on outside opinion, in a very clever print in my own possession entitled
"Promised Horrors of the French Invasion, or Forcible Reasons for
Neglecting a Regicide Peace." The print is so full of masterly detail
that it almost defies description. In the centre a figure (? that of
Pitt) is being flogged by Fox beneath the Tree of Liberty, planted at
the Piccadilly end of St. James's Street, with three human thigh-bones
at its base; beside it the French troops march up St. James's Street,
leaving the Palace in smoke and flames, and invade White's Club on their
right, pitching its ill-fated members on to the bayonets in the street,
but are received by the members of Brookes's Club on their left with
cries of welcome, and a set of heads neatly arranged upon a plate, with
the motto, "Killed for the Public Good!" October 20, 1796, is the date
of this magnificent cartoon of our artist, which must have found an echo
in public opinion: but ships, troops, and subsidies mean taxation, and
Pitt's continued demands on the Treasury are satirised in "The Nuptial
Bower" (February 15, 1797) and "Political Ravishment, or The Old Lady of
Threadneedle Street in Danger" (May 22, 1797).
=THE JACOBIN DRUMMER=
=_By James Gillray_ BRITANNIA BETWEEN DEATH AND THE DOCTORS=
In the year following (1798) the form of Nelson makes its appearance
in the print of "The British Hero cleansing ye Mouth of ye Nile," and in
"John Bull Taking a Luncheon"--off a captured French three-decker.
For now, too (November 21, 1799), the figure of Buonaparte, which was to
occupy so fully Gillray's pencil, makes his entry into these caricatures
in the cartoon of "Exit Liberte, a la Francois (_sic_) or, Buonaparte
closing the Farce of Egalite at S. Cloud, near Paris, November 16,
1799."
Another print, however, touching the Directorate period is too important
to be entirely omitted from our list. It is called "Ci-devant
Occupations, or Madame Tallien and the Empress Josephine dancing naked
before Barras in the Winter or 1797--a Fact." The dancers can be traced
behind a veil of gauze, while Barras sits at table, very drunk, beneath
an infant Bacchus wearing the Cap of Liberty, and Buonaparte watches the
scene from the side in front of a pile of skulls. "Madame Tallien," we
are here informed, "is a beautiful woman, tall and elegant: Josephine is
smaller and thin, with bad teeth"; in which case she must be the figure
nearest Buonaparte, and must have gone up in weight--in Gillray's
view--before she appears in his "Handwriting on the Wall."
It would be impossible within the limits of this series to give a
detailed list of all the superb series of Gillray's satires on the
Napoleonic struggle. I have been fortunate enough to obtain for this
work reproductions of three among the best ones; but my account may do
well to commence with that delightful print (another hit at Charles
James Fox) of the "Introduction of Citizen Volpone and his Suite at
Paris"; might note further "The Vexation of Little Boney"; and strike a
higher note in "The Handwriting upon the Wall," where, in the hour of
his triumph, Buonaparte, seated at table beside an enormously stout
Josephine, with gigantic and savage-looking Guards and very
_decolletees_ and ringleted maids-of-honour waiting in service on them,
sees with dilated eyes on the wall the warning of his doom.
=_By James Gillray_ ARMED HEROES (WILLIAM PITT AND BUONAPARTE)=
Of course the threatened invasion of England finds its echo in Gillray's
prints. "French Invasion, or Buonaparte Landing," "Armed Heroes" (of
which I give here a reproduction), and the "King of Brobindnag and
Gulliver" all belong to this theme of the nation's peril; as does that
interesting print, which I also reproduce, of "Britannia between
Death and the Doctor," where the sick lady is threatened on the one side
by Buonaparte as Death, the while Pitt, as chief physician, executes a
war dance at the expense of his professional rivals, planting his heel
very neatly in the mouth of the prostrate Charles James Fox. Napoleon's
European victories find comment in the "Surrender of Ulm," and in
another of my plates, "Tiddy Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Maker,
drawing out a New Batch of Kings," where Talleyrand seems, very
appropriately, to be the figure in the background kneading the dough
(note, too, the rubbish heap). But the worst danger was past already at
the time (as we know now) of that fine plate that commemorates the
"Death of Admiral Lord Nelson in the Moment of Victory," published by
Humphrey of St. James Street, on December 23, 1805.
