[56] As a power for the encouragement of virtue and the suppression of
vice, caricature cannot be too highly estimated, though often abused.
It is doubtful which exercises the greater influence, poem or picture.
In England, perhaps, picture wields the greater power; in France,
song. Yet, “let me write the ballads and you may govern the people,”
is an English axiom which was well known before pictures became so
plentiful or so popular, or the refined cartoons of Mr. Punch were
ever dreamt of. In Paris, where art-education is highly developed,
fugitive designs seems to have, with but few exceptions, descended
into vile abuse and indecent metaphor, the wildest invective being
exhausted upon trivial matters—hence the failure.
The art advocates of the Commune, with but few exceptions, seem to
have been of the most humble sort, inspired with the melodramatic
taste of our Seven Dials or the New Out, venting itself in
ill-drawn heroic females, symbols of the Republic, clad in white,
wearing either mural crowns or Phrygian caps, and waving red flags.
They are the work of aspiring juvenile artists or uneducated men. I
allude to art favourable to the Commune, and not that coëval with
it, or the vast mass of pictorial unpleasantly born of gallic rage
during the Franco-Prussian war, including such designs as the
horrible allegory of Bayard, “Sedan, 1870,” a large work depicting
Napoleon III. drawn in a calèche and four, over legions of his
dying soldiers, in the presence of a victorious enemy and the
shades of his forefathers’, and the well-known subject, so popular
in photography, of “The Pillory,” Napoleon between King William and
Bismarck, also set in the midst of a mass of dead and dying
humanity. Paper pillories are always very popular in Paris, and
under the Commune the heads of Tropmann and Thiers were exhibited
in a wooden vice, inscribed Pantin and Neuilly underneath. And,
again, in another print, entitled “The Infamous,” we have Thiers,
Favre, and MacMahon, seen in a heavenly upper storey, fixed to
stakes, contemplating a dead mother and her child, slain in their
happy home, the wounds very sanguine and visible, the only
remaining relict being a child of very tender years in an
overturned cradle; beneath is the inscription “Their Works.”
Communal art seems also to have been very severe upon landlords,
who are depicted with long faces and threadbare garments, seeking
alms in the street, or flying with empty bags and lean stomachs
from a very yellow sun, bearing the words “The Commune, 1871.”
Whilst as a contrast, a fat labourer, with a patch on his blouse,
luxuriates in the same golden sunshine.
As a sample of the better kind of French art, we give two
fac-similes, by Bertal, from _The Grelot_, a courageous journal
started during the Commune; it existed unmolested, and still
continues. We here insert a fac-simile of a sketch called “Paris
and his Playthings.”
“What destruction the unhappy, spoiled, and ill-bred child whose
name is Paris has done, especially of late!
“France, his strapping nurse, put herself in a passion in vain, the
child would not listen to reason. He broke Trochu’s arms, ripped up
Gambetta, to see what there was inside. He blew out the lantern of
Rochefort; as to Bergeret himself, he trampled him under foot.
“He has dislocated all his puppets, strewed the ground with the
_débris_ of his fancies, and he is not yet content,—‘What do you
want, you wretched baby?’—‘I want the moon!’ The old woman called
the Assembly was right in refusing this demand,—‘The moon, you
little wretch, and what would you do with it if you had it?’—‘I
would pull it to bits, as I did the rest.’”
Further on will be found “Paris eating a General a day” (Chapter
LXXVIII). Early in June, 1871 there appeared in the same journal
“The International Centipede,” “John Bull and the Blanche Albion.”
The Queen of England, clad in white, holding in her hands a model
of the Palace of Westminster, and sundry docks, resists the
approach of an interminable centipede, on which she stamps, vainly
endeavouring to impede the progress of the coil of fire and blood
approaching to soil and fire her fair robe; beside her stands John
Bull, in a queer mixed costume, half sailor, with the smalls and
gaiters of a coalheaver. He bears the Habeas Corpus Act under his
arm, but stands aghast and paralysed, it never seeming to have
occurred to the artist that this “Monsieur John Boule, Esquire,”
was well adapted by his beetle-crushers to stamp out the vermin.
Perhaps, it is needless to add, that the snake-like form issues
from a hole in distant Prussia, meandering through many nations,
causing great consternation, and that M. Thiers is finishing off
the French section in admirable style.
[Illustration: Little Paris and his Playthings. Nurse. Mais! Sacré
mille noms d’un moutard! what will you want next?—PETIT PARIS: I’ll
have the moon!]