vast numbers of people, even in free countries, still regard the head of a government as a kind of natural enemy, to a.s.sail whom is among the rights of a citizen. And, moreover, the king, the president, the minister, is unseen by those who hurl the barbed and poisoned javelin. They do not see him shrink and writhe. To many an anonymous coward it is a potent consideration, also, that the head of a const.i.tutional government can not usually strike back.

Mr. Thackeray, who was but nineteen when Louis Philippe came to the throne, witnessed much of the famous contest between this knot of caricaturists and the King of the French; and in one of the first articles which he wrote for subsistence, after his father's failure, he gave the world some account of it.[36] At a later period of his life he would probably not have regarded the king as the stronger party. He would probably not have described the contest as one between "half a dozen poor artists on the one side, and His Majesty Louis Philippe, his august family, and the numberless placemen and supporters of the monarchy, on the other." Half a dozen poor artists, with an unscrupulous publisher at their head, who gives them daily access to the eye and ear of a great capital, can array against the object of their satire and abuse the entire unthinking crowd of that capital. A firm, enlightened, and competent king would have united against these a majority of the responsible and the reflecting. Such a king would truly have been, as Mr. Thackeray observed, "an Ajax girded at by a Thersites." But Louis Philippe was no Ajax. He was no hero at all. He had no splendid and no commanding traits. He was merely an overfond father and well-disposed citizen of average talents. He was merely the kind of man which free communities can ordinarily get to serve them, and who will serve them pa.s.sably well if the task be not made needlessly difficult. Hence Philipon and his "half a dozen poor artists" were very much the stronger party--a fact which the king, in the sight and hearing of all France, confessed and proclaimed by putting them in prison.

[Footnote 36: In the _London and Westminster Review_ for April, 1839, Article II.]

It was those prosecutions of Philipon that were fatal to the king.

Besides adding emphasis, celebrity, and weight to the sallies of _Le Charivari_, they presaged the abandonment of the central principle of the movement that made him king--the freedom of utterance. The scenes in court when Philipon, or his artist, Daumier, was arraigned, were most damaging to the king's dignity. One, incorrectly related by Thackeray, may well serve to warn future potentates that of all conceivable expedients for the caricaturist's frustration, the one surest to fail is to summon him to a court of justice.

A favorite device of M. Philipon was to draw the king's face in the form of a huge pear, which it did somewhat resemble. Amateur draughtsmen also chalked the royal pear upon the walls of Paris; and the exaggerated pears with the king's features roughly outlined which everywhere met the eye excited the mocking laughter of the idle Parisian. No jest could have been so harmless if it had been unnoticed by the person at whom it was aimed, or noticed only with a smile. But the Government stooped to the imbecility of arraigning the author of the device. The _poire_ actually became an object of prosecution, and the editor of _Le Charivari_ was summoned before a jury on a charge of inciting to contempt against the person of the king by giving his face a ludicrous resemblance to one of the fruits of the earth. Philipon, when he rose to defend himself, exhibited to the jury a series of four sketches, upon which he commented. The first was a portrait of the king devoid of exaggeration or burlesque. "This sketch," said the draughtsman, "resembles Louis Philippe. Do you condemn it?" He then held up the second picture, which was also a very good portrait of the king; but in this one the toupet and the side-whiskers began to "flow together," as M. Champfleury has it (_s'onduler_), and the whole to a.s.sume a distant resemblance to the outline of a pear. "If you condemn the first sketch,"

said the imperturbable Philipon, "you must condemn this one which resembles it." He next showed a picture in which the pear was plainly manifest, though it bore an unmistakable likeness to the king. Finally, he held up to the court a figure of a large Burgundy pear, pure and simple, saying, "If you are consistent, gentlemen, you can not acquit this sketch either, for it certainly resembles the other three."

Mr. Thackeray was mistaken in supposing that this impudent defense carried conviction to the minds of the jury. Philipon was condemned and fined. He avenged himself by arranging the court and jury upon a page of _Le Charivari_ in the form of a pear.[37] He and his artists played upon this theme hundreds of variations, until the Government found matter for a prosecution even in a picture of a monkey stealing a pear. The pear became at last too expensive a luxury for the conductor of _Le Charivari_, and that fruit was "exiled from the empire of caricature."

