FRENCH CARICATURE.
It is inevitable that bad rulers should dread the satiric pencil.
Caricature, powerless against an administration that is honest and
competent, powerless against a public man who does his duty in his
place, is nevertheless a most effective device against arrogance,
double-dealing, corruption, cowardice, and iniquity. England, as the
French themselves admit, is the native home of political caricature; but
not an instance can be named in all its history of caricature injuring a
good man or defeating a good measure. A free pencil, too, becomes ever a
gayer and a kinder pencil. The measure of freedom which France has
occasionally enjoyed during the last ninety years has never lasted long
enough to wear off the keen point of the satirist's ridicule; and
collectors can tell, by the number and severity of the pictures in a
port-folio, just how much freedom Frenchmen possessed when they were
produced. It is curious, also, to note that caricatures on the wrong
side of great public questions are never excellent. It is doubtful if a
bad man with the wealth of an empire at his command could procure the
execution of one first-rate caricature hostile to the public good. A
despot can never fight this fire with fire, and has no resource but to
stamp it out.
Vainly, therefore, will the most vigilant collector search for _French_
caricatures of Napoleon Bonaparte published during his reign. His
government was a despotism _not_ tempered by epigrams, and it was
controlled by a despot who, though not devoid of a sense of humor, had
all a Corsican's mortal hatred of ridicule. No man in France was less
French than Napoleon, either in lineage or in character. His moral
position in Paris was not unlike that which Othello might have held in
Venice, if Othello had been base enough to betray and expel the senate
which he had sworn to serve. We can imagine how the shy, proud Moor
would have writhed under the pasquinades of the graceful, dissolute
Venetian wits whom he despised. So Napoleon, who never ceased to have
much in him of the semi-barbarian chief (and always looked like one when
he was dressed in imperial robes), shrunk with morbid apprehension from
the tongue of Madame De Stael, and wrote autograph notes to Fouche
calling his attention to the placards and verses of the street-corners.
There is something more than ludicrous in the spectacle of this rude
soldier, with a million armed men under his command, and half Europe at
his feet, sitting down in rage and affright to order Fouche to send a
little woman over the frontiers lest she should say something about him
for the drawing-rooms of Paris to laugh at.
[Illustration: Talleyrand--the Man with Six Heads. (Paris, 1817.)]
In place of caricature, therefore, we have only allegorical "glory" in
the fugitive pictures of his reign, few of which are worthy of
remembrance.
English Gillray, on the other side of the Channel, made most ample
amends. Modern caricature has not often equaled some of the best of
Gillray's upon Napoleon. In 1806, when the conqueror had finally lost
his head, dazzled and bewildered by his own victories, and was setting
up new kingdoms with a facility which began to be amusing, Gillray
produced his masterpiece of the "Great French Gingerbread Baker drawing
out a New Batch of Kings." It is full of happy detail. Besides the
central figure of Bonaparte himself drawing from the "New French Oven" a
fresh batch of monarchs, we see Bishop Talleyrand kneading in the
"Political Kneading-trough," into which Poland, Hanover, and Prussia
have just been thrown. There is also the "Ash-hole for Broken
Gingerbread," into which Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and broad-backed
Holland have been swept. On a chest of drawers stand a number of "Dough
Viceroys intended for the Next Batch," and the drawers are labeled
"Kings and Queens," "Crowns and Sceptres," "Suns and Moons." Gillray
burlesqued almost all the history of the gingerbread colossus from the
Egyptian expedition onward, but he never surpassed the gayety and
aptness of this picture, which was all the more effective in English
eyes because gilt gingerbread made into figures of kings, queens,
crowns, anchors, and princes' feathers, is a familiar object at English
fairs.
Napoleon himself may have laughed at it. We know that at St. Helena he
applauded English caricatures of a similar character, notably one which
represented George III. as a corpulent old man standing on the English
coast, hurling in fury a huge beet at the head of Napoleon on the other
side of the Channel, and saying to him, "Go and make yourself some
sugar!"[35] We know also that while he relished the satirical pictures
aimed at his enemies and rivals, he was very far from enjoying those
which reflected disagreeably upon himself. "If caricatures," said he one
day at St. Helena, "sometimes avenge misfortune, they form a continual
annoyance to power; and how many have been made upon me! I think I have
had my share of them."
[Footnote 35: "Napoleon at St. Helena," p. 90, by John S. C. Abbott, New
York, Harper & Brothers.]
[Illustration: A Great Man's Last Leap--Napoleon going on Board the
English Frigate, assisted by the Faithful Bertrand. (Paris, 1815.)]
Even he did not care for caricature when he was right. If it can be said
that Napoleon Bonaparte conferred upon France one lasting good, it was
beet-root sugar; but the satire aimed at that useful article does not
appear to have offended him. In a newspaper of June, 1812, we read: "A
caricature has been executed at Paris, in which the emperor and the King
of Rome are the most prominent characters. The emperor is represented as
sitting at the table in the nursery with a cup of coffee before him,
into which he is squeezing beet-root. Near to him is seated the young
King of Rome, voraciously sucking the beet-root. The nurse, who is
steadfastly observing him, is made to say, '_Suck, dear_, suck; your
father _says_ it is sugar.'" He did not care, probably, for that. It
would have been far otherwise if a draughtsman had touched upon his mad
invasion of Russia.
