Caricature and Other Comic Art Part 28

CHAPTER XXIV.

COMIC ART IN "PUNCH."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Boy who chalked up "No Popery!" and then ran away!--Lord John Russell and the Bill for Preventing the a.s.sumption of Ecclesiastical t.i.tles by Roman Catholics. (John Leech, in _Punch_.)

Explanation by Earl Russell in 1874: "The object of that bill was merely to _a.s.sert_ the supremacy of the Crown. It was never intended to prosecute.... Accordingly a very clever artist represented me in a caricature as a boy who had chalked up 'No Popery' upon a wall, and then ran away. This was a very fair joke.... When my object had been gained, I had no objection to the repeal of the bill."--_Recollections and Suggestions_, p. 210.]

One happy consequence of the new taste was the publication of _Punch_, which has been ever since the chief vehicle of caricature in England. As long as caricature was a thing of the shop-windows only, its power was restricted within narrow limits. Since the founding of _Punch_, in 1841, about two years after the conclusion of the "Pickwick Papers,"

caricature has become an element in periodical literature, from which it will perhaps never again be separated. And it is the pictures in this celebrated paper which have prolonged its life to this day. It owes its success chiefly to artists. There was and is an error in the scheme of the work which would have been speedily fatal to it but for the ever-welcome pictures of Richard Doyle, John Leech, John Tenniel, Du Maurier, and their companions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Leech.]

One of the rarest products of the human mind is a joke so good that it remains good when the occasion that gave rise to it is past. Probably the entire weekly harvest of wit and humor gathered from the whole earth would not fill a number of _Punch_ with "good things;" and if it did, no one could enjoy so many all at once, and the surfeit would sicken and disgust. The mere sitting-down for the purpose of being funny in a certain number of lines or pages is death to the comic powers; and hence it is that a periodical to which nearly the whole humorous talent of England has contributed is sometimes dull in its reading, and we wonder if there can be in any quarter of the globe a person so bereft of the means of entertainment as to get quite through one number. Once or twice a year, however, _Punch_ originates a joke which goes round the world, and remains part of the common stock of that countless host who are indebted to their memory for their jests.

But the pictures are almost always amusing, and often delightful. The artists have the whole scene of human life, public and private, to draw from, and they are able by their pencils to vividly reproduce the occasions that gave birth to their jokes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Preparatory School for Young Ladies. (John Leech, "Follies of the Year," London, 1852.)]

In looking over the long series of political caricatures by Leech and Tenniel, which now go back thirty-three years, we are struck, first of all, by the simplicity of the means which they usually employ for giving a comic aspect to the political situation. They reduce cabinet ministers and other dignitaries many degrees in the social scale, exhibiting them as footmen, as boys, as policemen, as nurses, as circus performers, so that a certain comic effect is produced, even if the joke should go no further. Of late years Mr. Tenniel has often reversed this device with fine effect by raising mundane personages to celestial rank, and investing them with a something more than a travesty of grandeur. It is remarkable how unfailing these simple devices are to amuse. Whether Mr.

Leech presents us with Earl Russell as a small foot-boy covered with b.u.t.tons, or Mr. Tenniel endows Queen Victoria with the majestic mien of Minerva, the public is well pleased, and desires nothing additional but a few apt words explanatory of the situation. But, simple as these devices may be, it is only a rarely gifted artist that can use them with effect. Between the sublime and the ridiculous there is a whole step; but in comic art there is but a hair's-breadth between the happy and the flat.

Lord Brougham was supposed to be courting the conservatives when Leech began to caricature. The superserviceable zeal of the ex-chancellor was. .h.i.t very happily in a circus scene, in which the Duke of Wellington figures as the ring-master, Brougham as the clown, and Sir Robert Peel as the rider. The clown says to the ring-master, "Now, Mr. Wellington, is there any thing I can run for to fetch--for to come--for to go--for to carry--for to bring--for to take?" etc. In another picture the same uneasy spirit, restive under his t.i.tled and pensioned nothingness, appears as "Henry asking for _more_." Again we have him dancing with the Wool-sack, which is explained by the words, "The Polka, a new Dance, introducing the old Double Shuffle." And again we see him in a tap-room, smoking a pipe, with a pot of beer on the table, looking on with complacency while Mr. Roebuck bullies an Irish member. Brougham says, "Go it, my little Roebuck! Bless his little heart! _I_ taught him to bounce like that."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Quarrel.--England and France. (John Leech, 1845.)

_Master Wellington._ "You're too good a judge to hit me, you are!"

_Master Joinville._ "Am I?"

