Caricature and Other Comic Art Part 22

Many caricaturists who afterward attained celebrity were early contributors to M. Philipon's much-prosecuted periodical. Among them was "the elegant Gavarni," who for thirty years was the favorite comic artist of Paris _roues_ and dandies--himself a _roue_ and dandy. At this period, according to his friend, Theophile Gautier, he was a very handsome young man, with luxuriant blonde curls, always fashionably attired, somewhat in the English taste, neat, quiet, and precise, and "possessing in a high degree the feeling for modern elegances." He was of a slender form, which seemed laced in, and he had the air of being carefully dressed and thoroughly appointed, his feet being effeminately small and daintily clad. In short, he was a dandy of the D'Orsay and N.

P. Willis period. For many years he expended the chief force of his truly exquisite talent in investing vice with a charm which in real life it never possesses. Loose women, who are, as a cla.s.s, very stupid, very vulgar, most greedy of gain and pleasure, and totally devoid of every kind of interesting quality, he endowed with a grace and wit, a fertility of resource, an airy elegance of demeanor, never found except in honorable women reared in honorable homes. He was the great master of that deadly school of French satiric art which finds all virtuous life clumsy or ridiculous, and all abominable life graceful and pleasing.

Alb.u.ms of this kind are extant in which married men are _invariably_ represented as objects of contemptuous pity, and no man is graceful or interesting except the sneaking scoundrel who has designs upon the integrity of a household. Open the "Musee pour Rire," for example. Here is a little family of husband, wife, and year-old child in bed, just awake in the morning, the wife caressing the child, and the husband looking on with admiring fondness. This scene is rendered ridiculous by the simple expedient of making the wife and child hideously ugly, and the fond father half an idiot. Another picture shows the same child, with a head consisting chiefly of mouth, yelling in the middle of the night, while the parents look on, imbecile and helpless. Turn to the sketches of the masked ball or the midnight carouse, and all is elegant, becoming, and delightful. If the French caricatures of the last thirty years do really represent French social life and French moral feeling, we may safely predict that in another generation France will be a German province; for men capable of maintaining the independence of a nation can not be produced on the Gavarnian principles.

Marriage and civilization we might almost call synonymous terms.

Marriage was at least the greatest conquest made by primitive man over himself, and the indispensable preliminary to a higher civilization. Nor has any mode yet been discovered of rearing full-formed and efficient men capable of self-control, patriotism, and high principle, except the union of both parents striving for that end with cordial resolution longer than an average life-time. It is upon this most sacred of all inst.i.tutions that the French caricaturists of the Gavarni school pour ceaseless scorn and contempt. As I write these lines, my eyes fall upon one of the last numbers of a comic sheet published in Paris, on the first page of which there is a picture which ill.u.s.trates this propensity. A dissolute-looking woman, smoking a cigarette, is conversing with a boy in b.u.t.tons who has applied for a place in her household. "How old are you?" she asks. "Eleven, madame." "And your name?" "Joseph!" Upon this innocent reply the woman makes a comment which is truly comic, but very Gavarnian: "So young, and already he calls himself Joseph!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Poultice for Two--Sympathy and Economy.--From _Impressions de Menage_, by Gavarni.]

Among the heaps of alb.u.ms to be found in a French collection we turn with particular curiosity to those which satirize the child life of France. Gavarni's celebrated series of "Enfants Terribles" has gone round the world, and called forth child satire in many lands. The presence of children in his pictures does not long divert this artist from his ruling theme. One of his terrible children, a boy of four, prattles innocently to his mother in this strain: "Nurse is going to get up very early, now that you have come home, mamma. Goodness! while you were in the country she always had her breakfast in bed, and it was papa who took in the milk and lighted the fire. But wasn't the coffee jolly sweet, though!" Another alarming boy of the same age, who is climbing up his father's chair and wearing his father's hat, all so merry and innocent, discourses thus to the petrified author of his being: "Who is Mr. Albert? Oh, he is a gentleman belonging to the Jardin des Plantes, who comes every day to explain the animals to mamma; a large man with mustaches, whom you don't know. He didn't come to-day until after they had shut up the monkeys. You ought to have seen how nicely mamma entertained him. Oh dear!" (discovering a bald place on papa's pate) "you have hardly any hair upon the top of your head, papa!" In a third picture both parents are exhibited seated side by side upon a sofa, and the terrible boy addresses his mother thus: "Mamma, isn't that little mustache comb which Cornelia found in your bedroom this morning for me?"