Gillray, after trying various publishers--Kent, Brown, Holland of Oxford
Street, Fores of Piccadilly--seems to have settled down with Humphrey,
first in the Strand, then in Bond Street, and later St. James Street,
whose shop-windows became famed for his prints. Joseph Grego, a known
authority on our artist, relates that Fox and Burke once walked into
the shop together, alarming the worthy proprietress by this sudden
invasion of Gillray's favourite subjects. But Burke reassured her with a
smile: "Were I to prosecute you it would be the making of your fortune;
and that favour, excuse me, Mrs. Humphrey, you do not entirely merit at
my hands."
We may terminate our study or Gillray's Napoleonic caricatures very
appropriately with the "Spanish Bullfight," in which Buonaparte is
tossed by the Spanish bull (Peninsular War of 1808) before the assembled
Powers of Europe (dated July 11, 1808); and the fine print of the
"Valley of the Shadow of Death" (September 24, 1808), in which the
prediction of an earlier print ("The Handwriting on the Wall") seems
near its fulfilment, and the Powers of Europe in grim demonic shapes
surround the terrified ruler, the British lion charging him full in
front, while the Russian bear takes an ugly snatch from behind at his
legs.
=_By James Gillray_ BUONAPARTE AS KING-MAKER (WITH TALLEYRAND TO HELP)=
James Gillray's political caricatures are so interesting and so
important, they form such a priceless commentary on the history of the
time, that I have given them the priority of space over his amusing
social satires, which scourge without mercy the follies of dress and
fashion. "A Lady putting on her Cap" (1795), "Lady Godiva's Rout"
(1796), "High Change in Bond Street" (1796), "A Modern Belle at Bath"
(1796), and "A Fashionable Mamma" come into this class, as well as
"Following the Fashion," "Characters in High Life," and many others. It
was the epoch when English ladies' waists seem to have risen nearly to
their arm-pits, and when their hair towered up correspondingly into a
forest of feathers; and all the above prints--as well as the series of
"Faro's Daughters," directed at the gambling craze, "The Graces in a
High Wind (as seen from Nature in Kensington Gardens)," and the still
more risky series of "Three Stages of a Lady's Toilet,"--depict these
extreme fashions.
"Tales of Wonder," "Advantages of Wearing Muslin Dresses, dedicated to
the Fashionable Ladies of Great Britain," "A Broad Hint of not Meaning
to Dance," "A Company shocked at a Lady getting up to Ring the Bell,"
belong to a slightly later period of costume, say 1802-04.
"Dido in Despair" is evidently a satire on the beautiful Lady Hamilton,
who is however represented in this print as enormously fat.[10] Gillray
has evidently no sympathy or mercy for the frail and famous beauty; for
here she is tumbling out of bed in nightcap and nightdress, from which a
huge foot protrudes, while she waves her fat arms in despair. A flask of
Maraschino is on the dressing-table near the rouge pot; on the floor
lie broken antiques; and a work on _Studies of Academic Attitudes_, with
scarcely academic illustrations, lies near the window, through which is
seen a line of British battleships standing out to sea.
"Ah where and oh where is my gallant sailor gone?
He's gone to fight the Frenchmen for George upon the throne,"--
is the motto of this print, which was published by Humphrey on February
6 of 1801. "The Bulstrode Siren" (Mrs. Billington), where she is seen
warbling to the Duke of Portland, fares little better than Emma herself;
and Sir William Hamilton appears, in another of Gillray's satires, as
"A Conoscenti contemplating ye beauties of ye Antique." Among these last
_objets d'art_ a battered "Lais" and a "Bacchante" who has lost her head
seem as full of cryptic allusion as the dancing figures on a Greek vase
and the Cupid with a bent arrow; while quite in Hogarth's best vein is
the "Mark Antony" framed upon the wall, in a cocked hat and admiral's
uniform, the "Cleopatra" with a gin bottle, and a view of Vesuvius in
full eruption.
Sheridan is a frequent figure in Gillray's political caricatures; but
perhaps he was never more happily treated than when he enters as
Harlequin, armed with a goose quill, and assisted by John Kemble and the
famous Mrs. Siddons, in "Blowing up the Pic Nics." To the same class and
subject of satire belongs the "Pic Nic Orchestra" and "Dilettante
Theatre"--this last a Green-room scene which seems reminiscent of
Hogarth's print of a similar subject. "Two-penny Whist" and "Push-pin"
are filled with contemporary portraits;[11] and the two series of
"Cockney Sportsmen" (4 plates, 1800) and "Elements of Skating" (4
plates, 1805) must not be overlooked any more than such weirdly hideous
creations as "Comfort to the Corns," as "Begone dull Care, I prithee,"
and "The Gout."
