The History of the Nineteenth Century in Caricature Part 17

[Ill.u.s.tration: Up against the Breastworks.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. Rhodes--The Napoleon of South Africa.

_From the Westminster "Budget" (London)._]

Perhaps the most famous of all the admirable cartoons dealing with _l'Affaire_ was the "Design for a New French Bastile," which was of German origin and which caused the paper publishing it to be excluded from French territory. It appeared just after Colonel Henry had cut his throat with a razor in his cell in the Fortress of Vincennes, when suspicions of collusion were openly expressed, and some went so far as to hint that the prisoner's death might be a case of murder and not suicide. The "Design for a New French Bastile" showed a formidable fortress on the lines of the famous prison destroyed in the French Revolution with a row of the special cells beneath. In one of these cells a loaded revolver was placed conspicuously on the chair; in the next was seen a sharpened razor; from a stout bar in a third cell dangled a convenient noose. The inference was obvious, and the fact that the cells were labeled "for Picquart," "for Zola," "for Labori"

and the other defenders of Dreyfus gave the cartoon an added and sinister significance. In caricature the Dreyfus case was a battle between a small number of Anti-Dreyfussard artists on the one hand, and the Dreyfus press with all the cartoonists of Europe and the United States as its allies on the other. The opportunity to exalt the prisoner, to hold him up as a martyr, to interpret pictorially the spirit of Zola's ringing "_la verite est en marche, et rien ne l'arretera_!" offered a vast field for dramatic caricature. On the other hand the cartoon against Dreyfus and his defenders was essentially negative, and the wonder is that the rout of the minority was not greater--it should have been a veritable "_sauve qui peut_."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fire!

_From "Psst" (Paris)._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The last Phase of the Dreyfus Case.

Justice takes Dreyfus into her car.

_From "Amsterdammer."_]

The spirit of anti-Dreyfussard caricature was Anti-Semitism. One of the most striking of the cartoons on this side purported to contrast France before 1789 and France at the end of the Nineteenth Century.

In the first picture we were shown a peasant toiling laboriously along a furrow in the ground, bearing on his shoulders a beribboned and beplumed aristocrat of the old regime, whose thighs grip the neck of the man below with the tenacity of the Old Man of the Sea. That was France before the Revolution came with its b.l.o.o.d.y lesson. In the picture showing France at the end of the Nineteenth Century there was the same peasant toiling along at the bottom, but the burden under which he tottered was fivefold. Above him was the petty merchant, who in turn carried on his shoulders the lawyer, and so on until riding along, arrogantly and ostentatiously, at the top was the figure of the foreign-born Jew, secure through the possession of his tainted millions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Toward Freedom.

MADAME LA RePUBLIQUE--"Welcome, M. Le Capitaine. Let me hope that I may soon return you your sword."

_From "Punch" (London)._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Dutch View.

The present condition of the French general staff.

_From "Amsterdammer."_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Between Scylla and Charybdis.

WALDECK-ROUSSEAU--"Forward, dear friends, look neither to the right nor the left, and we will win through at last."

_From "Humoristische Blatter" (Berlin)._]

The dangerous straits through which the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry was obliged to pa.s.s were hit off in a cartoon appearing in the _Humoristische Blatter_ of Berlin, ent.i.tled "Between Scylla and Charybdis." On one side of the narrow waterway a treacherous rock shows the yawning jaws of the Army. On the other side, equally hideous and threatening, gleam the sharpened teeth of the face typifying the Dreyfus Party. Waldeck-Rousseau, appreciating the choppiness of the sea and the dangerous rocks, calls to his gallant crew: "Forward, dear friends, look neither to the right nor to the left, and we will win through at last." Many of the cartoons dealing with the Dreyfus case were mainly symbolic in their nature; full of figures of "Justice with her Scales," "Justice Blindfolded and with Unsheathed Sword,"

