English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century Part 23

Though the _Times_ says I'm mad, And each rascally Rad Abuses my tergiversation; Though those humbugs, the Whigs, Swear that my "thimble-rigs"

Were the cause of all their vacill-ation; The whole story's a base fabri-cation To damage my great reputa-tion; So now to be brief, _Only make me Lord Chief_, And I'll serve without remuner-ation!'

When he found 'twas 'no go,'

And that Lyndhurst and Co.

Were deaf to all solici-tation, As 'twas useless with Lyndy To kick up a shindy, He resolved upon peregrin-ation.

Not waiting for much prepa-ration, He bolted with precipi-tation; A sad loss, I ween, To Charles Knight's magazine, And to Stinkomalee edu-cation."

Lord Brougham, indeed, by his despotic, intractable conduct, had thoroughly shut himself out from all chance of office. Sir Robert Peel's Conservative ministry lasted till April, 1835, when a second Whig government came into power, under the premiership of Lord Melbourne, and from the re-constructed cabinet, Brougham--much to his own surprise, but to the surprise of no one else--was excluded.[122]

IRISH DISAFFECTION.

Irish disaffection was, unfortunately, as stale a subject in 1833 as in 1883. For what particular sins of her own England has been cursed with a neighbour so bloodthirsty, so unreasonable, and so troublesome as Ireland, it would be difficult to say. Although we had no Irish Americans--no cowardly "dynamitards"--in those days, Ireland was nevertheless in a state of chronic disaffection, and an "Irish Coercion Bill" was found just as necessary to restrain the excitement of Irish political malcontents in 1833 as in 1883. Irish history, in this respect at least, has a method of repeating itself which is singularly embarra.s.sing, and the student of the history of Irish disaffection cannot fail to be interested in the statement with which Lord Grey introduced his measure fifty years ago. We learn from this statement that a state of things existed little short of actual rebellion. Bodies of men were collected and arrayed by signals, evidently directed by a system of organization in which many were combined, and such system was conducted in a manner which had hitherto set at defiance all the exertions of law and order. The disturbers of the peace prescribed the terms on which land was to be let, and any one who presumed to disobey their orders was subject to have his property destroyed or be put to death. The reign of terror was complete. The organization which supplied the place of the Land League of to-day dictated what persons should employ and be employed; and while they forbad labourers from working for obnoxious masters on the one hand, they prevented a master on the other from employing as labourers any but those who were obedient to their orders. They enforced their decrees by acts of cruelty and outrage; by spoliation, murder, attacks on houses in the dead of night; by dragging the inmates from their beds and so maltreating them that death often ensued, or by inflicting cruelties which were sometimes worse than death. The persons belonging to this organization a.s.sembled by signals, made concerted movements, watched the movements of the troops, and by information received so avoided them that the military were rendered practically useless.

The ordinary tribunals were powerless to arrest this iniquitous organization of murder and terror, which the Irish disaffectants and their advisers even in that day appear to have brought to a system of execrable perfection. Witnesses and jurors were terrified into silence.

In one case the master of a female servant was commanded to dismiss her because her _mother_ had given evidence against a person brought to trial for a capital crime, and similar cases were of almost daily occurrence. Five armed men went to the house of Patrick Lalor, a man of nearly seventy years of age, and shot him through the body. His crime had been disobedience to a mandate to give up some ground which he held contrary to the will of the Terrorists. The same system prevented a son of Lalor, and an eye-witness of his murder, from giving evidence against his murderers. On the trial of these miscreants at Kilkenny a.s.sizes, the jury not being able to agree was dismissed. It had been arranged in the jury-room that nothing should transpire as to the opinions of individual jurymen, and yet, in _half an hour_, the names of those in favour of an acquittal or of a conviction were printed--the former in black, and the latter, or as they were designated the "jurors who were for blood," in red ink. The result was that those whose names were printed in red were obliged to leave the country. At the Clonmel a.s.sizes the previous October (1832), when a person was to be tried for resisting the payment of t.i.the, only 76 jurors out of 265 who had been summoned made their appearance. A gentleman had been murdered in sight of his own gate in consequence of some dispute in connection with t.i.thes. The answer of his son-in-law, summoned by the coroner to give evidence against the supposed murderer, was this: "That he would submit to any penalty the crown or the law would impose upon him, but he would not appear at the trial, because he knew that if he stood forward as a witness his life would inevitably be forfeited." The Irish Government received a notice from Kilkenny "that many gentlemen who had always" most conscientiously discharged their duties, "would not attend at the next a.s.sizes. They cared not what penalty was imposed upon them. They refused to attend, because they knew that death" awaited them if they dared to do their duty. "It is the boast of the prisoners," continued this doc.u.ment, "that they cannot under existing circ.u.mstances be found guilty." Under such a disgraceful state of things, outrage had become of course triumphant.