_Master Wellington._ "Yes, you are."

_Master Joinville._ "Oh, am I?"

_Master Wellington._ "Yes, you are."

_Master Joinville._ "Ha!"

_Master Wellington._ "Ha!"

[Moral--_And they don't fight, after all._]]

Russell, Peel, Wellington, O'Connell, and Louis Philippe were other personages whom Mr. Punch often caricatured at that period of his existence, and he generally presented them in a manner that still coincides with public feeling in England, and was probably not disagreeable to the men themselves at the time. One of Leech's. .h.i.ts was a picture designed to ridicule certain utterances of the Prince de Joinville concerning the possible invasion of England in 1845, when some irritating conduct of the French ministry had been met by Wellington with good temper and firmness. The prince, as a boy, is "squaring off,"

with a great show of fight, at the duke, who stands with his hands in his pockets, not defiant, but serene and watchful. This picture is perfectly in the English taste. Leech liked to show great Britannia as infinitely able to fight, and not so very unwilling, but firmly resolved not to do so unless compelled by honor or necessity.

In these sixty-nine volumes of _Punch_ there is much of the history of our time which words alone could not have preserved. We can trace in them the progress of ideas, of measures, and of men. The changes in public feeling are exhibited which enabled Cobden and Peel to strike from British industry the gilt fetters of protection, for _Punch_ is only another name for Public Opinion. These pictures have a particular interest for us, since we are to travel the same road in due time, and thus, at length, give Great Britain a rival in the markets of the world.

Nothing could be better than Mr. Leech's picture showing Sir Robert Peel as the "Deaf Postilion." In a debate on the Corn Laws he had said, "I shall still pursue steadily that course which my conscience tells me I should take; let you and those opposite pursue what course you think right." The picture shows us a post-chaise, the body of which has become detached from the fore-wheels--a mishap which the deaf postilion does not discover, but goes trotting along as though his horses were still drawing the load. The chaise, named Protection, is occupied by Tory lords, who shout in vain to the deaf postilion. Again, we have Disraeli as a viper biting the file, Sir Robert. Leech continued his effective support of the movement until the victory was won, when he designed a monument to the victor, consisting of a pyramid of large cheap loaves of bread crowned by the name of Peel.

The Puseyite imbecility was as effectively satirized by Leech in 1849 as the ritualistic imitation has recently been by Tenniel. American slavery came in for just rebuke. As a retort to "some bunk.u.m" in the American press in 1848, Mr. Leech drew a picture of Liberty lashing a negro, while Jonathan, with rifle on his arm, cigar in his mouth, and bottle at his side, says, "Oh, ain't we a deal better than other folks! I guess we're a most a splendid example to them thunderin' old monarchies." The language is wrong, of course; no American ever said "a deal better."

English attempts at American slang are always incorrect. But the satire was deserved. Leech was far from sparing his own country. Some readers must remember the pair of pictures by Leech, in 1849, ent.i.tled "Pin-money" and "Needle-money," one exhibiting a young lady's boudoir filled with luxurious and costly objects, and the other a poor needle-woman in her garret of desolation, sewing by the light of a solitary candle upon a shirt for which she is to receive three half-pence. In a similar spirit was conceived a picture presenting two objects often seen in agricultural fairs in England--a "Prize Peasant"

and a "Prize Pig:" the first rewarded for sixty years of virtuous toil by a prize of two guineas, the owner of the fat pig being recompensed by an award of three guineas.

Toward Louis Napoleon _Punch_ gradually relented. At first Mr. Leech gave just and strong expression to the world's contempt for that unparalleled charlatan; but as he became powerful, and seemed to be useful to Great Britain, _Punch_ treated him with an approach to respect. A similar change toward Mr. Disraeli is observable. Seldom during the first fifteen years of his public life was he presented in a favorable light. Upon his retirement from office in 1853, Leech satirized his malevolent attacks upon the new ministry very happily by a picture in which he appears as a crossing-sweeper spattering mud upon Lord Russell and his colleagues. "Won't give me any thing, won't you?"

says the sweeper: "then take _that_!" Nor did the admirable Leech fail to mark the public sense of Disraeli's silence during the long debates upon the bill giving to English Jews some of the rights of citizenship.

In his whole public career there is nothing harder to forgive than that ign.o.ble and unnecessary abstinence. During the last few years Mr.

Disraeli has won by sheer persistence a certain solidity of position in English politics, and _Punch_ pays him the respect due to a person who represents a powerful and patriotic party.