"Swords of Damocles" and so on. A Dutch cartoon in _Amsterdammer_, ent.i.tled "The Last Phase of the Dreyfus Case," showed Justice taking the unfortunate captain into her car. The horses drawing the car were led by Scheurer-Kestner and Zola, while following the chariot, to which they are linked by ignominious chains, were the discredited Chiefs of the Army. The same paper humorously summed up the condition of the French General Staff in a picture showing a falling house of which the occupants, pulling at cross-purposes, were accelerating the downfall. The decision upon Revision and the dispatching of the Spax to Cayenne to bring Dreyfus back to France was commemorated in London _Punch_ in a dignified cartoon called "Toward Freedom." Madame la Republique greeted Dreyfus: "Welcome, M. le Capitaine. Let me hope I may soon return you your sword." The same phase of the case was more maliciously interpreted by _l.u.s.tige Blatter_ of Berlin in a cartoon ent.i.tled "At Devil's Island," which showed the Master of the Island studying grinningly a number of officers whom he held in the hollow of his hand, and saying: "They take away one captain from me: but look here, a whole handful of generals! Oh, after all, the arrangement is not so bad."

[Ill.u.s.tration: At Devil's Island.

THE MASTER OF THE ISLAND.--"They take away one captain from me; but look here, a whole handful of generals! Oh, after all, the arrangement is not so bad."

_From "l.u.s.tige Blatter" (Berlin)._]

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

THE MEN OF TO-DAY

With the Spanish-American War, the _Affaire Dreyfus_ in France, and England's long struggle for supremacy in the Transvaal, the period arbitrarily chosen as the scope of this book comes to a brilliant and dramatic close. But the cartoonist's work is never done. Nimble pencils are still busy, as in the days of Rowlandson and Gillray, in recording and in influencing the trend of history. And although, now and again during the past century, there has been some individual cartoonist whose work has stood out more boldly and prominently than the work of any one of our contemporaries in Europe or in this country stands out to-day, there has never been a time in the whole history of comic art when Caricature has held such sway and maintained such dignity, and has enlisted in her service so many workers of the first talent and rank.

Without alluding to the men of France and England, what an array it is that contemporary American caricature presents! C. G. Bush of the New York _World_, Charles Nelan of the New York _Herald_, Frederick Burr Opper and Homer Davenport of the New York _American and Journal_, Mahoney of the Washington _Star_, Bradley of the Chicago _Evening-News_, May of the Detroit _Journal_, "Bart" of the Minneapolis _Journal_, Mayfield of the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_, Victor Gillam, carrying on the traditions of his brother--Rogers, Walker, Hedrick, Bowman, McCutcheon, Lambdin, Wallace, Leipziger, Berryman, Holme, Bartholemew, Carter, Steele, Powers, Barritt--and to name these men does not nearly exhaust the list of those artists whose clever work has amused and unconsciously influenced hundreds of thousands of thinking American men and women.

[Ill.u.s.tration: C. G. Bush of "The World." The Dean of Active American Cartoonists.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Willie and his Papa.

"What on earth are you doing in there, Willie?"

"Teddy put me in. He says it's the best place for me during the campaign."]

There are interest and significance in the fact that a majority of the ablest caricaturists of to-day are devoting their talents almost exclusively to the daily press. It is an exacting sort of work, exhaustive both physically and mentally. The mere idea of producing a single daily cartoon, week in and week out,--thirty cartoons a month, three hundred and sixty-five cartoons a year, with the regularity of a machine,--is in itself appalling. And yet a steadily growing number of artists are turning to this cla.s.s of work, and one reason for this is that they realize that through the medium of the daily press their influence is more far-reaching than it possibly can be in the pages of the comic weeklies, and that at the same time the exigencies of journalism allow more scope for individuality than do the carefully planned cartoons of papers like _Puck_ or _Judge_. Speed and originality are the two prime requisites of the successful newspaper cartoon of to-day, a maximum of thought expressed in a minimum of lines, apposite, clear-cut, and incisive, like a well-written editorial. Indeed, our leading cartoonists regard their art as simply another and especially telling medium for giving expression to editorial opinion. Mr. Bush, "the dean of American caricaturists," may be said to have spoken for them all when he said, in a recent interview, that he looks upon a cartoon as an editorial pure and simple.