Interesting, however, though much of Gillray's social satire certainly
is, it scarcely reaches the same level as his political work. He was a
magnificent engraver, and was able in his best time to build up his
cartoon with the smallest possible scaffolding, a few lines pencilled
upon a card being enough to enable him to commence at once upon the
copper; while the freedom and facility of his design is witnessed amply
by all his prints--those prints which we have now studied in some
measure together, though anything in the nature of a comprehensive
catalogue is denied me by the space at my command. His influence, too,
upon Isaac Cruikshank is to be marked, as a link in the evolution of
English caricature.
In his later years James Gillray resided almost entirely with his kindly
publisher, Mrs. Humphrey, of whom, as I have noted, he has left a
whimsical portrait, with her faithful maid "giggling Betty," in his
print of "Two-penny Whist." Mrs. Humphrey appreciated her client's
genius, and at one time their mutual understanding got so far on the
road to matrimony that they had already reached the door of the church
(their parish church of S. James, Piccadilly) when this eccentric
bridegroom remarked, "This is a foolish affair, Mrs. Humphrey. We live
very comfortably together--better let well alone!"--and walked home to
work on his copper plate. But even if this legend of blighted hopes be
correct, the good spinster in any case devoted herself no less to the
artist's comfort and welfare; and the tragedy of his later years was due
to himself alone. Intemperance weakened his powers; and in the last
years of his life he lapsed, from this cause probably, into a condition
of mental imbecility, which contrasts sadly with those busy and
successful years of his life, from 1777 to close on 1810.
He died upon the 1st of June, 1815, and was buried near the rectory of
S. James, Piccadilly; within reach of the busy roar of that London whose
complex multitudinous life he had lived amongst and loved and studied,
and which still surges around his last resting-place in changed and
ever-changing forms.
V
THE COMEDY OF LIFE
Thomas Rowlandson, the last and in some ways the greatest of the
caricaturists whose work illustrates the eighteenth century, was born in
London in 1756, being thus just six years younger than Bunbury, and one
year older than Gillray; so that all these artists cover very much the
same period, although their work has elements of the greatest diversity.
In Bunbury we have seen the really gifted amateur, who entrusted his
clever sketches to other hands to be engraved, who kept in touch with
social life in London and county society, and pursued his career in the
army and at Court, while throughout devoting himself to art as his
greatest hobby. Again, later, we have traced briefly Gillray's supreme
talent, both as engraver and draughtsman, more especially in his
magnificent series of contemporary political cartoons. But in Rowlandson
we touch a genius as fertile, but of a different order, and, I incline
to think, of a considerably wider grasp; and if I call this chapter,
which I am devoting especially to his work, the "Comedy of Life"--in
contrast to pictorial morals, to society or politics--it is because life
in all its exuberance, all its variety and fertility, seems to stream on
us from the gifted artist's pencil.
But Life contains--thanks be--not only coarse, distorted types of
humanity, exaggerations of foolish fashion, and political antagonisms,
but grace and beauty, even with the changing form of the time-spirit;
and it is just here that Rowlandson infinitely surpasses those
contemporaries whom we studied in our last chapter. His female figures
have often that rich English beauty which we find in Reynolds, Hoppner,
or sometimes in Morland; and his landscape has qualities of very
exceptional merit. He might, we are frequently tempted to think, have
been a painter worthy to take a front rank even in that magnificent
English eighteenth-century school, which included Reynolds,
Gainsborough, Romney, Hoppner, among its glories; but as we come to
study his life we shall find in the _insouciance_ of his character, in
the very facility of his genius, the causes which made him--not, indeed,
entirely to our loss--only the greatest caricaturist of his time.
As a boy already, at Dr. Barrow's academy in Soho, he had attracted
notice by his humorous sketches of his fellow pupils; and in his
sixteenth year he went to Paris at the invitation of his aunt, a Mlle.