It was not until his power was gone that French satirists tried their
pencils upon him, and then with no great success. With the downfall of
Napoleon was involved the prostration of France. Humiliation followed
humiliation. The spirit of Frenchmen was broken, and their resources
were exhausted. In the presence of such events as the Russian
catastrophe, the march of the allies upon Paris, Napoleon's banishment
to Elba, the Hundred Days, Waterloo, the encampment of foreign armies in
the public places of Paris, the flight of the emperor, and his final
exile, the satirist was superseded, and burlesque itself was outdone by
reality. When at last Paris was restored to herself, and peace again
gave play to the human mind, Napoleon was covered with the majesty of
what seemed a sublime misfortune. That peerless histrionic genius took
the precaution in critical moments to let the world know what character
he was enacting, and accordingly, when he stepped on board the English
man-of-war, he announced himself to mankind as Themistocles
magnanimously seeking an asylum at the hands of the most powerful of his
enemies.
The good ruler is he who leaves to his successor, if not an easy task,
yet one not too difficult for respectable talents. Napoleon solved none
of the menacing problems. He threw no light upon the difficulties with
which the modern world finds itself face to face. Every year that he
reigned he only heaped up perplexity for his successors, until the
mountain mass transcended all human ability, and entailed upon Frenchmen
that tumultuous apprenticeship in self-government which is yet far from
ending.
[Illustration: Talleyrand.]
The first effort of the caricaturists in Paris after the Restoration was
simply to place the figure of a weather-cock after the names of public
men who had shown particular alacrity in changing their politics with
the changing dynasties. This was soon improved upon by putting
weather-cocks enough to denote the precise number of times a personage
had veered. Thus Talleyrand, who from being a bishop and a nobleman had
become a republican, then a minister under Napoleon, and at last a
supporter and servant of the Restoration, besides exhibiting various
minor changes, was complimented with as many weather-cocks as the fancy
of each writer suggested.
Six appears to have been the favorite number. We find in a previous
picture that he is represented as the man with six heads. The public men
signalized by this simple device were said to belong to the Order of the
Weather-cock; and it was the interest of the reactionists, who urged on
the trial and execution of Ney and his comrades, to cover them with
odium. To this day much of that odium clings to the name of Talleyrand.
A man who keeps a cool head in the midst of madmen is indeed a most
offensive person, and Talleyrand committed this enormity more than once
in his life. So far as we can yet discern, the only "treason" he ever
practiced toward the governments with which he was connected consisted
in giving them better advice than they were capable of acting upon. The
few words which he uttered on leaving the council-chamber, after vainly
advising Marie Louise to remain in her husband's abode and maintain the
moral dignity of his administration, show how well he understood the
collapse of the "empire" and its cause: "It is difficult to comprehend
such weakness in such a man as the emperor. What a fall is his! _To
give his name to a series of adventures, instead of bestowing it upon
his century!_ When I think of that, I can not help groaning." Then he
added the words which gave him his high place in the Order of the
Weather-cock: "But now what part to take? It does not suit every body to
let himself be overwhelmed in the ruins of this edifice." Particularly
it did not suit M. de Talleyrand, and he was not overwhelmed,
accordingly. Considering the manner in which France was governed during
his career, he might well say, "I have not betrayed governments:
governments have betrayed me."
It is mentioned by M. Champfleury as a thing unprecedented that this
weather-cock device did not wholly lose its power to amuse the Parisians
for two years. The portly person and ancient court of the king, Louis
XVIII., called forth many caricatures at a later period. This king was
as good-natured, as well-intentioned, as honorable a Bourbon as could
have been found in either hemisphere. It was not he who enriched all
languages by the gift of his family name. It was not his obstinate
adherence to ancient folly which caused it to be said that the Bourbons
had forgotten nothing and learned nothing. Born as long before his
accession as 1755, he was an accomplished and popular prince of mature
age during the American Revolution and the intellectual ferment which
followed it in France. A respectable scholar (for a prince), well versed
in literature (for a prince), a good judge of art (for a prince), of
liberal politics (for a prince), and not so hopelessly ignorant of state
affairs as kings and princes usually were, he watched the progress of
the Revolution with some intelligence and, at first, with some sympathy.
Both then and in 1815 he appears to have been intelligently willing to
accept a constitution that should have left his family on the throne by
right divine.
Right divine was his religion, to which he sacrificed much, and,
unquestionably, would have sacrificed his life. When he was living in
exile upon the bounty of the Emperor of Russia, he said to his nephew,
on the wedding-day of that young Bourbon: "If the crown of France were
of roses, I would give it to you. It is of thorns; I keep it." And,
indeed, a turn in politics expelled him soon after, in the middle of
winter, from his abode, and made him again a dependent wanderer. In
1803, too, when there could be descried no ray of hope of the
restoration of the old dynasty, and Napoleon, apparently lord of the
world, offered him a principality in landed wealth if he would but
formally renounce the throne, he replied in a manner which a believer in
divine right might think sublime:
"I do not confound M. Bonaparte with those who have preceded him. His
valor, his military talents, I esteem; and I am even grateful to him for
several measures of his administration, since good done to my people
will ever be dear to my heart. But if he thinks to engage me to
compromise my rights, he deceives himself. On the contrary, by the very
offer he now makes me he would establish them if they could be thought
of as doubtful. I do not know what are the designs of God with regard to
my house and myself, but I know the obligations imposed upon me by the
rank in which it was his pleasure to cause me to be born. A Christian, I
shall fulfill those obligations even to my latest breath; a son of St.
Louis, I shall know, taught by his example, how even in chains to
respect myself; a successor of Francis I., I desire at least to be able
to say, like him, 'All is lost but honor!'"
Again, in 1814, when the Emperor Alexander of Russia urged him to
concede so much to the popular feeling as to call himself King of the
_French_, and to omit from his style the words "_par la grace de Dieu_"
he answered: "Divine right is at once a consequence of religious dogma
and the law of the country. By that law for eight centuries the monarchy
has been hereditary in my family. Without divine right I am but an
infirm old man, long an exile from my country, and reduced to beg an
asylum. But by that right, the exile is King of France."
[Illustration: De la Villevielle, Cambaceres, D'Aigre Feuille--A
Promenade in the Palais Royal. (Paris, 1818.)]
