Caricature and Other Comic Art Part 9

In looking over the broadsheets of that stirring period, we are struck by the absence of the mighty Name that must have been uppermost in every mind and oftenest on every tongue--that of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. A few caricatures were executed in Holland, in which "The General" and "Oliver" and "The Protector" were weakly satirized; but as most of the plates in that age were made to serve various purposes, and were frequently altered and redated, it is not certain that any of them were circulated in England during Cromwell's life-time. English draughtsmen produced a few pictures in which the Protector was favorably depicted dissolving the Long Parliament, but their efforts were not remarkable either with pen or pencil. The Protector may have relished, and Bunyan may have written, the verses that accompanied some of them:

"Full twelve years and more these Rooks they have sat to gull and to cozen all true-hearted People; Our Gold and our Silver has made them so fat that they lookt more big and mighty than Paul's Steeple."

The Puritans handled the sword more skillfully than the pen, and the royalists were not disposed to satire during the rule of the Ironside chief. The only great writer of the Puritan age on the Puritan side was Milton, and he was one of the two or three great writers who have shown little sense of humor.

CHAPTER X.

LATER PURITAN CARICATURE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cris-cross Rhymes on Love's Crosses, 1640. (Musarum, 306.)]

What a change came over the spirit of English art and literature at the Restoration in 1660! Forty years before, when James I. was king, who loathed a Puritan, there was occasionally published a print in which Puritans were treated in the manner of Hudibras. There was one of 1612 in which a crown was half covered by a broad-brimmed hat, with verses reflecting upon "the aspiring, factious Puritan," who presumed to "overlooke his king." There was one in 1636, in the reign of Charles I., aimed at "two infamous upstart prophets," weavers, then in Newgate for heresy, which contains a description of a Puritan at church, which is entirely in the spirit of Hudibras:

"His seat in the church is where he may be most seene. In the time of the Sermon he drawes out his tables to take the Notes, but still noting who observes him to take them. At every place of Scripture cited he turnes over the leaves of his Booke, more pleased with the motion of the leaves than the matter of the Text; For he folds downe the leaves though he finds not the place. Hee lifts up the whites of his eyes towards Heaven when hee meditates on the sordid pleasures of the earth; his body being in G.o.d's Church, when his mind is in the divel's Chappell."

Again, in 1647, two years before the execution of Charles, an extensive and elaborate sheet appeared, in which the ignorant preachers of the day were held up to opprobrium. Each of these "erronious, hereticall, and Mechannick spirits" was exhibited practicing his trade, and a mult.i.tude of verses below described the heresies which such teachers promulgated.

"Oxford and Cambridge make poore Preachers; Each shop affordeth better Teachers: Oh blessed Reformation!"

Among the "mechannick spirits" presented in this sheet we remark "Barbone, the Lether-seller," who figures in many later prints as "Barebones." There are also "Bulcher, a Chicken man;" "Henshaw, a Confectioner, alias an Infectioner;" "Duper, a Cowkeeper;" "Lamb, a Sope-boyler," and a dozen more.

Such pictures, however, were few and far between during the twenty years of Puritan ascendency. But when the rule of the Sound-head was at an end, and Rattle-head had once more the dispensing of preferment in Church and State, the press teemed with broadsheets reviling the Puritan heroes. The gorgeous funeral of the Protector--his body borne in state on a velvet bed, clad in royal robes, to Westminster Abbey, where a magnificent tomb rose over his remains--was still fresh in the recollection of the people of London when they saw the same body torn from its resting-place, and hung on Tyburn Hill from nine in the morning until six in the evening, and then cast into a deep pit. Thousands who saw his royal funeral looked upon his body swinging from the gallows.

The caricatures vividly mark the change. Cromwell now appears only as tyrant, antichrist, hypocrite, monster. Charles I. is the holy martyr.

His son's flight in disguise, the hiding in the oak-tree, and other circ.u.mstances of his escape are no longer ignominious or laughable, but graceful and glorious.