Chatelier, with the object of pursuing art study in that city. He had
already been admitted as a student in the Royal Academy; and his life
studies in Paris are said to have possessed great merit. Paris itself at
this time (about 1772-4), with Louis XV. still on the throne, must have
been very fascinating to the young English lad, living with a relative
who treated him with affection and generosity, in the first
consciousness too of his genius, in the midst of a most brilliant
capital, and with every prospect of fortune waiting for him. These years
left, without doubt, an indelible impression on his mind. Mr. Grego, an
authority on this artist as well as Gillray, expresses this[12] very
happily when he says: "It was the more romantic Paris of Sterne that
Rowlandson first viewed, and he seems to have recognised and noted down
the characteristics of the same typical personages described by
'Yorick'; their two satirical points of view were identical. It was
indeed the ideal artistic centre: Fragonard, Lavrience, Eisen, St. Aubin,
and the school of followers of Boucher and Lancret--elegant triflers in
their way, but unequalled for dash and brilliancy--were the leading
spirits as Rowlandson imbibed his first inspiration from these
attractive fonts. His two years' residence in the midst of these
appetising surroundings must have been the happiest of Rowlandson's
career; the seeds sown amid these gayer scenes blossomed forth in later
years, and influenced the artist in gradually devoting his gifts from
the dull routine of portrait-painting to the indulgence of his fruitful
imagination."
Whether indeed all the influence which the critic here mentions was
entirely for good, is, I think myself, open to question. It is quite
possible that our artist acquired at this time the taste for gambling
which led him to the brink of ruin more than once in later life; and I
have suggested already that had he kept to painting he might have
achieved in that medium a fame far above even that which he now
possesses. For on his return to London he resumed his studies at the
Royal Academy Schools, and in 1775 exhibited at the Academy "Samson
visited by Delilah," which he followed up by the portraits on which he
was busy now in Wardour Street from 1778 to 1781. His work must have
shown considerable power to be hung beside the canvases of Reynolds,
Romney, and Hoppner; but at the later date of 1784 his exhibited
drawings--"Vauxhall Gardens," "The Serpentine," and "An Italian
Family"--show already a tendency to the lighter side of art, and between
the above date and 1787 the direction of his art has changed in favour
of caricature.
His imagination was as fertile as his pencil was facile. The market was
easy--Fores (for whom Gillray also worked), Ackermann,[13] and others
offering a ready sale for his satires; and, since we are treating of him
here as a caricaturist, it is at this point that we must take his work
in detail. The purely humorous prints commence as early as 1781 ("The
Village Doctor," published in June of that year by Humphrey), and are
followed up (November 27, same year and publisher) by "Charity Covereth
a Multitude of Sins," and that unpleasing subject (published by Fores,
1783) of "The Amputation"; but it is in his political cartoons of
1784--such as "Britannia roused, or the Coalition Monster
destroyed"--that we begin to recognise the distinctive touch of Thomas
Rowlandson. This vigorous print shows a half-draped female figure
catching Charles James Fox by the ankle and Lord North by the throat; in
this print he takes the same political attitude as his contemporary
Gillray, whom he resembles, though far less virulently, in his
anti-French prints, while he shows less marked hostility to the reigning
house.
The famous Westminster election of the same year (1784) brought
Rowlandson still further into political satire, in which Charles James
Fox and the beautiful Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire, are leading
figures. In "The Devonshire, or the most approved manner of securing
votes," the lovely duchess is bestowing a warm embrace on a voter, in
the shape of a fat butcher, while another lady, perhaps the Duchess of
Gordon, looks on approvingly with the words "Huzza! Fox for ever!" In
the "Lords of the Bedchamber," Georgina, seated in her _boudoir_
beneath Reynolds' portrait of her duke, is entertaining to tea two
privileged visitors, Fox and his leading supporter, Sam House--"brave,
bald-headed Sam" as he was then called. The enthusiastic support which
her Grace gave to Fox's candidature gave an opening which was
used--often too freely--by the caricaturists. In "Wit's last stake, or
the Cobbler's vote," she is seated upon Fox's knee, the while a cobbler
puts a stitch into her shoe, so that she may have the excuse of pouring
a handful of guineas into his wife's hand. In another print she appears
neglecting the infant heir of the Cavendishes for a fox, dressed up in
baby clothes; and upon Fox's triumphant return is made by the artist to
carry him pick-a-back, and to stop at Mungo's Hotel for a drop of gin.