Another sketch shows us father, mother, and terrible boy taking a walk in the streets of Paris. A dandy, in the likeness of Gavarni himself, goes by, with his cane in his mouth, and his face fixed so as to seem not to see them. But the boy sees _him_, and bawls to his mother: "Mamma! mamma! that Monsieur du Luxembourg!--you know him--the one you said was such a great friend to papa--he has gone by without saluting! I suppose the reason is, he don't know how to behave." Another picture presents to view a little girl seated on a garden bench eating nuts, and talking to a young man: "The rose which you gave to mamma?" "Yes, yes."

"The one you nearly broke your neck in getting? Let me see. Oh, my cousin Nat stuck it in the tail of Matthew's donkey. How mamma did laugh! Got any more nuts?" The same appalling girl imparts a family secret to her tutor: "Mamma wrote to M. Prosper, and papa read the letter. Oh, wasn't papa angry, though! And all because she had spelled a word wrong." A mother hearing a little girl say the catechism is a subject which one would suppose was not available for the purposes of a Gavarni, but he finds even that suggestive. "Come, now, pay attention.

What must we do when we have sinned [_peche_]?" To which the terrible child replies, playing unconsciously upon the word _peche_ (sinned), which does not differ in sound from _peche_ (fished), "When we have _peche_? Wait a moment. Oh! we go back to the White House with all the fish in the basket, which my nurse eats with Landerneau. He is a big soldier who has white marks upon his sleeve. And I eat _my_ share, let me tell you!"

It is thus that the first caricaturist of France "utilized" the innocence of childhood when Louis Philippe was King of the French.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Parisian "Shoo, Fly!"

"Captain, I am here to ask your permission to fight a duel."

"What for, and with whom?"

"With Saladin, the trumpeter, who has so far forgotten himself as to call me a _moucheron_" (little fly).--From _Messieurs nos Fils et Mesdemoiselles nos Filles_, by Randon, Paris.]

There is a later series by Randon, ent.i.tled "Messieurs nos Fils et Mesdemoiselles nos Filles," which exhibits other varieties of French childhood, some of which are inconceivable to persons not of the "Latin race." It has been said that in America there are no longer any children; but nowhere among us are there young human beings who could suggest even the burlesque of precocity such as M. Randon presents to us. We have no boys of ten who go privately to the hero of a billiard "tournament" and request him with the politest gravity, cap in hand, to "put him up to some points of the game for his exclusive use." We have no boys of eight who stand with folded arms before a sobbing girl of seven and address her in words like these: "Be reasonable, then, Amelia.

The devil! People can't be always loving one another." We have no errand-boys of eight who offer their services to a young gentleman thus: "For delivering a note on the sly, or getting a bouquet into the right hands, monsieur can trust to me. I am used to little affairs of that kind, and I am as silent as the tomb." We have no little boys in belt and ap.r.o.n who say to a bearded veteran of half a dozen wars: "You don't know your happiness. For my part, give me a beard as long as yours, and not a woman in the world should resist me!" We have no little boys who in the midst of a fight with fists, one having a black eye and the other a b.l.o.o.d.y nose, would pause to say: "At least we don't fight for money, like the English. It is for glory that _we_ fight." We have no little boys who, on starting for a ride, wave aside the admonitions of the groom by telling him that they know all about managing a horse, and what they want of him is simply to tell them where in the _Bois_ they will be likely to meet most "Amazons." No, nor in all the length and breadth of English-speaking lands can there be found a small boy who, on being lectured by his father, would place one hand upon his heart, and lift the other on high, and say, "Papa, by all that I hold dearest, by my honor, by your ashes, by any thing you like, I swear to change my conduct!" All these things are so remote from our habits that the wildest artist could not conceive of them as pa.s.sable caricature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Three! (From "Arithmetic Ill.u.s.trated," by Cham.)]