He wrote and said these "neat things" himself, not by a secretary. Among
his happy sayings two have remained in the memory of Frenchmen:
"Punctuality is the politeness of kings," and "Every French soldier
carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack." He was, in short, a genial,
witty, polite old gentleman, willing to govern France constitutionally,
disposed to forget and forgive, and be the good king of the whole
people. But he was sixty years of age, fond of his ease, and extremely
desirous, as he often said, of dying in his own bed. He was surrounded
by elderly persons who were bigoted to a Past which could not be
resuscitated; and his brother, heir presumptive to the throne, was that
fatal Comte d'Artois (Charles X.) who aggravated the violence of the
Revolution of 1789, and precipitated that of 1830, by his total
incapacity to comprehend either. Gradually the gloomy party of reaction
and revenge who surrounded the heir presumptive gained the ascendency,
and the good-natured old king could only restrain its extravagance
enough to accomplish his desire of dying in his own house. Sincerely
religious, he was no bigot; and it was not by his wish that the court
assumed more and more the sombre aspect of a Jesuit seminary. It is
doubtful if there would have been one exception to the amnesty of
political offenses if Louis XVIII. had been as firm as he was kind. The
reader sees a proof of his good-nature in the picture on the preceding
page of Prince Cambaceres, who was Second Consul when Napoleon was First
Consul, and Arch-chancellor under the Empire, peacefully walking in the
streets of Paris with two of his friends. This caricature has a value in
preserving an excellent portrait of a personage noted for twenty years
in the history of France.
[Illustration: Family of the Extinguishers--Caricature of the
Restoration. (Paris, 1819.)]
To the Order of the Weather-cock succeeded, in 1819, when priestly
ascendency at court was but too manifest, the Family of the
Extinguishers. In the picture given below, the reader has the pleasure
of viewing some of the family portraits, and in another he sees members
of the family at work, rekindling the fire and extinguishing the lights.
The fire was to consume the charter of French liberty and the records of
science; the lights are the men to whom France felt herself indebted for
liberty and knowledge--Buffon, Franklin, D'Alembert, Montesquieu,
Voltaire, Montaigne, Fenelon, Condorcet, and their friends. Above is the
personified Church, with sword uplifted, menacing mankind with new St.
Bartholomews and Sicilian Vespers. Underneath this elaborate and
ingenious work was the refrain of Beranger's song of 1819, entitled "Les
Missionnaires," which was almost enough of itself to expel the Bourbons:
"Vite soufflons, soufflons, morbleu!
Eteignons les lumieres
Et rallumons le feu."
The historian of that period will not omit to examine the songs which
the incomparable Beranger wrote during the reign of the two kings of the
Restoration. "Le peuple, c'est ma Muse," the poet wrote many years
after, when reviewing this period. The people were his Muse. He studied
the people, he adds, "with religious care," and always found their
deepest convictions in harmony with his own. He had been completely
fascinated by the "genius of Napoleon," never suspecting that it was
Napoleon's lamentable _want_ of ability which had devolved upon the
respectable Louis XVIII. an impossible task. But he perceived that the
task _was_ impossible. There were two impossibilities, he thought, in
the way of a stable government. It was impossible for the Bourbons,
while they remained Bourbons, to govern France, and it was impossible
for France to make them any thing but Bourbons. Hence, in lending his
exquisite gift to the popular cause, he had no scruples and no reserves;
and he freely poured forth those wonderful songs which became
immediately part and parcel of the familiar speech of his countrymen.
Alas for a Bourbon when there is a Beranger loose in his capital!
Charles X. attempted the Bourbon policy of repression, and had the poet
twice imprisoned. But he could not imprison his songs, nor prevent his
writing new ones in prison, which sung themselves over France in a week.
Caricature, too, was severely repressed--the usual precursor of collapse
in a French government.
[Illustration: The Jesuits at Court. (Paris, 1819.)
"Quick! Blow! blow! Let us put out the lights and rekindle the fires!"]
The end of the Restoration, in 1830, occurred with a sudden and
spontaneous facility, which showed, among other things, how effectively
Beranger had sung from his garret and his prison. The old king in 1824
had his wish of dying in his own bed, and is said to have told his
successor, with his dying breath, that he owed this privilege to the
policy of tacking ship rather than allowing a contrary wind to drive her
upon the rocks. He advised "Monsieur" to pursue the same "tacking
policy." But Monsieur was Comte d'Artois, that entire and perfect
Bourbon, crusted by his sixty-seven years, a willing victim in the hands
of Jesuit priests. In six years the ship of state was evidently driving
full upon the rocks; but, instead of tacking, he put on all sail, and
let her drive. At a moment when France was in the last extremity of
alarm for the portion of liberty which her constitution secured her,
this unhappy king signed a decree which put the press under the control
of the Minister of Police, and the rest of the people of France under
Marshal Marmont. Twenty-one days after, August 16th, 1830, the king and
his suite were received on board of two American vessels, the _Charles
Carroll_ and the _Great Britain_, by which they were conveyed from
Cherbourg to Portsmouth. "This," said the king to his first English
visitors, "is the reward of my efforts to render France happy. I wished
to make one last attempt to restore order and tranquillity. The factions
have overturned me." The old gentleman resumed his daily mass, and found
much consolation for the loss of a crown in the slaughter of beasts and
birds. Louis Philippe was King of the _French_, by the grace of
Lafayette and the acquiescence of a majority of the French people.
Caricature, almost interdicted during the last years of the Restoration,
pursued the fugitive king and his family with avenging ridicule.