One quality of the _Punch_ caricatures is worthy of particular regard: they are rarely severe, and never scurrilous. The men for whom Mr. Leech entertained an antipathy, such as O'Connell, O'Brien, Brougham, and others, were usually treated in a manner that could not have painfully wounded their self-love. We observe even in the more incisive works of Gillray a certain boisterous good-humor that often made their satire amusing to the men satirized. Mr. Rush, American minister in London in 1818, describes a dinner party at Mr. Canning's, at which the minister exhibited to his guests alb.u.ms and sc.r.a.p-books of caricature in which he was himself very freely handled. Fox and Burke, we are told, visited the shop where Gillray's caricatures were sold, and while buying the last hit at themselves would bandy jests with Mrs. Humphrey, the publisher.

Burke winced a little under the lash, but the robuster and larger Fox was rarely disturbed, and behaved in the shop with such winning courtesy that Mrs. Humphrey p.r.o.nounced him the peerless model of a gentleman.

_Punch_, likewise, does not appear to irritate the men whom he caricatures. Lord Brougham used to laugh at the exceedingly ugly countenance given him by Leech, and to say that the artist, unable to hit his likeness, was obliged to designate him by his checked trousers.

Lord Russell, as we see, does not object to Leech's delineations; and Palmerston, long a favorite with the _Punch_ artists, may well have been content with their handsome treatment of him.

During the last fifteen years Mr. Tenniel has oftenest supplied the political cartoon of _Punch_. His range is not so wide as that of Leech, but within his range he is powerful indeed. He has produced some pictures which for breadth, strength, aptness, good feeling, and finish have rarely been equaled in their kind. He gives us sometimes such an impression of his power as we fancy Michael Angelo might have done if he had amused himself by drawings reflecting upon the politics of his time.

If, as the _Quarterly Review_ lately remarked, Tenniel's pictures are often something less than caricature, being wanting in the exuberant humor of his predecessors, we can also say that they are frequently much more than caricature. Mr. Tenniel was an artist of repute, and had furnished a cartoon for the Westminster Parliament-house before he became identified with _Punch_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Obstructives." (John Tenniel, 1870.)

_Mr. Punch_ (to Bull A 1). "Yes, it's all very well to say 'Go to school!' How are they to go to school with those people quarreling in the door-way? Why don't you make 'em 'move on?'"]

In common with John Leech and the ruling cla.s.s of England generally, Mr.

Tenniel was so unfortunate as to misinterpret the civil war in America.

He was almost as much mistaken as to its nature and significance as some of our own politicians, who had not his excuse of distance from the scene. He began well, however. His "Divorce a Vinculo," published in January, 1861, when the news of the secession of South Carolina reached England, was too flattering to the North, though correct as to the att.i.tude of the South. "Mrs. Carolina a.s.serts her Right to 'larrup' her n.i.g.g.e.r" was a rough statement of South Carolina's position, but we can not pretend that the Northern States objected from any interest they felt in the colored boy. On the part of the North it was simply a war for self-preservation. It was as truly such as if Scotland or Ireland, or both of them, had seceded from England in 1803, when the Peace of Amiens was broken, and the English people had taken the liberty to object. Again, Mr. Tenniel showed good feeling in admonishing Lord Palmerston, when the war had begun, to keep Great Britain neutral.

"Well, Pam," says Mr. Punch to his workman, "of course I shall keep you on, but you must stick to _peace_-work." Nor could we object to the picture in May, 1861, of Mr. Lincoln's poking the fire and filling the room with particles of soot, saying, with downcast look, "What a nice White House this would be if it were not for the Blacks!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Jeddo and Belfast; or, A Puzzle for j.a.pan. (John Tenniel, in _Punch_, 1872.)

_j.a.panese Emba.s.sador._ "Then these people, your Grace, I suppose, are heathen?"

_Archbishop of Canterbury._ "On the contrary, your Excellency; those are among our most enthusiastic religionists."]

But from that time to the end of the war all was misapprehension and perversity. In July, 1861, "Naughty Jonathan," an ill-favored little boy carrying a toy flag, addresses the majesty of Britain thus: "You _sha'n't_ interfere, mother--and you ought to be on my side--and it's a great shame--and I don't care--and you _shall_ interfere--and I won't have it." During the Mason and Slidell imbroglio the Tenniel cartoons were not "soothing" to the American mind. "Do what's right, my son,"

says the burly sailor, Jack Bull, to little Admiral Jonathan, "or I'll blow you out of the water." Again, we have a family dinner scene. John Bull at the head of the table, and Lord Russell the boy in waiting.