The sickening catalogue of Irish cruelty and crime during the previous year comprised 172 homicides, 465 robberies, 568 burglaries, 455 _acts of houghing of cattle_, 2,095 illegal notices, 425 illegal meetings, 796 _malicious injuries to property_, 753 _attacks on houses_, 280 arsons, 3,156 serious a.s.saults, making an aggregate of crimes of every description during the year, connected with the disturbed state of the country, exceeding 9,000 in number, and the number was evidently still on the increase.

EFFECT OF THE IRISH COERCION BILL OF 1833.

The third reading of the Coercion Bill was carried in the Commons on the 29th of March, by 345 to 86, and the Act was to continue in force till the 1st of August, 1834. It led of course to many scenes in the House between English and Irish members, although the Irish members of that day, to do them simple justice, had not graduated in the aggravated system of obstruction they have since developed, and thereby earned for themselves the character of political nuisances. One of these scenes led to the sketch ent.i.tled _Prisoners of War_, which has reference to a serio-comic interlude, in which the princ.i.p.al performers were Lord Althorp and Mr. Shiel, member for Tipperary. On the 5th of February, 1834, Lord Althorp charged (without naming them) certain Irish members who had particularly distinguished themselves by violent opposition to the Bill in the House, with using very different language in reference to it in private conversation. Up then rose one Irish member after another, inquiring if he was the person alluded to. To Mr. O'Connell and Mr. Finn the answer was in the negative, while Mr. Shiel was given directly to understand that _he_ was one of the members intended, his lordship declining at the same time to name his authority, but avowing his belief in the truth of the story, and his willingness to take upon himself the full responsibility. The result of course was a "scene." Mr.

Shiel, after the manner of fire-eating Irishmen of that day, having hinted his intention to demand satisfaction elsewhere, Sir Francis Burdett arose and said that, unless the "honourable members pledged themselves to preserve the peace, he should instantly move that they be committed to the custody of the Serjeant-at-arms." As neither of the parties would give such a.s.surance, the motion was put from the chair and carried. The _Prisoners of War_ portrayed in the sketch are of course Mr. Shiel and Lord Althorp. After a brief absence from the House, each having given the required a.s.surance was discharged from custody, and there the matter ended. The benefits of the Act were almost immediately made apparent. The a.s.sociation, which called itself, by the way, "The Irish Volunteers" (the Land League of 1833), was promptly suppressed by the Lord Lieutenant; and the list of offences during the month of March which preceded and the month of May which followed the pa.s.sing of the Act most conclusively proved its efficiency, for, while in the former month the records of crime in eleven counties reached a sum total of 472, they had declined in the latter month to 162.[123]

O'CONNELL.