The opprobrious words in use among French boys would not strike the boys of New York or London as being very exasperating. M. Randon gives us an imaginary conversation between a very small trumpeter in gorgeous uniform and a _gamin_ of the street. Literally translated, it would read thus: "Look out, little fly, or you will get yourself crushed." To which the street boy replies, "Descend, then, species of toad: I will make you see what a little fly is!" On the other hand, if we may believe M.

Randon, French boys of a very tender age consider themselves subject to the code of honor, and hold themselves in readiness to accept a challenge to mortal combat. A soldier of ten years appears in one of this series with his arm in a sling, and he explains the circ.u.mstance to his military comrade of the same age: "It's all a sham, my dear. I'll tell you the reason in strict confidence: it is to make a certain person of my acquaintance believe that I have fought for her." The boys of France, it is evident, are nothing if not military. Most of the young veterans _blases_ exhibited in these alb.u.ms are in uniform.

An interesting relic of those years when Frenchmen still enjoyed some semblance of liberty to discuss subjects of national and European concern is Gavarni's series of masterly sketches burlesquing the very idea of private citizens taking an interest in public affairs. This is accomplished by the device of giving to all the men who are talking politics countenances of comic stupidity. An idiot in a blouse says to an idiot in a coat, "Poland, don't you see, will never forgive your ingrat.i.tude!" An idiot in a night-cap says to an idiot bare-headed, with ludicrous intensity, "And when you have taken Lombardy, then what?"

Nothing can exceed the skill of the draughtsman of this series, except the perversity of the man, to whom no human activity seemed becoming unless its object was the lowest form of sensual pleasure. But the talent which he displayed in this alb.u.m was immense. It was, if I may say so, _frightful_; for there is nothing in our modern life so alarming as the power which reckless and dissolute talent has to make virtuous life seem provincial and ridiculous, vicious life graceful and metropolitan.

CHAPTER XIX.

LATER FRENCH CARICATURE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Two Att.i.tudes.

"With your air of romantic melancholy, you could succeed with some women. For my part, I make my conquests with drums beating and matches lighted."--From _Messieurs nos Fils et Mesdemoiselles nos Filles_, by Randon, Paris.]

During the twenty years of Louis Napoleon, political caricature being extinguished, France was inundated with diluted Gavarni. Any wretch who drew or wrote for the penny almanacs, sweltering in his Mansard on a franc a day, could produce a certain effect by representing the elegant life of his country, of which he knew nothing, to be corrupt and sensual. Pick up one of these precious works blindfold, open it at random, and you will be almost certain to light upon some penny-a-line calumny of French existence, with a suitable picture annexed. I have just done so. The "Almanach Comique" for 1869, its twenty-eighth year, lies open before me at the page devoted to the month of August. My eye falls upon a picture of a loosely dressed woman gazing fondly upon a large full purse suspended upon the end of a walking-stick, and underneath are the words, "_Elle ne tarde pas a se reapprivoiser._" She does not delay to _retame_ herself, the verb being the one applied to wild beasts. There is even a subtle deviltry in the syllable _re_, implying that she has rebelled against her destiny, but is easily enough brought to terms by a bribe. The reading matter for the month consists of the following brief essay, ent.i.tled "August--the Virgin:" "How to go for a month to the sea-sh.o.r.e during the worst of the dog-days. Hire a chalet at Cabourg for madame, and a cottage on the beach of Trouville for _mademoiselle_. The transit between those two places is accomplished per omnibus in an hour. That is very convenient. Breakfast with Mademoiselle; dine with Madame. This double existence is very expensive, but _as it is the most common_, we are compelled to examine it in order to establish a basis for the expenditures of the twelve months." Is it not obvious that this was "evolved?" Does it not smell of a garlicky Mansard? And have not all modern communities a common interest in discrediting anonymous calumny? It were as unjust, doubtless, to judge the frugal people of France by the comic annuals as the good-natured people of England by the _Sat.u.r.day Review_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Den of Lions at the Opera. (From _Les Differents Publics de Paris_, by Gustave Dore.)]