Gavarni, then an unknown artist of twenty-six, employed by Emile de
Girardin to draw the fashion plates of his new periodical, _La Mode_,
gave Paris, in those wild July days of 1830, the only political
caricatures he ever published. One represented the king as an
old-clothes man, bawling, "Old coats! old lace!" In another he appeared
astride of a lance, in full flight, in a costume composed of a priest's
black robe and the glittering uniform of a general; white bands at his
neck, the broad red ribbon of the Legion of Honor across his breast, one
arm loaded with mitres, relics, and chaplets, with the scissors of the
censer on the thumb, on the other side the end of a sabre, and the
meagre legs encompassed by a pair of huge jack-boots. Another picture,
called the "Lost Balloon," exhibited the king in the car of a balloon,
with the same preposterous boots hanging down, along with the Duc
d'Angouleme clinging to the sides, and the duchess crushing the king by
her weight. The royal banner, white, and sown with fleurs-de-lis,
streamed out behind as the balloon disappeared in the clouds.
These were the only political caricatures ever published by the man whom
Frenchmen regard as the greatest of their recent satirical artists. He
cared nothing for politics, and had the usual attachment of artists and
poets to the Established Order. Having aimed these light shafts at the
flying king in mere gayety of heart, because every one else was doing
the same, he soon remembered that the king was an old man, past
seventy-three, as old as his own father, and flying in alarm from his
home and country. He was conscience-stricken. Reading aloud one day a
poem in which allusion was made to a white-haired old man going into
exile with slow, reluctant steps, his voice broke, and he could scarcely
utter the lines:
"Pas d'outrage au vieillard qui s'exile a pas lents.
C'est une piete d'epargner les ruines.
Je n'enfoncerai pas la couronne d'epines
Que la main du malheur met sur ses cheveux blancs."
As he spoke these words the image of his old father rose vividly before
his mind, and he could read no more. "I felt," said he, "as if I had
been struck in the face;" and ever after he held political caricature in
horror.
This feeling is one with which the reader will often find himself
sympathizing while examining some of the heartless and thoughtless
pictures which exasperated the elderly paterfamilias who was now called
to preside over demoralized France. Louis Philippe was another
good-natured Louis XVIII., _minus_ divine right, _plus_ a large family.
With all the domestic virtues, somewhat too anxious to push his children
on in the world, a good citizen, a good patriot, an unostentatious
gentleman, he was totally destitute of those picturesque and captivating
qualities which adventurers and banditti often possess, but which wise
and trustworthy men seldom do. In looking back now upon that eighteen
years' struggle between this respectable father of a family and anarchy,
it seems as if France should have rallied more loyally and more
considerately round him, and given him too the privilege, so dear to
elderly gentlemen, of dying in his own bed. One-tenth of his virtue and
one-half his intellect had sufficed under the old _regime_.
But since that lamentable and fatal day when the priests wrought upon
Louis XIV. to decree the expulsion of the Huguenots, who were the
_elite_ of his kingdom, France had been undergoing a course of political
demoralization, which had made a constitutional government of the
country almost impossible. Recent events had exaggerated the criminal
class. Twenty years of intoxicating victory had made all moderate
success, all gradual prosperity, seem tame and flat; and the reduction
of the army had set afloat great numbers of people indisposed to
peaceful industry. Under the Restoration, we may almost say, political
conspiracy had become a recognized profession. The new king, pledged to
make the freedom of the press "a reality," soon found himself face to
face with difficulties which Bourbons had invariably met by mere
repression. Republicans and Legitimists were equally dissatisfied.
Legitimists could only wait and plot; but Republicans could write,
speak, and draw. A considerable proportion of the young, irresponsible,
and adventurous talent was republican, and there was a great deal of
Bohemian character available for that side. It was a time when a Louis
Napoleon could belong to a democratic club.
Caricature speedily marked the "citizen king" for her own. Napoleon had
employed all his subtlest tact during the last ten years of his reign in
keeping alive in French minds the base feudal feeling, so congenial to
human indolence and vanity, that it is nobler to be a soldier than to
rear a family and keep a shop. In his bulletins we find this false
sentiment adroitly insinuated in a hundred ways. He loved to stigmatize
the English as a nation of shop-keepers. He displayed infinite art in
exalting the qualities which render men willing to destroy one another
without asking why, and in casting contempt on the arts and virtues by
which the waste of war is repaired. The homely habits, the plain dress,
the methodical ways, of Louis Philippe were, therefore, easily made to
seem ridiculous. He was styled the first _bourgeois_ of his kingdom--as
he was--but the French people had been taught to regard the word as a
term of contempt.
Unfortunately he abandoned the policy of letting the caricaturists
alone. Several French rulers have adopted the principle of not regarding
satire, but not one has had the courage to adhere to it long. Sooner or
later all the world will come into the "American system," and all the
world will at length discover the utter impotence of the keenest
ridicule and the most persistent abuse against public men who do right
and let their assailants alone. The chief harm done by the abuse of
public men in free countries is in making it too difficult to expose
their real faults. How would it be possible, for example, to make the
people of the United States believe ill of a President in vilifying whom
ingenious men and powerful journals had exhausted themselves daily for
years? Nothing short of _testimony_, abundant and indisputable, such as
would convince an honest jury, could procure serious attention. From
President Washington to President Grant the history of American politics
is one continuous proof of Mr. Jefferson's remark, that "an
administration which has nothing to conceal has nothing to fear from the
press."
[Illustration: Charles Philipon.]