A cherished fiction appears frequently in the caricatures that no man came to a good end who had had any hand in the king's execution, not even the executioner nor the humblest of his a.s.sistants. On one sheet we read of a certain drum-maker, named Tench, who "provided roapes, pullies, and hookes (in case the king resisted) to compel and force him down to the block." "This roague is also haunted with a Devill, and consumes away." There was the confession, too, of the hangman, who, being about to depart this life, declared that he had solemnly vowed not to perform his office upon the king, but had nevertheless dealt the fatal blow, trembling from head to foot. Thirty pounds had been his reward, which was paid him in half-crown pieces within an hour after the execution--the dearest money, as he told his wife, that he had ever received, for it would cost him his life, "which propheticall words were soon made manifest, for it appeared that, ever since, he had been in a most sad condition, and lay raging and swearing, and still pointing at one thing or another which he conceived to appear visible before him."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Shrove-tide in Arms against Lent, A.D. 1660.]

Richard Cromwell was let off as easily by the caricaturist as he was by the king. He is depicted as "the meek knight," the mild incapable, hardly worth a parting kick. In one very good picture he is a cooper hammering away with a mallet at a cask, from which a number of owls escape, most of which, as they take their flight, cry out, "_King!_"

Richard protests that he knows nothing of this trade of cooper, for the more he hammers, the more the barrel breaks up. Elizabeth, the wife of the Protector, figured in a ludicrous manner upon the cover of a cookery-book published in the reign of Charles II., the preface of which contained anecdotes of the kitchen over which she had presided.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lent tilting at Shrove-tide, A.D. 1660.]

Among other indications of change in the public feeling, we notice a few pictures conceived in the pure spirit of gayety, designed to afford pleasure to every one, and pain to no one. Two of these are given here--Shrove-tide and Lent tilting at one another--which were thought amazingly ingenious and comic two hundred years ago. They are quite in the taste of the period that produced them. Shrove-tide, in the calendar of Rome, is the Tuesday before Lent, a day on which many people gave themselves up to revelry and feasting, in antic.i.p.ation of the forty days' fast. Shrove-tide accordingly is mounted on a fat ox, and his sword is sheathed in a pig and piece of meat, with capons and bottles of wine about his body. His flag, as we learn from the explanatory verses, is "a cooke's foule ap.r.o.n fix'd to a broome," and his helmet "a bra.s.se pot." Lent, on the contrary, flings to the breeze a fishing-net, carries an angling-rod for a weapon, and wears upon his head "a boyling kettle."

Thus accoutred, these mortal foes approach one another, and Lent lifts up his voice and proclaims his intention:

"I now am come to mundifie and cleare The base abuses of this last past yeare: Thou puff-paunch'd monster (Shrovetyde), thou art he That were ordain'd the latter end to be Of forty-five weekes' gluttony, now past, Which I in seaven weekes come to cleanse at last: Your feasting I will turn to fasting dyet; Your cookes shall have some leasure to be quiet; Your masques, pomps, playes, and all your vaine expence, I'll change to sorrow, and to penitence."

Shrove-tide replies valiantly to these brave words:

"What art thou, thou leane-jawde anottamie, All spirit (for I no flesh upon thee spie); Thou bragging peece of ayre and smoke, that prat'st, And all good-fellowship and friendship hat'st; You'le turn our feasts to fasts! when, can you tell?

Against your spight, we are provided well.

Thou sayst thou'lt ease the cookes!-the cookes could wish Thee boyl'd or broyl'd with all thy frothy fish; For one fish-dinner takes more paines and cost Than three of flesh, bak'd, roast, or boyl'd, almost."

This we are compelled to regard as about the best fun our ancestors of 1660 were capable of achieving with pencil and pen. Nor can we claim much for their pictures which aim to satirize the vices.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Queen of James II. and Father Petre.

