The History of the Nineteenth Century in Caricature Part 13

Gillam at first hit upon David Davis as the person to be so represented. He was describing the proposed cartoon one day in the office of _Puck_ when Mr. Bunner, who was at that time the editor, turned suddenly and said: "David Davis? Nonsense! Blaine is the man for that." The cartoon so conceived was splendidly executed, and became one of the great pictorial factors in turning the scale of the election. It stirred Mr. Blaine himself to a point where he resolved to prosecute the publishers of _Puck_, and was persuaded from this course only by the very strongest pressure. The tattoo marks which were most obnoxious to him were those which spelled out the word "Bribery." A curious feature of this series was that Mr. Bernard Gillam was an ardent Republican, voting for Mr. Blaine on election day, and at the same time that he was executing the Tattooed Man cartoon in _Puck_ was suggesting equally vindictive caricatures of Mr.

Cleveland and the Democratic party for the rival pages of _Judge_.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE INFLUENCE OF JOURNALISM

[Ill.u.s.tration: A German Idea of Irish Home Rule.]

In looking backward over a century of caricature, it is interesting to ask just what it is that makes the radical difference between the cartoon of to-day and that of a hundred years ago. That there is a wide gulf between the comparative restraint of the modern cartoonist and the unbridled license of Gillray's or Rowlandson's grotesque, gargoyle types, is self-evident; that comic art, as applied to politics, is to-day more widespread, more generally appreciated, and in a quiet way more effective in molding public opinion than ever before, needs no argument. And yet, if one stops to a.n.a.lyze the individual cartoons, to take them apart and discover the essence of their humor, the incisive edge of their irony and satire, one finds that there is nothing really new in them; that the basic principles of caricature were all understood as well in the eighteenth century as in the nineteenth, and that, in many cases, the successful cartoon of to-day is simply the replica of an old one of a past generation, modified to fit a new set of facts. When Gilbert Stuart drew his famous "Gerrymander" cartoon, he was probably not the first artist to avail himself of the chance resemblance of the geographical contour of a state or country to some person or animal. He certainly was not the last. Again and again the map of the United States has been drawn so as to bring out some significant similarity, as recently when it was distorted into a ludicrous semblance of Mr. Cleveland, bending low in proud humility, the living embodiment of the principle, _L'etat c'est Moi_; or again, just before our war with Spain, when it was so drawn as to present a capital likeness of Uncle Sam, the Atlantic and Gulf States forming his nose and mouth, the latter suggestively opened to take in Cuba, which is swimming dangerously near. _Puck's_ famous "Tattooed Man" was only a new application of an idea that had been used before; while the representation of a group of leading politicians as members of a freak show, a circus, or a minstrel troop, is as old as minstrels or dime museums themselves. Few leading statesmen of the past half century have not at some time in their career been portrayed as Hamlet, or Macbeth, or Richard III.; while as for the conventional use of animals and symbolic figures to represent the different nations, the British Lion and the Russian Bear, Uncle Sam and French Liberty, these belong to the raw materials of caricature, dating back to its very inception as an art. And yet, while the means used are essentially the same as in the days of Hogarth and Cruikshank, the results are radically different.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The World (Newspaper).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Horatius Cleveland at the Bridge.

_From New York "Life."_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bernard Gillam of "Judge."]

The reason for this difference may be summed up in a single word--Journalism. The modern cartoon is essentially journalistic, both in spirit and in execution. The spasmodic single sheets of Gillray's period, huge lithographs that found their way to the public through the medium of London print shops, were long ago replaced by the weekly comic papers, while to-day these in turn find formidable rivals in the cartoons which have become a feature of most of the leading daily journals. The celerity with which a caricature is now conceived and executed, thanks to the modern mechanical improvements and the prevailing spirit of alertness, makes it possible for the cartoonist to keep pace with the news of the day, to seize upon the latest political blunder, the social fad of the moment, and hit it off with a stroke of incisive irony, without fear that it will be forgotten before the drawing can appear in print. The consequences of all this modern haste and enterprise are not wholly advantageous. Real talent is often wasted upon mediocre ideas under the compulsion of producing a daily cartoon, and again a really brilliant conception is marred by overhaste in execution, a lack of artistic finish in the detail.

Besides, the tendency of a large part of contemporary cartoons is toward the local and the ephemeral. This is especially true of the caricatures which appear during an American political campaign, in which every petty blunder, every local issue, every bit of personal gossip, is magnified into a vital national principle, a world-wide scandal. And when the morning after the election dawns, the business settles down into its wonted channel, these momentous issues, and the flamboyant cartoons which proclaimed them, suddenly become as trivial and as empty as a spent firecracker or Roman candle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Joseph Keppler of "Puck."]