Irish agitators of the nineteenth century are all more or less "tarred with the same brush," but the conditions under which an Irish agitator of 1883-4 must be content to figure in that character are, it must be remembered, widely different from those which influenced the agitators of 1833. The Irish "Home Rulers" have sown the wind and have reaped the whirlwind which carries them along in its progress, and we doubt whether if they wished to stop the hideous Frankenstein they have created, it would allow them to do so. The Home Rulers, however, are not in any way to be pitied. Not content with Land League terrorism, they sought to force their measures upon John Bull himself by an unheard-of system of parliamentary obstruction, which has inevitably recoiled upon themselves. O'Connell was far too sharp-sighted--far too intelligent and clever a man to make so grave a mistake as this. By the sheer force of his genius he exercised for many years of his life a most powerful influence on English politics. He figures in one of John Doyle's sketches in the character ascribed to him probably by most of his contemporaries. In the sketch referred to, the Governor of Barataria is represented by the typical Irish peasant; O'Connell appears in the character of the Doctor; and Lord John Russell as the attendant and amused servitor. Pat's eagerness to enjoy the good things he has been led to expect, and his mortification at their being removed out of reach and out of sight are ridiculously rendered.

We must not be misunderstood; although O'Connell had far greater personal influence over the Irish than his successors, he was for all that in political matters eminently unscrupulous.[124] At the general election of 1835, the avowed principles on which he stood forth as a candidate were: repeal of the union,--universal suffrage, vote by ballot,--triennial parliaments,--and the abolition of t.i.thes. "I am," he said, "decidedly for the vote by ballot. Whoever votes by ballot votes as he pleases, and no one need know how he votes." Yet, in spite of these avowed principles, he controlled the election of Irish candidates after the following fashion:--The Knight of Kerry started as a candidate for his native county, but dared to avow his intention to take an independent course. He had spent all his life in resisting Orangemen, and yet O'Connell said, "Every one who dares to vote for the Orange knight of Kerry shall have a death's head and cross-bones painted on his door." The voters at the Irish elections were collected in the chapels by the priests, and led forth to the poll under threats of being refused all the rites and visited with all the punishments of their Church.

Under these influences, the Knight of Kerry, supported by nearly all the property, intelligence, and respectability of the county, was defeated.

Of a candidate for New Ross who had refused to enlist under his banner, O'Connell said, "Whoever shall support him his shop shall be deserted, no man shall pa.s.s his threshold; put up his name as a traitor to Ireland; let no man speak to him; let the children laugh him to scorn."

His example was followed of course by his lieutenants. It says something for Irish independence that these unscrupulous "dodges" were not always successful; and O'Connell himself, and his colleague, Mr. Ruthven, secured their own seats by comparatively small majorities. At the previous election O'Connell had obtained a majority of 1,549, and Mr.

Ruthven of 1,490 above the highest Conservative candidate: at the election in 1835, O'Connell's majority had fallen to 217, and Mr.

Ruthven's to 169. The "Irish agitator" was manifestly no favourite with HB, who depicted him as the comet of 1835. Comets being supposed by the vulgar to portend disaster, it is represented as leaving Ireland in a flame, and pa.s.sing over St. George's Channel to exercise a malign influence on peaceful England. The head of course is that of O'Connell, while the tail is studded with the countenances of the Irish members who made up his "following." In a previous sketch he had figured as the Wolf to Lord John Russell's "Little Red Riding Hood," in allusion to a statement made by the opposition journals that the Government had made a league with the restless agitator with the view of securing his support in the House of Commons. We have heard something very like this lately, in relation to what is now known as the "Kilmainham Treaty."

SIR ROBERT PEEL.