It is evident, too, that the French have a totally different conception from ourselves of what is fit and unfit to be uttered. They ridicule our squeamishness; we stand amazed at their indelicacy. Voltaire, who could read his "Pucelle" to the Queen of Prussia, her young daughter being also present and seen to be listening, was astounded in London at the monstrous indecency of "Oth.e.l.lo;" and English people of the same generation were aghast at the license of the Parisian stage. M.

Marcelin, a popular French caricaturist of to-day, dedicates an alb.u.m containing thirty pictures of what he styles _Un certain Monde_ to his mother! We must not judge the productions of such a people by standards drawn from other than "Latin" sources.

Among the comic artists who began their career in Louis Philippe's time, under the inspiration of Philipon and Daumier, was a son of the Comte de Noe, or, as we might express it, Count Noah, a peer of France when there were peers of France. Amedee de Noe, catching the spirit of caricature while he was still a boy (he was but thirteen when _Le Charivavi_ was started), soon made his pseudonym, Cham, familiar to Paris. Cham being French for Shem, it was a happy way of designating a son of Count Noah. From that time to the present hour Cham has continued to amuse his countrymen, pouring forth torrents of sketches, which usually have the merit of being harmless, and are generally good enough to call up a smile upon a face not too stiffly wrinkled with the cares of life. He is almost as prolific of comic ideas as George Cruikshank, but his pictures are now too rudely executed to serve any but the most momentary purpose. When a comic alb.u.m containing sixty-one pictures by Cham is sold in Paris for about twelve cents of our currency, the artist can not bestow much time or pains upon his work. The comic almanac quoted above, containing one hundred and eighty-three pages and seventy pictures, costs the retail purchaser ten cents.

Gustave Dore, now so renowned, came from Strasburg to Paris in 1845, a boy of thirteen, and made his first essays in art, three years after, as a caricaturist in the _Journal pour Rire_. But while he scratched trash for his dinner, he reserved his better hours for the serious pursuit of art, which, in just ten years, delivered him from a vocation in which he could never have taken pleasure. His great subsequent celebrity has caused the publication of several volumes of his comic work. It abounds in striking ideas, but the pictures were executed with headlong haste, to gratify a transient public feeling, and keep the artist's pot boiling. His series exhibiting the Different Publics of Paris is full of pregnant suggestions, and there are happy thoughts even in his "Histoire de la Sainte Russie," a series published during the Crimean war, though most of the work is crude and hasty beyond belief.

In looking over the volumes of recent French caricature, we discover that a considerable number of English words have become domesticated in France. France having given us the words of the theatre and the restaurant, has adopted in return several English words relating to out-of-door exercises: Turf, ring, steeple-chase, box (in a stable), jockey, jockey-club, betting, betting-book, handicap, race, racer, four-in-hand, mail-coach, sport, tilbury, dog-cart, tandem, pickpocket, and revolver. Rosbif, bifstek, and "choppe" have long been familiar.

"Milord" is no longer exclusively used to designate a sumptuous Englishman, but is applied to any one who expends money ostentatiously.

Gentleman, dandy, dandyism, flirt, flirtation, puff, c.o.c.kney, and c.o.c.ktail are words that would be recognized by most Parisians. A French writer quotes the phrase "hero of two hemispheres," applied to Lafayette, as a specimen of the "_puff_" superlative. "Oth.e.l.lo" has become synonymous with "jealous man;" and the sentence, "That is the question," from "Hamlet," seems to have acquired currency in France.

Cab, abbreviated a century ago from the French (cabriolet), has been brought back to Paris, like the head of a fugitive decapitated in exile.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Vulture. (From _La Menagerie Imperiale_, 1871.)]

The recent events in France, beginning with the outbreak of the war with Prussia, have elicited countless caricatures and series of caricatures.