When Louis Philippe had been a year upon the throne appeared the first
number of _Le Charivari_, a daily paper of four small pages, conducted
by an unknown, inferior artist--Charles Philipon. Around him gathered a
number of Bohemian draughtsmen and writers, not one of whom appears then
to have shared in the social or political life of the country, or to
have had the faintest conception of the consideration due to a
fellow-citizen in a place of such extreme difficulty as the head of a
government. They assailed the king, his person, his policy, his family,
his habits, his history, with thoughtless and merciless ridicule. A
periodical which has undertaken to supply a cloyed, fastidious public
with three hundred and sixty-five ludicrous pictures per annum must
often be in desperation for subjects, and there was no resource to
Philipon so obvious or so sure as the helpless family imprisoned in the
splendors and etiquette of royalty. Unfortunately for modern
governments, the people of Europe were for so many centuries preyed upon
and oppressed by kings that vast numbers of people, even in free
countries, still regard the head of a government as a kind of natural
enemy, to assail whom is among the rights of a citizen. And, moreover,
the king, the president, the minister, is unseen by those who hurl the
barbed and poisoned javelin. They do not see him shrink and writhe. To
many an anonymous coward it is a potent consideration, also, that the
head of a constitutional government can not usually strike back.
Mr. Thackeray, who was but nineteen when Louis Philippe came to the
throne, witnessed much of the famous contest between this knot of
caricaturists and the King of the French; and in one of the first
articles which he wrote for subsistence, after his father's failure, he
gave the world some account of it.[36] At a later period of his life he
would probably not have regarded the king as the stronger party. He
would probably not have described the contest as one between "half a
dozen poor artists on the one side, and His Majesty Louis Philippe, his
august family, and the numberless placemen and supporters of the
monarchy, on the other." Half a dozen poor artists, with an unscrupulous
publisher at their head, who gives them daily access to the eye and ear
of a great capital, can array against the object of their satire and
abuse the entire unthinking crowd of that capital. A firm, enlightened,
and competent king would have united against these a majority of the
responsible and the reflecting. Such a king would truly have been, as
Mr. Thackeray observed, "an Ajax girded at by a Thersites." But Louis
Philippe was no Ajax. He was no hero at all. He had no splendid and no
commanding traits. He was merely an overfond father and well-disposed
citizen of average talents. He was merely the kind of man which free
communities can ordinarily get to serve them, and who will serve them
passably well if the task be not made needlessly difficult. Hence
Philipon and his "half a dozen poor artists" were very much the stronger
party--a fact which the king, in the sight and hearing of all France,
confessed and proclaimed by putting them in prison.
[Footnote 36: In the _London and Westminster Review_ for April, 1839,
Article II.]
It was those prosecutions of Philipon that were fatal to the king.
Besides adding emphasis, celebrity, and weight to the sallies of _Le
Charivari_, they presaged the abandonment of the central principle of
the movement that made him king--the freedom of utterance. The scenes in
court when Philipon, or his artist, Daumier, was arraigned, were most
damaging to the king's dignity. One, incorrectly related by Thackeray,
may well serve to warn future potentates that of all conceivable
expedients for the caricaturist's frustration, the one surest to fail is
to summon him to a court of justice.
A favorite device of M. Philipon was to draw the king's face in the form
of a huge pear, which it did somewhat resemble. Amateur draughtsmen also
chalked the royal pear upon the walls of Paris; and the exaggerated
pears with the king's features roughly outlined which everywhere met the
eye excited the mocking laughter of the idle Parisian. No jest could
have been so harmless if it had been unnoticed by the person at whom it
was aimed, or noticed only with a smile. But the Government stooped to
the imbecility of arraigning the author of the device. The _poire_
actually became an object of prosecution, and the editor of _Le
Charivari_ was summoned before a jury on a charge of inciting to
contempt against the person of the king by giving his face a ludicrous
resemblance to one of the fruits of the earth. Philipon, when he rose to
defend himself, exhibited to the jury a series of four sketches, upon
which he commented. The first was a portrait of the king devoid of
exaggeration or burlesque. "This sketch," said the draughtsman,
"resembles Louis Philippe. Do you condemn it?" He then held up the
second picture, which was also a very good portrait of the king; but in
this one the toupet and the side-whiskers began to "flow together," as
M. Champfleury has it (_s'onduler_), and the whole to assume a distant
resemblance to the outline of a pear. "If you condemn the first sketch,"
said the imperturbable Philipon, "you must condemn this one which
resembles it." He next showed a picture in which the pear was plainly
manifest, though it bore an unmistakable likeness to the king. Finally,
he held up to the court a figure of a large Burgundy pear, pure and
simple, saying, "If you are consistent, gentlemen, you can not acquit
this sketch either, for it certainly resembles the other three."
Mr. Thackeray was mistaken in supposing that this impudent defense
carried conviction to the minds of the jury. Philipon was condemned and
fined. He avenged himself by arranging the court and jury upon a page of
_Le Charivari_ in the form of a pear.[37] He and his artists played upon
this theme hundreds of variations, until the Government found matter for
a prosecution even in a picture of a monkey stealing a pear. The pear
became at last too expensive a luxury for the conductor of _Le
Charivari_, and that fruit was "exiled from the empire of caricature."
[Footnote 37: "Histoire de la Caricature Moderne," p. 100, par
Champfleury.]
Before Louis Philippe had been three years upon the throne there was an
end of all but the pretense of maintaining the freedom of press or
pencil. "The Press," as Mr. Thackeray remarks, "was sent to prison; and
as for poor dear Caricature, it was fairly murdered." In _Le Charivari_
for August 30th, 1832, we read that Jean-Baptiste Daumier, for an
equally harmless caricature of the king, was arrested in the very
presence of his father and mother, of whom he was the sole support, and
condemned to six months' imprisonment. It was Daumier, however, as M.
Champfleury reveals, who had "served up the pear with the greatest
variety of sauces." It was the same Daumier who after his release
assailed the advocates and legal system of his country with ceaseless
burlesque, and made many a covert lunge at the personage who moved them
to the fatal absurdity of imprisoning him.