It is but fair to our Caricaturist to say that the fair Pittite
champion, Lady Buckingham, is treated no less mercilessly; and that,
even while he was aiming the most outrageous shafts of ridicule and
innuendo at the Duchess, his pencil did justice to her extraordinary
beauty and charm, both in the prints above mentioned, and in a
"Procession to the Hustings after a successful Canvass," in which she
leads the way in a big picture hat, and carrying a perfectly
indescribable ensign with "The Man of the People" as its legend.
Finally, "The Westminster Mendicant" and the "Westminster Deserter
drummed out" complete this really brilliant series of election
caricatures, of which I have only detailed the most interesting. In the
last-named print it is "brave baldheaded" Sam House who beats the drum,
while on his left is the triumphant candidate, Charles James Fox, who
addresses the crowd with the time-hallowed words, "Friends and fellow
citizens, I cannot find words to express my feelings, etc.," and on his
right the defeated Sir Cecil Wray; while behind are the Irish chairmen
who had fought (in every sense of the word) so lustily for Fox, and a
procession of London maidservants, armed with mops and brooms.
In my account of this series of prints (which all fall within the dates
of April and May of 1784) I shall note briefly one remaining print, "For
the Benefit of the Champion," in which Fox and Lord North, in female
attire, and the Duchess in her large picture hat, but _decollettee_, and
with bare arms, are busy singing a dirge on the defeated opponent.
Georgina, a figure of delicious sprightliness and beauty, points to
the tombstone marked "Here lies poor Cecil Ray," while the spectacled
profile of Burke peeps into the door. And here I may remark again how
astonishingly to my own experience a study of these prints makes history
real, vivid, and living. These dry bones of bygone politics become
clothed with flesh; and names which we had studied with colder interest
become friends, and almost intimates. Ere we leave the theme of
politics, it may be noted that in the great French War Rowlandson does
not come behind Gillray in his patriotic enthusiasm. A whole series of
prints, from July to September 1808, was directed against Napoleon;
while Nelson appears in a print of which, by the kindness of its
possessor, Mr. Newman, a great collector of Nelson relics, I am able to
give a plate--"Admiral Nelson recruiting with his brave tars after the
glorious Battle of the Nile" (published by Ackermann, October 20, 1798);
and both contemporary figures are alluded to in "Napoleon Buonaparte in
a Fever on Receiving the Astounding Gazette of Nelson's Victory over the
Combined Fleets" (Ackermann, November 13, 1805).
=_By Thomas Rowlandson_ NELSON RECRUITING WITH HIS BRAVE TARS AFTER THE
BATTLE OF THE NILE=
But it is time for us to betake ourselves to Rowlandson's social
caricatures, which after all represent the best of his life work; and I
am tempted to quote--in seeking illustration of that wonderful sense of
life which seems to stream upon us from his pencil--some words of my own
in an earlier work, in which I had occasion to treat of this artist.
"These creatures of his scenes of comedy--drawn boldly in outline with
the reed pen dipped in Indian ink and vermillion, with the shadows then
washed in, and the whole slightly tinted in colour--seem full-blooded,
vigorous, overflowing with animal life and energy. His women above all
are delicious. Rather voluptuous, perhaps, and full in form, but yet
indescribably charming in their mob caps, or those big 'picture' hats
that George Morland loved, in the tight sleeves and high-waisted gowns
falling in long folds about their limbs--their eyes sparkling with
roguery, and their whole being breathing the charm of sex."[14]
We may commence our study of his social satires here, in following to
some extent the sequence of time, with "A Sketch from Nature"--published
by J. R. Smith in January of 1784, and engraved by him in stipple with
great beauty and finish. The subject here recalls a very similar scene
in Hogarth's "Rake's Progress," for here, as there, a merry company of
both sexes is engaged in riotous revel; and the wine and punch flowing
freely has got into the heads, and found expression in the behaviour, of
the nymphs and their attendant swains. "Money-lenders," "Councillor and
Client," and "Bookseller and Author" (all 1784) are excellent
character-studies of male figures: the eighteenth century evidently
needed the presence of Sir Walter Besant, for the bookseller is fat,
prosperous, and overbearing, the author terribly thin, poorly dressed,
and looking overworked. In "The Golden Apple or the Modern Paris" (1785)
the fair Georgina again appears before us with her rival beauties, the
Duchesses of Rutland and Gordon:
"Here Juno Devon, all sublime,
Minerva Gordon's wit and eyes,
Sweet Rutland, Venus in her prime."