But another change which the spirit of journalism has wrought in the contemporary cartoon, and a more vital change than any other, is due to the definite editorial policy which lies behind it. The dominant note in all the work of the great cartoonists of the past, in the English Gillray and the French Daumier, was the note of individualism.

Take away the personal rancor, the almost irrational hatred of "Little Boney" from Gillray, take away Daumier's mordant irony, his fearless contempt for Louis Philippe, and the life of their work is gone. The typical cartoon of to-day is, to a large extent, not a one-man production at all. It is frequently built up, piecemeal, one detail at a time, and in the case of a journal like _Punch_ or _Judge_ or _Life_ often represents the thoughtful collaboration of the entire staff. In the case of the leading dailies, the cartoon must be in accord with the settled political policy of the paper, as much as the leading articles on the editorial page. The individual preferences of the cartoonist do not count. In fact, he may be doing daily violence to his settled convictions, or he may find means of espousing both sides at once, as was the case with Mr. Gillam, who throughout the Cleveland-Blaine campaign was impartially drawing Democratic cartoons for _Puck_ and suggesting Republican cartoons for _Judge_ at the same time.

What the political cartoon will become in the future, it is dangerous to predict. There is, however, every indication that its influence, instead of diminishing, is likely to increase steadily. What it has lost in ceasing to be the expression of the individual mind, the impulsive product of erratic genius, it has more than gained in its increased timeliness, its greater sobriety, its more sustained and definite purpose. At certain epochs in the past it has served as a vehicle for reckless scandal-mongering and scurrilous personal abuse.

But this it seems to have happily outgrown. That pictorial satire may be made forceful without the sacrifice of dignity was long ago demonstrated by Tenniel's powerful work in the pages of _Punch_. And there is no doubt that a serious political issue, when presented in the form of a telling cartoon, will be borne home to the minds of a far larger circle of average every-day men and women than it ever could be when discussed in the cold black and white of the editorial column.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The John Bull Octopus in Egypt.

_From "Il Papagallo" (Rome)._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Hand against every Man.

_From London "Judy," April 13, 1892._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Stability of the Triple Alliance.

_From "Il Papagallo" (Rome)._]

Another interesting effect of the growing conservative spirit in caricature is seen in the gradual crystallization of certain definite symbolic types. Allusion has already been made, in earlier chapters of this work, to the manner in which the conception of John Bull and Uncle Sam and other a.n.a.logous types, has been gradually built up by almost imperceptible degrees, each artist preserving all the essential work of his predecessor, and adding a certain indefinable something of his own, until a certain definite portrait has been produced, a permanent ideal, whose characteristic features the cartoonists of the future could no more alter arbitrarily than they could the features of Bismarck or Gladstone. And not only have these crystallized types become accepted by the nation at large,--not only is Uncle Sam the same familiar figure, tall and lanky, from the New York _Puck_ to the San Francisco _Wasp_,--but gradually these national types have migrated and crossed the seas, and to-day they are the common property of comic artists of all nations. John Bull and the Russian Bear, Columbia and the American Eagle, are essentially the same, whether we meet them in the press of Canada, Australia, Cape Colony, or the United States. And for the very reason that there is so little variety in the obvious features, the mere physical contour, the subtler differences due to race prejudice and individual limitations are all the more significant and interesting. There are cases, and comparatively recent cases, too, where race-prejudice has found expression in such rampant and illogical violence as prompted many of the Spanish cartoons during our recent war over Cuba, in which Americans were regularly portrayed as hogs--big hogs and little hogs, some in hog-pens, others running at large--but one and all of them as hogs. The cartoonists of the Continent, Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians alike, have difficulty in accepting the Anglo-Saxon type of John Bull. Instead, they usually portray him as a sort of sad-faced travesty upon Lord Dundreary, a tall, lank, much bewhiskered "milord,"

familiar to patrons of Continental farce-comedy. But it is not in cases like these that race prejudice becomes interesting. There is nothing subtle or suggestive in mere vituperation, whether verbal or pictorial, any more than in the persistent representation of a nation by a type which is no sense representative. On the other hand, the subtle variations of expression in the John Bull of contemporary American artists, or the Uncle Sam of British caricature, will repay careful study. They form a sort of sensitive barometer of public sentiment in the two countries, and excepting during the rare periods of exceptional good feeling there is always in the Englishman's conception of Uncle Sam a scarce-concealed suggestion of crafty malice in place of his customary kindly shrewdness, while conversely, our portrayal of John Bull is only too apt to convert that bluff, honest-hearted country gentleman into a sort of arrogant bl.u.s.terer, greedy for gain, yet showing the vein of cowardice distinctive of the born bully.