[Footnote 37: "Histoire de la Caricature Moderne," p. 100, par Champfleury.]

Before Louis Philippe had been three years upon the throne there was an end of all but the pretense of maintaining the freedom of press or pencil. "The Press," as Mr. Thackeray remarks, "was sent to prison; and as for poor dear Caricature, it was fairly murdered." In _Le Charivari_ for August 30th, 1832, we read that Jean-Baptiste Daumier, for an equally harmless caricature of the king, was arrested in the very presence of his father and mother, of whom he was the sole support, and condemned to six months' imprisonment. It was Daumier, however, as M.

Champfleury reveals, who had "served up the pear with the greatest variety of sauces." It was the same Daumier who after his release a.s.sailed the advocates and legal system of his country with ceaseless burlesque, and made many a covert lunge at the personage who moved them to the fatal absurdity of imprisoning him.

Driven by violence from the political field, to which it has been permitted to return only at long intervals and for short periods, French caricature has ranged over the scene of human foibles, and attained a varied development. Daumier and Philipon conjointly produced a series of sketches in _Le Charivari_ which had signal and lasting success with the public. The play of "Robert Macaire," after running awhile, was suppressed by the Government, the actor of the princ.i.p.al part having used it as a vehicle of political burlesque. _Le Charivari_ seized the idea of satirizing the follies of the day by means of two characters of the drama--Macaire, a cool, adroit, audacious villain, and Bertrand, his comrade, stupid, servile, and timid.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Robert Macaire fishing for Share-holders. (Daumier, 1833.)]

Philipon supplying the words and Daumier executing the pictures, they made Macaire undertake every scheme, practice, and profession which contained the requisite ingredients of the comic and the rascally. The series extended beyond ninety sketches. Macaire founds a joint-stock charity--_la morale en action_, he explains to gaping Bertrand, each _action_ (share) being placed at two hundred and fifty francs. He becomes a quack-doctor. "Don't trifle with your complaint," he says to a patient, as he gives him two bottles of medicine. "Come to see me often; it won't ruin you, for I make no charge for consultations. You owe me twenty francs for the two bottles." The patient appearing to be startled at the magnitude of this sum, Dr. Macaire blandly says, as he bows him out, "We give two cents for returned bottles." He becomes a private detective. A lady consults him in his office. "Sir," she says, "I have had a thousand-franc note stolen." "Precisely, madame. Consider the business done: the thief is a friend of mine." "But," says the lady, "can I get my note back, and find out who took it?" "Nothing easier.

Give me fifteen hundred francs for my expenses, and to-morrow the thief will return the note and send you his card."

Every resource being exhausted, Macaire astounds the despairing Bertrand by saying, "Come, the time for mundane things is past; let us attend now to eternal interests. Suppose we found a religion?" "A religion!"

cries Bertrand; "that is not so easy." To this Macaire replies by alluding to the recent proceedings of a certain Abbe Chatel, in Paris.

"One makes a pontiff of himself, hires a shop, borrows some chairs, preaches sermons upon the death of Napoleon, upon Voltaire, upon the discovery of America, upon any thing, no matter what. There's a religion for you; it's no more difficult than that." On one occasion Macaire himself is a little troubled in mind, and Bertrand remarks the unusual circ.u.mstance. "You seem anxious," says Bertrand. "Yes," replies Macaire, "I _am_ in bad humor. Those scoundrels of bond-holders have bothered me to such a point that I have actually paid them a dividend!" "What!"

exclaims Bertrand, aghast, "a _bona-fide_ dividend?" "Yes, positively."

"What are you going to do about it?" "I am going to get it back again."