Driven by violence from the political field, to which it has been
permitted to return only at long intervals and for short periods, French
caricature has ranged over the scene of human foibles, and attained a
varied development. Daumier and Philipon conjointly produced a series of
sketches in _Le Charivari_ which had signal and lasting success with the
public. The play of "Robert Macaire," after running awhile, was
suppressed by the Government, the actor of the principal part having
used it as a vehicle of political burlesque. _Le Charivari_ seized the
idea of satirizing the follies of the day by means of two characters of
the drama--Macaire, a cool, adroit, audacious villain, and Bertrand, his
comrade, stupid, servile, and timid.
[Illustration: Robert Macaire fishing for Share-holders. (Daumier,
1833.)]
Philipon supplying the words and Daumier executing the pictures, they
made Macaire undertake every scheme, practice, and profession which
contained the requisite ingredients of the comic and the rascally. The
series extended beyond ninety sketches. Macaire founds a joint-stock
charity--_la morale en action_, he explains to gaping Bertrand, each
_action_ (share) being placed at two hundred and fifty francs. He
becomes a quack-doctor. "Don't trifle with your complaint," he says to a
patient, as he gives him two bottles of medicine. "Come to see me often;
it won't ruin you, for I make no charge for consultations. You owe me
twenty francs for the two bottles." The patient appearing to be startled
at the magnitude of this sum, Dr. Macaire blandly says, as he bows him
out, "We give two cents for returned bottles." He becomes a private
detective. A lady consults him in his office. "Sir," she says, "I have
had a thousand-franc note stolen." "Precisely, madame. Consider the
business done: the thief is a friend of mine." "But," says the lady,
"can I get my note back, and find out who took it?" "Nothing easier.
Give me fifteen hundred francs for my expenses, and to-morrow the thief
will return the note and send you his card."
Every resource being exhausted, Macaire astounds the despairing Bertrand
by saying, "Come, the time for mundane things is past; let us attend
now to eternal interests. Suppose we found a religion?" "A religion!"
cries Bertrand; "that is not so easy." To this Macaire replies by
alluding to the recent proceedings of a certain Abbe Chatel, in Paris.
"One makes a pontiff of himself, hires a shop, borrows some chairs,
preaches sermons upon the death of Napoleon, upon Voltaire, upon the
discovery of America, upon any thing, no matter what. There's a religion
for you; it's no more difficult than that." On one occasion Macaire
himself is a little troubled in mind, and Bertrand remarks the unusual
circumstance. "You seem anxious," says Bertrand. "Yes," replies Macaire,
"I _am_ in bad humor. Those scoundrels of bond-holders have bothered me
to such a point that I have actually paid them a dividend!" "What!"
exclaims Bertrand, aghast, "a _bona-fide_ dividend?" "Yes, positively."
"What are you going to do about it?" "I am going to get it back again."
The reader will, of course, infer that each of these pictures was a hit
at some scoundrelly exploit of the day, the public knowledge of which
gave effect to the caricature. In many instances the event is forgotten,
but the picture retains a portion of its interest. One of Macaire's
professions was that of cramming students for their bachelor's degree. A
student enters. "There are two ways in which we can put you through,"
says Macaire: "one, to make you pass your examination by a substitute;
the other, to enable you to pass it yourself." "I prefer to pass it
myself," says the young man. "Very well. Do you know Greek?" "No."
"Latin?" "No." "All right. You know mathematics?" "Not the least in the
world." "What do you know, then?" "Nothing at all." "But you have two
hundred francs?" "Certainly." "Just the thing! You will get your degree
next Thursday." We may find comfort in this series, for we learn from it
that in every infamy which we now deplore among ourselves we were
anticipated by the French forty years ago. Macaire even goes into the
mining business, at least so far as to sell shares. "We have made our
million," says the melancholy Bertrand; "but we have engaged to produce
gold, and we find nothing but sand." "No matter; utilize your capital;
haven't you got a gold mine?" "Yes--but afterward?" "Afterward you will
simply say to the share-holders, 'I was mistaken; we must try again.'
You will then form a company for the utilization of the sand." Bertrand,
still anxious, ventures to remark that there _are_ such people as
policemen in the country. "Policemen!" cries Macaire, gayly. "So much
the better: they will take shares." One of his circular letters was a
masterpiece:
"SIR,--I regret to say that your application for shares in the
Consolidated European Incombustible Blacking Association can not
be complied with, as all the shares of the C. E. I. B. A. were
disposed of on the day they were issued. I have nevertheless
registered your name, and in case a second series should be put
forth I shall have the honor of immediately giving you notice.
"I am, sir, etc.
ROBERT MACAIRE, Director."
"Print three hundred thousand of these," says the director, "and poison
all France with them." "But," says Bertrand, "we haven't sold a single
share; you haven't a sou in your pocket, and--" "Bertrand, you are an
ass. Do as I tell you."
[Illustration: A Husband's Dilemma.
"Yes; but if you quarrel like that with all your wife's lovers, you will
never have any friends."--From _Paris Nonsensicalities_ (_Baliverneries
Parisiennes_), by Gavarni.]