The rapidity with which John Doyle caught an inspiration from a few chance words in a speech, may be aptly ill.u.s.trated by the manner in which he served Sir Robert Peel. On the occasion of his being installed Lord Rector of Glasgow University, in November, 1836, the distinguished statesman made a speech to his patrons, in which he meant to tell them that, admiring Scotland and Scottish scenery, he thought the best mode of seeing both was on horseback instead of travelling in a public or private conveyance. He expressed the idea, however, in the following round-about fashion:--"I wished," he said, "to see something of Scotland which I could not have seen from the windows of a luxurious carriage; I wished to see other habits and manners of life than those which the magnificent hospitable castles of the n.o.bility presented. Yes," he continued, "in Glasgow I hired an _humble but faithful steed_; I travelled partly on horseback and partly on foot through almost every county that lies southern of Inverness; I have read the map of Scotland upon the great scale of nature, from the summits of Ben Nevis and Ben Lomond; I have visited that island whence savage and roaming bands derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. Yes, amid the ruins of Iona I have abjured the rigid philosophy which would conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground that has been dignified by wisdom, by bravery, and by virtue. I have stood on the sh.o.r.es of Staffa,--I have seen the temple not built with hands,--I have seen the mighty swell of the ocean,--the waves of the great Atlantic beating in its inmost recesses, and swelling notes of praise n.o.bler than ever pealed from human organs." Well, other tourists besides the statesman have stood on the summit of Ben Nevis and Ben Lomond,--have visited Staffa and Iona,--and yet, the rigid philosophy which Sir Robert credited himself for abjuring, has unconsciously conducted them comparatively "indifferent and unmoved" over much ground that may have been "dignified by wisdom, by bravery," and even "by virtue." The stilted remarks of Sir Robert will serve to remind some of us of the very original sentiments we find recorded in "visitors' books" of sundry home and continentals hotels much affected by members of the gushing order of travellers. Some such idea seems to have struck the artist; for in his next satire Sir Robert very deservedly figured as _Dr. Syntax setting out on his Humble but Faithful Steed in Search of the Picturesque_.

As a rule the t.i.tles of these sketches, which reach the amazing number of nine hundred and seventeen, afford no clue whatever to their subject matter. Here are the t.i.tles of a few, taken at random from the general bulk:--_An Affair of Honour_; _A Group of Sporting Characters at Epsom_; _A Nice Distinction, or a Hume-iliating Rejoinder to a Warlike Ap-Peel_; _A Political Ruse_; _Swearing the Horatii_; _Retaliation_; _Goody Two Shoes turned Barber_; _State Cricket Match_; _Taking an Airing in Hyde Park_;--and so on. A description, however short, of the events to which these "Political Sketches" refer, would occupy probably a couple of volumes; and, following the course which we have hitherto adopted, we have preferred to make selection of a few which seemed to us--either from the persons satirized or the scenes in which they figure--likely to interest the general reader. Thackeray said of them at the time they were appearing, "You never hear any laughing at HB, his pictures are a great deal too genteel for that,--polite points of wit which strike one as exceedingly clever and pretty, and cause one to smile in a quiet, gentlemanlike kind of way." Forty-two years have elapsed since this was written;--the sketches fail now almost to provoke the "gentlemanlike kind" of smile mentioned by the humourist, for the events and the persons which caused it and to which they relate have alike pa.s.sed away out of sight and out of memory.

FAULTS OF THE "SKETCHES."

The number which they attained is due no doubt in a large measure to the facility with which they were produced. They were all drawn on stone, and exhibit the faults so often to be found in the productions of artists who confine themselves to this material, which, owing to the comparative facility of the process, has a tendency to induce a slovenliness in execution unusual with artists accustomed to the careful discipline under which a successful etching on steel or copper can alone be produced. A writer in _Blackwood_[125] says with much truth that HB "would have been a greater artist had he worked on the same material and with the same tools as Gillray and Cruikshank, but we should probably not have possessed so complete a gallery of portraits, comprising all the men of note who took part in political affairs from before the pa.s.sing of the Catholic Relief Bill until after the repeal of the Corn Laws, a period more eventful than any of a similar length since the Revolution of 1688." John Doyle, too, had no great powers of sarcasm, and he was timid in design, contenting himself with as few figures as were possible for the purposes of his drawings. Robert William Buss, himself a comic artist of ability, in his brief notice of him charges him with a certain feebleness in the att.i.tude of the persons who figure in his sketches, and gives us to understand that to balance a figure properly requires a knowledge and practice in drawing to which HB was a stranger; and further, that by reason of the absence of such knowledge and practice, he falls far behind Hogarth, Gillray, Bunbury, Rowlandson, or the Cruikshanks. With these artists indeed, as we have endeavoured to show, John Doyle has nothing in common, and he evidently designed that no comparison should ever be inst.i.tuted between any one of them and himself. His chief merits are to be found in the facility with which he grasped an idea; the harmlessness and playfulness of his satire, which wrought a complete revolution in the style and manner of caricaturists; and above all in the excellence of his likenesses. The best and most graceful of the series was produced just after the wedding of her Majesty, and is a transcript (as it were) of Stothard's beautiful design of _The Procession of the Flitch of Bacon_, the leading personages being the young Queen and the late Prince Consort, whose portraits are admirably executed. Towards the close of the series they show signs of failing power, not unnatural in an artist who during a course of twenty years had produced upwards of a thousand drawings. I have seen it somewhere stated that this deterioration dates from the period when the ident.i.ty of HB was discovered; but inasmuch as this secret had been practically revealed long before the decadence commences, there is no just ground for any such a.s.sumption.