"It is a foolish sheep that makes the wolf her confessor." (1685.)]

The joy of the English people at the restoration of the monarchy, which seemed at first to be as universal as it was enthusiastic, was of short duration. The Stuarts were the Bourbons of England, incapable of being taught by adversity. Within two years Charles II. alarmed Protestant England by marrying a Portuguese princess. The great plague of 1665, that destroyed in London alone sixty-eight thousand persons, was followed in the very next year by the great fire of London, which consumed thirteen thousand two hundred houses. At a moment when the public mind was reduced to the most abject credulity by such events as these, the scoundrel t.i.tus Oates appeared, declaring that the dread calamities which had afflicted England, and others then imminent, were only parts of an awful _Popish Plot_, which aimed at the destruction of the king and the restoration of the Catholic religion. A short time after, 1678, Sir Edmundsbury G.o.dfrey, the magistrate before whom t.i.tus Oates made his deposition, was found dead in a field near London, the victim probably of some fanatic a.s.sa.s.sin of the Catholic party. The kingdom was thrown into an ecstasy of terror, from which, as before observed, it has not to this day wholly recovered. Terror may lurk in the blood of a race ages after the removal of its cause, as we find our sensitive horses shying from low-lying objects at the road-side, though a thousand generations may have peacefully labored and died since their ancestors crouched from the spring of a veritable wild beast. The broadsheets of that year, 1678, and of the troublous years following, even until William of Orange was seated on the throne of England, in 1690, have, we may almost say, but one topic--the Popish Plot. The spirit of that period lives in those sheets.

It had been a custom in England to celebrate the 17th of November, the day, as one sheet has it, on which the unfortunate Queen Mary died, and "that Glorious Sun, Queen Elizabeth, of happy memory, arose in the English horizon, and thereby dispelled those thick fogs and mists of Romish blindness, and restored to these kingdoms their just Rights both as men and Christians." The next recurrence of this anniversary after the murder of G.o.dfrey was seized by the Protestants of London to arrange a procession which was itself a striking caricature. A pictorial representation of the procession is manifestly impossible here, but we can copy the list of objects as given on a broadsheet issued a few days after the event. This device of a procession, borrowed from Catholic times, was continually employed to promulgate and emphasize Protestant ideas down to a recent period, and has been used for political objects in our own day. How changed the thoughts of men since Albert Durer witnessed the grand and gay procession at Antwerp, in honor of the Virgin's a.s.sumption, one hundred and fifty-nine years before! The 17th of November, 1679, was ushered in, at three o'clock in the morning, by a burst of bell-ringing all over London. The broadsheet thus quaintly describes the procession:

"About Five o'clock in the Evening, all things being in readiness, the Solemn Procession began, in the following Order: I. Marched six Whiflers to clear the way, in Pioneers Caps and Red Waistcoats (and carrying torches). II. A Bellman Ringing, who, with a Loud and Dolesom Voice cried all the way, _Remember Justice G.o.dfrey_. III. A Dead Body representing Sir Edmundbury G.o.dfrey, in the Habit he usually wore, the Cravat wherewith he was murdered about his Neck, with spots of Blood on his Wrists, Shirt, and white Gloves that were on his hands, his Face pale and wan, riding on a White Horse, and one of his Murderers behind him to keep him from falling, representing the manner how he was carried from Somerset House to Primrose Hill. IV. A Priest in a Surplice, with a Cope Embroidered with Dead mens Bones, Skeletons, Skuls, &c., giving pardons very freely to those who would murder Protestants, and proclaiming it Meritorious. V. A Priest alone, in Black, with a large Silver Cross. VI. Four Carmelite Friers in White and Black Habits. VII.

Four Grey Friars in their proper Habits. VIII. Six Jesuits with b.l.o.o.d.y Daggers. IX. A Consort of Wind-musick, call'd the Waits. X. Four Popish Bishops in Purple and Lawn Sleeves, with Golden Crosses on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. XI. Four other Popish Bishops in their Pontificalibus, with Surplices, Rich Embroydered Copes, and Golden Miters on their Heads.