Thus, week after week, for many a month, did _Le Charivari_ "utilize"
these impossible characters to expose and satirize the plausible
scoundrelism of the period. Mr. Thackeray, who ought to be an excellent
authority on any point of satirical art, praises highly the execution of
these pictures by M. Daumier. They seem carelessly done, he remarks; but
it is the careless grace of the consummate artist. He recommends the
illustrator of "Pickwick" to study Daumier. When we remember that
Thackeray had offered to illustrate "Pickwick," his comments upon the
artist who was preferred to himself have a certain interest: "If we
might venture to give a word of advice to another humorous designer
[Hablot K. Browne], whose works are extensively circulated, the
illustrator of 'Pickwick' and 'Nicholas Nickleby,' it would be to study
well those caricatures of M. Daumier, who, though he executes very
carelessly, knows very well what he would express, indicates perfectly
the attitude and identity of the figure, and is quite aware beforehand
of the effect he intends to produce. The one we should fancy to be a
practiced artist taking his ease, the other a young one somewhat
bewildered--a very clever one, however, who, if he would think more and
exaggerate less, would add not a little to his reputation." Possessors
of the early editions of "Pickwick" will be tempted to think that in
this criticism of Mr. Browne's performances by a disappointed rival
there was an ingredient of wounded self-love. The young author, however,
in another passage, gave presage of the coming Thackeray. He observes
that in France ladies in difficulties who write begging letters, or live
by other forms of polite beggary, are wont to style themselves "widows
of the Grand Army." They all pretended to some connection with _le Grand
Homme_, and all their husbands were colonels. "This title," says the
wicked Thackeray, "answers exactly to the clergyman's daughter in
England;" and he adds, "The difference is curious as indicating the
standard of respectability."
[Illustration: Housekeeping.
"Gracious, Dorothy, I have forgotten the meat for your cat!"
"Have you, indeed? But you didn't forget the biscuit for your bird,
egotist! No matter! No matter! If there is nothing in the house for my
cat, I shall give her your bird, I shall!"--From _Impressions de
Menage_, by Gavarni.]
Many caricaturists who afterward attained celebrity were early
contributors to M. Philipon's much-prosecuted periodical. Among them was
"the elegant Gavarni," who for thirty years was the favorite comic
artist of Paris _roues_ and dandies--himself a _roue_ and dandy. At this
period, according to his friend, Theophile Gautier, he was a very
handsome young man, with luxuriant blonde curls, always fashionably
attired, somewhat in the English taste, neat, quiet, and precise, and
"possessing in a high degree the feeling for modern elegances." He was
of a slender form, which seemed laced in, and he had the air of being
carefully dressed and thoroughly appointed, his feet being effeminately
small and daintily clad. In short, he was a dandy of the D'Orsay and N.
P. Willis period. For many years he expended the chief force of his
truly exquisite talent in investing vice with a charm which in real life
it never possesses. Loose women, who are, as a class, very stupid, very
vulgar, most greedy of gain and pleasure, and totally devoid of every
kind of interesting quality, he endowed with a grace and wit, a
fertility of resource, an airy elegance of demeanor, never found except
in honorable women reared in honorable homes. He was the great master of
that deadly school of French satiric art which finds all virtuous life
clumsy or ridiculous, and all abominable life graceful and pleasing.
Albums of this kind are extant in which married men are _invariably_
represented as objects of contemptuous pity, and no man is graceful or
interesting except the sneaking scoundrel who has designs upon the
integrity of a household. Open the "Musee pour Rire," for example. Here
is a little family of husband, wife, and year-old child in bed, just
awake in the morning, the wife caressing the child, and the husband
looking on with admiring fondness. This scene is rendered ridiculous by
the simple expedient of making the wife and child hideously ugly, and
the fond father half an idiot. Another picture shows the same child,
with a head consisting chiefly of mouth, yelling in the middle of the
night, while the parents look on, imbecile and helpless. Turn to the
sketches of the masked ball or the midnight carouse, and all is elegant,
becoming, and delightful. If the French caricatures of the last thirty
years do really represent French social life and French moral feeling,
we may safely predict that in another generation France will be a German
province; for men capable of maintaining the independence of a nation
can not be produced on the Gavarnian principles.
Marriage and civilization we might almost call synonymous terms.
Marriage was at least the greatest conquest made by primitive man over
himself, and the indispensable preliminary to a higher civilization. Nor
has any mode yet been discovered of rearing full-formed and efficient
men capable of self-control, patriotism, and high principle, except the
union of both parents striving for that end with cordial resolution
longer than an average life-time. It is upon this most sacred of all
institutions that the French caricaturists of the Gavarni school pour
ceaseless scorn and contempt. As I write these lines, my eyes fall upon
one of the last numbers of a comic sheet published in Paris, on the
first page of which there is a picture which illustrates this
propensity. A dissolute-looking woman, smoking a cigarette, is
conversing with a boy in buttons who has applied for a place in her
household. "How old are you?" she asks. "Eleven, madame." "And your
name?" "Joseph!" Upon this innocent reply the woman makes a comment
which is truly comic, but very Gavarnian: "So young, and already he
calls himself Joseph!"
[Illustration: A Poultice for Two--Sympathy and Economy.--From
_Impressions de Menage_, by Gavarni.]
Among the heaps of albums to be found in a French collection we turn
with particular curiosity to those which satirize the child life of
France. Gavarni's celebrated series of "Enfants Terribles" has gone
round the world, and called forth child satire in many lands. The
presence of children in his pictures does not long divert this artist
from his ruling theme. One of his terrible children, a boy of four,
prattles innocently to his mother in this strain: "Nurse is going to get
up very early, now that you have come home, mamma. Goodness! while you
were in the country she always had her breakfast in bed, and it was papa
who took in the milk and lighted the fire. But wasn't the coffee jolly
sweet, though!" Another alarming boy of the same age, who is climbing up
his father's chair and wearing his father's hat, all so merry and
innocent, discourses thus to the petrified author of his being: "Who is
Mr. Albert? Oh, he is a gentleman belonging to the Jardin des Plantes,
who comes every day to explain the animals to mamma; a large man with
mustaches, whom you don't know. He didn't come to-day until after they
had shut up the monkeys. You ought to have seen how nicely mamma
entertained him. Oh dear!" (discovering a bald place on papa's pate)
"you have hardly any hair upon the top of your head, papa!" In a third
picture both parents are exhibited seated side by side upon a sofa, and
the terrible boy addresses his mother thus: "Mamma, isn't that little
mustache comb which Cornelia found in your bedroom this morning for me?"