"To be a success it should point a moral. Exaggeration and a keen sense of humor are only adjuncts of the cartoonist, for he must deal with real people. He must also be a student. I am obliged not only to use my pencil, but to study hard, and read everything I can lay my hands on. The features of Roosevelt, Bryan, Hanna, and Croker may be familiar to me, but I must know what these men are doing. I must also know what the ma.s.ses behind these popular characters think and believe."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Homer Davenport, of the "New York American and Journal."]

Another direct result of the influence of journalism upon caricature, in addition to that of compelling the artist to keep in closer touch than ever before with contemporary history, is the growing popularity of the series method--a method which dates back to the Macaire of Philipon and the Mayeux of Travies, and which consists in portraying day by day the same more or less grotesque types, ever undergoing some new and absurd adventure. It is a method which suits the needs of artist and public alike. To the former, his growing familiarity with every line and detail of the features and forms of his pictorial puppets minimizes his daily task, while the public, even that part of the public which is opposed to comic art in general, or is out of sympathy with the political att.i.tude of a certain series in particular, finds itself gradually becoming familiar with the series, through fugitive and unexpected glimpses, and ends by following the series with amus.e.m.e.nt and interest and a growing curiosity as to what new and absurd complications the artist will next introduce. This employment of the series idea is as successful in social as political satire. Mr. Outcault's "Yellow Kid" and "Buster Brown," Mr. Opper's "Happy Hooligan" and "Alphonse and Gaston," Gene Carr's "Lady Bountiful," and Carl Schultze's "Foxy Grandpa" are types that have won friends throughout the breadth of the continent. In the domain of strictly political caricature, however, there is no series that has attracted more attention than Homer Davenport's familiar conception of the Trusts, symbolized as a bulky, overgrown, uncouth figure, a primordial giant from the Stone Age. And since there have been a number of apocryphal stories regarding the source of Mr. Davenport's inspiration, it will not be without interest to print the artist's own statement. "As a matter of fact," he says, "I got the idea in St.

Mark's Square in Venice. Seeing a flock of pigeons flying about in that neighborhood I immediately, with my love of birds and beasts, determined by fair means or foul to purloin a pair. I watched them fly hither and thither, and in following them came across a statue of Samson throwing some man or other--I forget his name--to the ground.

The abnormal size of the muscles of the figure struck me at once, and turning round to my wife, who was with me, I said with a sudden inspired thought, 'The Trusts!'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Davenport's Conception of the Trusts.]

Of equal importance are the various series in lighter vein through which Mr. Opper aims to lead people to the same way of thinking politically as the paper which he serves. Long years of labor and constant production do not seem to have in any way drained his power of invention, for no sooner has one series done its work, and before the public has become sated with it, than an entirely new line of cartoons is introduced. Mr. Opper, as well as Mr. Davenport, has had his fling at and drawn his figure of the Trusts, and to place the two figures side by side is to contrast the methods and work of the men.

Mr. Opper's purpose seems to be, first of all, to excite your mirth, and consequently he never fails to produce a certain effect. When you take up one of his cartoons in which the various stout, st.u.r.dy, and well-fed gentlemen typifying the different Trusts are engaged in some pleasant game the object of which is the robbing, or abusing of the pitiable, dwarfish figure representative of the Common People, your first impulse is a desire to laugh at the ludicrous contrast. It is only afterwards that you begin to think seriously how badly the abject little victim is being treated, and what a claim he has upon your sympathy and indignation. In those series which are designed entirely along party lines, such as "Willie and his Papa," this method is even more effective, since it begins by disarming party opposition.

Of such men, and the younger draughtsmen of to-day, much more might be written with sympathetic understanding and enthusiasm. But most of them belong rather to the century that has just begun rather than that which has lately closed, and a hundred years from now, whoever attempts to do for the twentieth century a service a.n.a.logous to that which has here been undertaken for the nineteenth, will find an infinitely ampler and richer store of material, thanks to this group of younger satirists in the full flood of their enthusiasm, who are valiantly carrying on the traditions of the men of the past--of Leech and Tenniel, of Daumier, and Philipon, and Cham and Andre Gill, of Nast and Keppler and Gillam, and who have already begun to record with trenchant pencil the events that are ushering in the dawn of the new century.

THE END