The reputation of the "Political Sketches" was, however, ephemeral, and considering their popularity and the eagerness with which they were bought up at the time, it is surprising how completely they have pa.s.sed into oblivion. The name of HB, or of John Doyle, is now not only "caviare to the general," but it is amazing how little until lately he was known even to men not altogether ignorant on the subject of satirical art. A gentleman to whom I am indebted for some valuable information, tells me that some three or four years since "a large number of _original_ sketches (not the engravings) were catalogued and announced for sale at Christies'. I went," he says, "possibly to buy several, but (and it is curious as showing the decadent interest in the pictures) no sale took place, because I was told there was no one to buy. I think," my informant adds, "that I was the only person, or nearly the only person, in the room." Distinguished people, however, had been to look at the drawings, and among them the late Lord Beaconsfield.

The success of the artist produced, of course, a number of imitators.

Their productions were of various degrees of merit; but like most imitations they generally accentuated the faults without reproducing the excellencies of the model. Some of them are ent.i.tled "Political Hits,"

"Royal Ramblings," "The Belgian Trip," "Parisian Trip," and so on; some are signed "Philo H. B.," "H. H.," "B. H.," while others have neither initials or signature. They comprise some eighty or a hundred plates at least, many of which were probably suppressed, whilst others no doubt served the useful purposes of the greengrocer, the bookbinder, or the trunk-maker; and if, as we are told--

"Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away;"

there can be nothing after all very dishonourable or very surprising in their ultimate destination.

The artist died in 1868.

FOOTNOTES:

[113] Annual Register, 1836, p. 237.

[114] 1836, p. 244. Mr. Baldwin (one of the proprietors of the _Standard_ newspaper) stated that "if the bill pa.s.sed in its present shape, it would deteriorate his property fifty per cent., and would operate in the same way with all property of that description."--_Ibid._, p. 247.

[115] Greville's "Memoirs," pp. 3, 71.

[116] In which Lord Brougham took a special interest.

[117] Greville's "Memoirs," ii., p. 148.

[118] For the silly and spiteful observations made in this speech, see "Annual Register," 1825, p. 43.

[119] Greville's "Memoirs," iii. p. 85.

[120] _Inverness Courier_, Sept. 3rd (quoted in "Annual Register,"

1854, p. 129).

[121] From a nervous habit he had contracted of twitching his nose Lord Brougham was known to his contemporaries by the nickname of "Jemmy Twitcher."

[122] On this occasion the Great Seal was reserved and for the time put in commission, the commissioners being Sir Charles Pepys (Master of the Rolls), Vice Chancellor Shadwell, and Mr. Justice Bosanquet.

Eventually it was presented to Sir Charles Pepys (Lord Cottenham), and the slight produced such a stunning effect on Brougham that he retired from active public life for a time, and sought solace in the pursuit and study of literature and philosophy.

[123] For this interesting table, see "Annual Register," 1833, p. 83.

[124] "One whose name is unconnected with any honourable action, whose whole life has been one scene of skulking from dangers into which he had drawn others, and who is occupied from one end of the year to the other in devising plans of drawing enormous fortunes from squalid beggary."--_Dr. Maginn._

[125] Vol. xciv., August, 1863.

CHAPTER XIII.

_JOHN LEECH._