Another sketch shows us father, mother, and terrible boy taking a walk
in the streets of Paris. A dandy, in the likeness of Gavarni himself,
goes by, with his cane in his mouth, and his face fixed so as to seem
not to see them. But the boy sees _him_, and bawls to his mother:
"Mamma! mamma! that Monsieur du Luxembourg!--you know him--the one you
said was such a great friend to papa--he has gone by without saluting! I
suppose the reason is, he don't know how to behave." Another picture
presents to view a little girl seated on a garden bench eating nuts, and
talking to a young man: "The rose which you gave to mamma?" "Yes, yes."
"The one you nearly broke your neck in getting? Let me see. Oh, my
cousin Nat stuck it in the tail of Matthew's donkey. How mamma did
laugh! Got any more nuts?" The same appalling girl imparts a family
secret to her tutor: "Mamma wrote to M. Prosper, and papa read the
letter. Oh, wasn't papa angry, though! And all because she had spelled a
word wrong." A mother hearing a little girl say the catechism is a
subject which one would suppose was not available for the purposes of a
Gavarni, but he finds even that suggestive. "Come, now, pay attention.
What must we do when we have sinned [_peche_]?" To which the terrible
child replies, playing unconsciously upon the word _peche_ (sinned),
which does not differ in sound from _peche_ (fished), "When we have
_peche_? Wait a moment. Oh! we go back to the White House with all the
fish in the basket, which my nurse eats with Landerneau. He is a big
soldier who has white marks upon his sleeve. And I eat _my_ share, let
me tell you!"
It is thus that the first caricaturist of France "utilized" the
innocence of childhood when Louis Philippe was King of the French.
[Illustration: Parisian "Shoo, Fly!"
"Captain, I am here to ask your permission to fight a duel."
"What for, and with whom?"
"With Saladin, the trumpeter, who has so far forgotten himself as to
call me a _moucheron_" (little fly).--From _Messieurs nos Fils et
Mesdemoiselles nos Filles_, by Randon, Paris.]
There is a later series by Randon, entitled "Messieurs nos Fils et
Mesdemoiselles nos Filles," which exhibits other varieties of French
childhood, some of which are inconceivable to persons not of the "Latin
race." It has been said that in America there are no longer any
children; but nowhere among us are there young human beings who could
suggest even the burlesque of precocity such as M. Randon presents to
us. We have no boys of ten who go privately to the hero of a billiard
"tournament" and request him with the politest gravity, cap in hand, to
"put him up to some points of the game for his exclusive use." We have
no boys of eight who stand with folded arms before a sobbing girl of
seven and address her in words like these: "Be reasonable, then, Amelia.
The devil! People can't be always loving one another." We have no
errand-boys of eight who offer their services to a young gentleman thus:
"For delivering a note on the sly, or getting a bouquet into the right
hands, monsieur can trust to me. I am used to little affairs of that
kind, and I am as silent as the tomb." We have no little boys in belt
and apron who say to a bearded veteran of half a dozen wars: "You don't
know your happiness. For my part, give me a beard as long as yours, and
not a woman in the world should resist me!" We have no little boys who
in the midst of a fight with fists, one having a black eye and the other
a bloody nose, would pause to say: "At least we don't fight for money,
like the English. It is for glory that _we_ fight." We have no little
boys who, on starting for a ride, wave aside the admonitions of the
groom by telling him that they know all about managing a horse, and what
they want of him is simply to tell them where in the _Bois_ they will be
likely to meet most "Amazons." No, nor in all the length and breadth of
English-speaking lands can there be found a small boy who, on being
lectured by his father, would place one hand upon his heart, and lift
the other on high, and say, "Papa, by all that I hold dearest, by my
honor, by your ashes, by any thing you like, I swear to change my
conduct!" All these things are so remote from our habits that the
wildest artist could not conceive of them as passable caricature.
[Illustration: Three! (From "Arithmetic Illustrated," by Cham.)]
The opprobrious words in use among French boys would not strike the boys
of New York or London as being very exasperating. M. Randon gives us an
imaginary conversation between a very small trumpeter in gorgeous
uniform and a _gamin_ of the street. Literally translated, it would read
thus: "Look out, little fly, or you will get yourself crushed." To which
the street boy replies, "Descend, then, species of toad: I will make you
see what a little fly is!" On the other hand, if we may believe M.
Randon, French boys of a very tender age consider themselves subject to
the code of honor, and hold themselves in readiness to accept a
challenge to mortal combat. A soldier of ten years appears in one of
this series with his arm in a sling, and he explains the circumstance to
his military comrade of the same age: "It's all a sham, my dear. I'll
tell you the reason in strict confidence: it is to make a certain person
of my acquaintance believe that I have fought for her." The boys of
France, it is evident, are nothing if not military. Most of the young
veterans _blases_ exhibited in these albums are in uniform.
An interesting relic of those years when Frenchmen still enjoyed some
semblance of liberty to discuss subjects of national and European
concern is Gavarni's series of masterly sketches burlesquing the very
idea of private citizens taking an interest in public affairs. This is
accomplished by the device of giving to all the men who are talking
politics countenances of comic stupidity. An idiot in a blouse says to
an idiot in a coat, "Poland, don't you see, will never forgive your
ingratitude!" An idiot in a night-cap says to an idiot bare-headed, with
ludicrous intensity, "And when you have taken Lombardy, then what?"
Nothing can exceed the skill of the draughtsman of this series, except
the perversity of the man, to whom no human activity seemed becoming
unless its object was the lowest form of sensual pleasure. But the
talent which he displayed in this album was immense. It was, if I may
say so, _frightful_; for there is nothing in our modern life so alarming
as the power which reckless and dissolute talent has to make virtuous
life seem provincial and ridiculous, vicious life graceful and
metropolitan.