The downfall of the "Empire," as it was called, gave the caricaturists an opportunity of vengeance which they improved. A citizen of New York possesses a collection of one thousand satirical pictures published in Paris during the war and under the Commune. A people who submit to a despised usurper are not likely to be moderate or decent in the expression of their contempt when, at length, the tyrant is no longer to be feared. It was but natural that the French court should insult the remains of Louis XIV., to whom living it had paid honors all but divine; for it is only strength and valor that know how to be either magnanimous or dignified in the moment of deliverance. Many of the people of Paris, when they heard of the ridiculous termination near Sedan of the odious fiction called the Empire, behaved like boys just rid of a school-master whom they have long detested and obeyed. Of course they seized the chalk and covered all the blackboards with monstrous pictures of the tyrant.

The flight of his wife soon after called forth many scandalous sketches similar to those which disgraced Paris when Marie Antoinette was in prison awaiting the execution of her husband and her own trial. Many of these burlesques, however, were fair and legitimate. The specimen given on the next page, ent.i.tled "Partant pour la Syrie," which appeared soon after the departure of Eugenie and her advisers, was a genuine hit. It was exhibited in every window, and sold wherever in France the victorious Germans were not. A member of the American legation, amidst the rushing tide of exciting events and topics, chanced to save a copy, from which it is here reduced.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Badinguet. Eugenie. General Fleury. Pietri. Rouher.

Maupas. Persigny.

Partant pour la Syrie. (Published in Paris after the Flight of Eugenie.)]

Among the "alb.u.ms" of siege sketches, we come upon one executed by the veterans Cham and Daumier, the same Henri Daumier whom Louis Philippe imprisoned, and Thackeray praised, forty years ago. In this collection we see Parisian ladies, in view of the expected bombardment, bundled up in huge bags of cotton, leading lap-dogs protected in the same manner.

An ugly Prussian touches off a bomb aimed at the children in the Jardin du Luxembourg. King William decorates crutches and wooden legs as "New-year's presents for his people." An apothecary sells a plaster "warranted to prevent wounds, provided the wearer never leaves his house." A workman goes to church for the first time in his life, and gives as a reason for so unworkman-like a proceeding that "a man don't have to stand in line for the blessed bread." A volunteer goes on a sortie with a pillow under his waistcoat "to show the enemy that we have plenty of provisions." All these are by the festive Cham.

Daumier does not jest. He seems to have felt that Louis Napoleon, like a child-murderer, was a person far beneath caricature--a creature only fit to be destroyed and hurried out of sight and thought forever. Amidst the dreary horrors of the siege, Henri Daumier could only think of its mean and guilty cause. One of his few pictures in this collection is a row of four vaults, the first bearing the inscription, "Died on the Boulevard Montmartre, December 2d, 1851;" the second, "Died at Cayenne;" the third, "Died at Lambessa;" the fourth, "Died at Sedan, 1870." But even then Daumier, true to the vocation of a patriotic artist, dared to remind his countrymen that it was they who had reigned in the guise of the usurper. A wild female figure standing on a field of battle points with one hand to the dead, and with the other to a vase filled with ballots, on which is printed the word OUI. She cries, "_These killed those!_"

During the Commune the walls of Paris were again covered with drawings and lithographs of the character which Frenchmen produce after long periods of repression: Louis Napoleon crucified between the two thieves, Bismarck and King William; Thiers in the pillory covered and surrounded with opprobrious inscriptions; Thiers, Favre, and M'Mahon placidly looking down from a luxurious upper room upon a slain mother and child ghastly with blood and wounds; landlords, lean and hungry, begging for bread, while fat and rosy laborers bask idly in the sun; little boy Paris smashing his playthings (Trochu, Gambetta, and Rochefort) and crying for the moon; "Paris eating a general a day;" Queen Victoria in consternation trying to stamp out the horrid centipede, _International_, while "Monsieur John Boule, Esquire," stands near with the habeas-corpus act in his hand; naked France pressing Rochefort to her bosom; and hundreds more, describable and indescribable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gavarni.]