CHAPTER XXIX

YEARS OF TURBULENCE

In marked contrast to the preceding lengthy period of tranquillity, the closing decade of the nineteenth century witnessed a succession of wars and international crises well calculated to stimulate the pencils of every cartoonist worthy of the name. One has only to recall that to this period belong the conflict between China and j.a.pan, the brief clash between Greece and Turkey, the beginning of our policy of expansion, with the annexation of Hawaii, our own war with Spain, and England's protracted struggle in the Transvaal, to realize how rich in stirring events these few years have been, and what opportunities they offer for dramatic caricature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I. Absolute Monarchy. II. Const.i.tutional Government.

III. Middle Cla.s.s Republic. IV. Social Republic.

A Present Day Lesson.

_From the "Revue Encyclopedique."_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A _Punch_ slip: a cartoon published in antic.i.p.ation of an event which did _not_ occur--viz. the meeting of General Gordon and General Stewart at Khartoum.

_By Tenniel, February 7, 1885._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Telegram, Thursday morning, Feb. 5._--"Khartoum taken by the Mahdi. General Gordon's fate uncertain."

_By Tenniel, February 14, 1885._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The London "Times" and the Spurious Parnell Letters.]

A cartoon produced in an earlier chapter, ent.i.tled "Waiting," showed General Gordon gazing anxiously across the desert at the mirage which was conjured up by his fevered brain, taking the clouds of the horizon to be the guns of the approaching British army of relief. Early in 1885 the relief expedition started under the command of General Henry Stewart, and on February 7 there was published in _Punch_ the famous cartoon "At Last," showing the meeting between Gordon and the relieving general. This was a famous _Punch_ slip. That meeting never occurred. For on February 5, two days before the appearance of the issue containing the cartoon, Khartoum had been taken by the Mahdi.

The following week Tenniel followed up "At Last" with the cartoon "Too Late," which showed the Mahdi and his fanatic following pouring into Khartoum, while stricken Britannia covers her eyes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tenniel's Famous Cartoon at the Time of Bismarck's Retirement.]

The _Times_ challenge to Charles Stewart Parnell was, of course, recorded in the caricature of _Punch_. The "Thunderer," it will be remembered, published letters, which it believed to be genuine, involving Parnell in the murders of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr.

Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin, in 1882. When these letters were proved to have been forged by Pigot, _Punch_ published a cartoon showing the _Times_ doing penance. Both of these cartoons were by Tenniel. "The Challenge" appeared in the issue of April 30, 1887, and "Penance"

almost two years later, March 9, 1889.

[Ill.u.s.tration: L'enfant Terrible.

The Baccarat Scandal at Tranby Croft in 1891.

_From "Puck."_]

A cartoon which marked Tenniel's genius at its height, a cartoon worthy of being ranked with that which depicted the British Lion's vengeance on the Bengal Tiger after the atrocities of the Sepoy rebellion, was his famous "Dropping the Pilot," which was published on March 29, 1890, after William II. of Germany had decided to dispense with the services of the Iron Chancellor. Over the side of the ship of state the young Emperor is leaning complacently looking down on the grim old pilot, who has descended the ladder and is about to step into the boat that is to bear him ash.o.r.e. The original sketch of this cartoon was finished by Tenniel as a commission from Lord Rosebery, who gave it to Bismarck. The picture is said to have pleased both the Emperor and the Prince.

[Ill.u.s.tration: William Bluebeard.

"My first two wives are dead. Take care, Hohenlohe, lest the same fate overtake you."

_From "La Silhouette" (Paris)._]

The baccarat scandal at Tranby Croft and the subsequent trial at which the then Prince of Wales was present as a witness was a rich morsel for the caricaturist in the early summer of 1891. Not only in England, but on the Continent and in this country, the press was full of jibes and banter at the Prince's expense. The German comic paper, _Ulk_, suggested pictorially a new coat-of-arms for his Royal Highness in which various playing cards, dice, and chips were much in evidence. In another issue the same paper gives a German reading from Shakspere in which it censures the Prince in much the same manner that Falstaff censured the wild Harry of Henry IV. The London cartoonists all had their slings with varying good nature. _Fun_ represented the Prince as the Prodigal Son being forgiven by the paternal British nation. Point to this cartoon was given by the fact that the pantomime "L'Enfant Prodigue" was being played at the time in the Prince of Wales'