XII. Six Cardinals in Scarlet Robes and Red Caps. XIII. The Popes Chief Physitian with Jesuites Powder in one hand, and a ---- in the other.

XIV. Two Priests in Surplices, with two Golden Crosses. Lastly, the Pope in a Lofty Glorious Pageant, representing a Chair of State, covered with Scarlet, the Chair richly embroydered, fringed, and bedeckt with Golden b.a.l.l.s and Crosses; at his feet a Cushion of State, two Boys in Surplices, with white Silk Banners and Red Crosses, and b.l.o.o.d.y Daggers for Murdering Heritical Kings and Princes, painted on them, with an Incense-pot before them, sate on each side censing his Holiness, who was arrayed in a rich Scarlet Gown, Lined through with Ermin, and adorned with Gold and Silver Lace, on his Head a Triple Crown of Gold, and a Glorious Collar of Gold and precious stones, St. Peters Keys, a number of Beads, Agnus Dei's and other Catholick Trumpery; at his Back stood his Holiness's Privy Councellor, the Devil, frequently caressing, hugging, and whispering, and oft-times instructing him aloud, to destroy His Majesty, to forge a Protestant Plot, and to fire the City again; to which purpose he held an Infernal Torch in his hand. The whole Procession was attended with 150 Flambeaus and Torches by order; but so many more came in Voluntiers as made up some thousands. Never were the Balconies, Windows and Houses more numerously filled, nor the Streets closer throng'd with mult.i.tudes of People, all expressing their abhorrence of Popery with continual Shouts and Acclamations."

With slow and solemn step the procession marched to Temple Bar, then just rebuilt, and there it halted, while a dialogue in verse was sung in parts by "one who represented the English Cardinal Howard, and one the people of England." We can imagine the manner in which the crowd would come thundering in with

"Now G.o.d preserve Great Charles our King, And eke all honest men; And Traytors all to justice bring, Amen! Amen! Amen!"

Fire-works succeeded the song, after which "his Holiness was decently tumbled from all his grandeur into the impartial flames," while the people gave so prodigious a shout that it was heard "far beyond Somerset House." For many years a similar pageant was given in London on the same day.

As an additional ill.u.s.tration of the feeling which then prevailed in Puritan circles, I will copy the rude and doleful rhymes which accompany a popular print of 1680, called "The Dreadful Apparition; or, the Pope haunted with Ghosts." Coleman, Whitebread, and Harcourt, who figure among the ghosts, had been recently executed as "popish plotters." The picture shows the Pope in bed, to whom the devil conducts Coleman, and an angel leads the spirit of Sir Edmundsbury G.o.dfrey. Whitebread and Harcourt are in shrouds. A bishop, a cardinal, and other figures are seen. A label issuing from the mouth of each of the persons represented contains the rhymes which follow:

THE POPE IN BED.

"_Away! Away! am not I Pope of Rome, torment me not before my time is Come._"

THE DEVIL, IN THE FORM OF A DRAGON.

"_Your Sevt S{r}! Ned Coleman doth appeare he'll tell you all, therefore I brought him here._"

COLEMAN'S GHOST.

"_S{r} you are Cause of my Continuall paine, My Soul is Lost, for your Ambitious gaine._"

G.o.dFREY'S GHOST, INTRODUCED BY ----.

"_Repent great S{r} and be for ever blest, in Heaven with me that happy place of rest._"

ANGEL, IN A "ROMAN SHAPE."

"_O Chariety! who mercy craves for those: With Bluddy hands that ware his Cruell foes._"

WHITEBREAD'S GHOST, WITH A SWORD THROUGH THE BODY.

"_I am perplexed with perpetuall fright; but who is this apeares this dreadful night._"

HARCOURT'S GHOST, WITH A SWORD THROUGH THE BODY.