It remains to give a specimen of recent French caricature of another kind. Once more, after so many proofs of its impolicy, the Government of France attempts to suppress such political caricature as is not agreeable to it, while freely permitting the publication of pictures flagrantly indecent. At no former period, not even in Voltaire's time, could the French press have been more carefully hedged about with laws tending to destroy its power to do good, and increase its power to do harm. The Government treats the press very much after the manner of those astute parents who forbid their children to see a comedy of Robertson or a play of Shakspeare, but make it up to them by giving them tickets to the variety show. A writer familiar with the subject gives us some astounding details:

"There exist at present," he remarks, "sixty-eight laws in France, all intended to suppress, curtail, weaken, emasculate, and even to strangle newspapers; but not one single law to foster them in their dire misfortune. If any private French gentleman wishes to establish a newspaper, he must first write to the Prefet de Police, on paper of a certain size and duly stamped, and give this functionary notice that he intends to establish a newspaper. His signature has, of course, to be countersigned by the Maire. But if the paper our friend wishes to establish is purely literary, he has first to make his declaration to the police, who rake up every information that is possible about the unfortunate projector. After that, the Ministere de l'Interieur inst.i.tutes another searching inquiry, and these two take seven or eight months at least. When the _enquete_ and the _contre-enquete_ are ended, the _avis favorable_ of the whole Ministry is necessary before the paper can be published. Another six months to wait yet; but this is not all.

Our would-be newspaper proprietor or editor possesses now the right of publishing his paper; but he has not yet the right to sell it. In order to obtain this, he must begin anew all his declarations and attempts, so that his purely literary paper may be sold at all the ordinary book-sellers' shops. But if he wishes it to be sold in the streets--or, in other words, in the kiosques--he must address himself to another office _ad hoc_, and then the Commissaire de Police sends the answer of the Prefet de Police to the unfortunate proprietor, editor, or publisher, who by this time must be nearly at his wits' end.

But even this is not all. If the unhappy projector proposes to ill.u.s.trate his paper, his labors are still far from ending. "He must,"

continues the writer, "obtain, of course, the permission of the Ministere de l'Interieur for Paris, or of the prefects for the provinces. The Ministere asks for the opinion of the Governor of Paris, who asks, in his turn, for the opinion of the Bureau de Censure, a body of gentlemen working in the dark, and which, to the eye of the obtuse foreigner, appears only established to prevent any political insinuations to be made, but to allow the filthiest drawings to be publicly exposed for sale, and the most indecent innuendoes to be uttered on the stage or in novels. The Censure demands, under the penalty of seizing, forbidding, and bringing before the court, that every sketch or outline shall be submitted to it. When this is done, and the Censure finds nothing to criticise in it, it requires further that the drawing, when finished, be anew laid before it, and, if the drawing be colored, it must be afresh inspected after the dangerous paints have been smirched on. When our happy editor wishes to publish the caricature or the portrait of any one, he can not do so unless he has the permission of the gentleman or lady whose likeness he wishes to produce."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Honore Daumier.]

Such was the measure of freedom enjoyed in the French republic governed by soldiers. But this elaborate system of repression can be both evaded and turned to account by the caricaturist. During the last two or three years, a writer who calls himself Touchatout has been amusing Paris by a series of satirical biographies, each preceded by a burlesque portrait.

But occasionally the Censure refuses its consent to the insertion of the portrait. The son of Louis Napoleon was one individual whom the Censure thus endeavored to protect. Observe the result. Instead of exhibiting to the people of Paris a harmless picture representing the head of the unfortunate young man mounted upon a pair of diminutive legs, Touchatout prints at the head of his biographical sketch the damaging burlesque subjoined:

____________________________________________________ RePUBLIQUE FRANcAISE. LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY, AND CENSURE. THE PUBLICATION OF THE PORTRAIT OF Velocipede IV. HAS BEEN FORBIDDEN BY THE CENSURE. ____________________________________________________ IT CAN BE FOUND AT ALL THE PHOTOGRAPHERS. ____________________________________________________

I translate the burlesque biography that follows the above. It may serve also as a specimen of the new literary commodity of which the Parisians seem so fond, and for which a name has been invented--_blague_--which means amusingly malign gossip.