_Enter_ "Captain Jonathan, F.N.," who says, "Jist looked in to see if thar's any rebels he-arr." Upon which Mr. Bull remarks, "Oh, indeed!

John, look after the plate-basket, and then fetch a policeman." This was in allusion to a supposed claim on the part of Mr. Seward of a right to search ships for rebel pa.s.sengers. Then we have Mr. Lincoln as a "c.o.o.n"

in a tree, and Colonel Bull aiming his blunderbuss at him. "Air you in earnest, colonel?" asks the c.o.o.n. "I am," replies the mighty Bull.

"Don't fire," says the c.o.o.n; "I'll come down." And accordingly Mason and Slidell were speedily released. In a similar spirit most of the events of the war were treated; and when the war had ended, there was still shown in _Punch_, as in the English press generally, the same curious, inexplicable, and total ignorance of the feelings of the American people. What an inconceivable perversity it was to attribute Mr.

Sumner's statement of the damage done to the United States by the alliance which existed for four years between the owners of England and the masters of the South to a Yankee grab for excessive damages! In all the long catalogue of national misunderstandings there is none more remarkable than this. Mr. Tenniel from the first derided the idea that any particular damage had been done by the _Alabama_ and her consorts: certainly there was no damage, he thought, upon which a "claim" could be founded. "Claim for damages against _me_?" cries big Britannia, in one of his pictures of October, 1865. "Nonsense, Columbia; don't be mean over money matters."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "At the Church-gate." (Du Maurier, in _Punch_, 1872.)

"So now you've been to church, Ethel! And which part of it all do you like best?"

"_This_ part, mamma!"]

All this has now become merely interesting as a curiosity of misinterpretation. The American people know something of England through her art, her literature, and press; but England has extremely imperfect means of knowing us. No American periodical, probably, circulates in Great Britain two hundred copies. We have no d.i.c.kens, no Thackeray, no George Eliot, no _Punch_, to make our best and our worst familiar in the homes of Christendom; and what little indigenous literature we have is more likely to mislead foreigners than enlighten them. Cooper's men, women, and Indians, if they ever existed, exist no more. Mr. Lowell's Yankee is extinct. Uncle Tom is now a freeman, raising his own bale of cotton. Mark Twain and Bret Harte would hardly recognize their own California. It is the literature, the art, and the science of a country which make it known to other lands; and we shall have neither of these in adequate development until much more of the work is done of smoothing off this rough continent, and educating the people that come to us, at the rate of a cityful a month, from the continent over the sea. At present it is nearly as much as we can do to find spelling-books for so many.

To most Americans the smaller pictures of Leech and others in _Punch_, which gently satirize the foibles and fashions of the time, are more interesting than the political cartoons. How different the life of the English people, as exhibited in these thousands of amusing scenes, from the life of America! We see, upon turning over a single volume, how much more the English play and laugh than we do. It is not merely that there is a large cla.s.s in England who have nothing to do except to amuse themselves, but the whole people seem interested in sport, and very frequently to abandon themselves to innocent pleasures. Here is a young lady in the hunting field in full gallop, who cries gayly to her companion, "Come along, Mr. Green; I want a lead at the brook;" which makes "Mr. Green think that women have no business in hunting." England generally thinks otherwise, and Mr. Punch loves to exhibit his countrywomen "in mid-air" leaping a ditch, or bounding across a field with huntsmen and hounds about them. He does not object to a hunting parson. A churchwarden meets an "old sporting rector" on the road, and says, "Tell ye what 'tis, sir, the congregation do wish you wouldn't put that 'ere curate up in pulpit; n.o.body can't hear un." To which the old sporting parson on his pony replies, "Well, Blunt, the fact is, Tweedler's such a good fellow for parish work, I'm obliged to give him _a mount_ sometimes." And in the distance we see poor Tweedler trudging briskly along, umbrella in hand, upon some parish errand. Another sporting picture shows us three gentlemen at dinner, one of whom is a clergyman whose mind is so peculiarly const.i.tuted that his thoughts run a little upon the duties of his office. Perhaps he is Tweedler himself.

One of the laymen, a fox-hunter, says to the other, "That was a fine forty minutes yesterday." The other replies, "Yes; didn't seem so long either." _Punch_ remarks that "the curate is puzzled, and wonders, do they refer to his lecture in the school-room?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: An Early Quibble. (Du Maurier, in _Punch_, 1872.)

_George._ "_There_, Aunt Mary! what do you think of _that_?

_I_ drew the horse, and Ethel drew the jockey!"

_Aunt Mary._ "H'm! But what would mamma say to your drawing jockeys on a Sunday?"