The reader will, of course, infer that each of these pictures was a hit at some scoundrelly exploit of the day, the public knowledge of which gave effect to the caricature. In many instances the event is forgotten, but the picture retains a portion of its interest. One of Macaire's professions was that of cramming students for their bachelor's degree. A student enters. "There are two ways in which we can put you through,"

says Macaire: "one, to make you pa.s.s your examination by a subst.i.tute; the other, to enable you to pa.s.s it yourself." "I prefer to pa.s.s it myself," says the young man. "Very well. Do you know Greek?" "No."

"Latin?" "No." "All right. You know mathematics?" "Not the least in the world." "What do you know, then?" "Nothing at all." "But you have two hundred francs?" "Certainly." "Just the thing! You will get your degree next Thursday." We may find comfort in this series, for we learn from it that in every infamy which we now deplore among ourselves we were antic.i.p.ated by the French forty years ago. Macaire even goes into the mining business, at least so far as to sell shares. "We have made our million," says the melancholy Bertrand; "but we have engaged to produce gold, and we find nothing but sand." "No matter; utilize your capital; haven't you got a gold mine?" "Yes--but afterward?" "Afterward you will simply say to the share-holders, 'I was mistaken; we must try again.'

You will then form a company for the utilization of the sand." Bertrand, still anxious, ventures to remark that there _are_ such people as policemen in the country. "Policemen!" cries Macaire, gayly. "So much the better: they will take shares." One of his circular letters was a masterpiece:

"SIR,--I regret to say that your application for shares in the Consolidated European Incombustible Blacking a.s.sociation can not be complied with, as all the shares of the C. E. I. B. A. were disposed of on the day they were issued. I have nevertheless registered your name, and in case a second series should be put forth I shall have the honor of immediately giving you notice.

"I am, sir, etc.

ROBERT MACAIRE, Director."

"Print three hundred thousand of these," says the director, "and poison all France with them." "But," says Bertrand, "we haven't sold a single share; you haven't a sou in your pocket, and--" "Bertrand, you are an a.s.s. Do as I tell you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Husband's Dilemma.

"Yes; but if you quarrel like that with all your wife's lovers, you will never have any friends."--From _Paris Nonsensicalities_ (_Baliverneries Parisiennes_), by Gavarni.]

Thus, week after week, for many a month, did _Le Charivari_ "utilize"

these impossible characters to expose and satirize the plausible scoundrelism of the period. Mr. Thackeray, who ought to be an excellent authority on any point of satirical art, praises highly the execution of these pictures by M. Daumier. They seem carelessly done, he remarks; but it is the careless grace of the consummate artist. He recommends the ill.u.s.trator of "Pickwick" to study Daumier. When we remember that Thackeray had offered to ill.u.s.trate "Pickwick," his comments upon the artist who was preferred to himself have a certain interest: "If we might venture to give a word of advice to another humorous designer [Hablot K. Browne], whose works are extensively circulated, the ill.u.s.trator of 'Pickwick' and 'Nicholas Nickleby,' it would be to study well those caricatures of M. Daumier, who, though he executes very carelessly, knows very well what he would express, indicates perfectly the att.i.tude and ident.i.ty of the figure, and is quite aware beforehand of the effect he intends to produce. The one we should fancy to be a practiced artist taking his ease, the other a young one somewhat bewildered--a very clever one, however, who, if he would think more and exaggerate less, would add not a little to his reputation." Possessors of the early editions of "Pickwick" will be tempted to think that in this criticism of Mr. Browne's performances by a disappointed rival there was an ingredient of wounded self-love. The young author, however, in another pa.s.sage, gave presage of the coming Thackeray. He observes that in France ladies in difficulties who write begging letters, or live by other forms of polite beggary, are wont to style themselves "widows of the Grand Army." They all pretended to some connection with _le Grand Homme_, and all their husbands were colonels. "This t.i.tle," says the wicked Thackeray, "answers exactly to the clergyman's daughter in England;" and he adds, "The difference is curious as indicating the standard of respectability."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Housekeeping.

"Gracious, Dorothy, I have forgotten the meat for your cat!"

"Have you, indeed? But you didn't forget the biscuit for your bird, egotist! No matter! No matter! If there is nothing in the house for my cat, I shall give her your bird, I shall!"--From _Impressions de Menage_, by Gavarni.]