COMIC ART IN "PUNCH."
[Illustration: The Boy who chalked up "No Popery!" and then ran
away!--Lord John Russell and the Bill for Preventing the Assumption of
Ecclesiastical Titles by Roman Catholics. (John Leech, in _Punch_.)
Explanation by Earl Russell in 1874: "The object of that bill was merely
to _assert_ the supremacy of the Crown. It was never intended to
prosecute.... Accordingly a very clever artist represented me in a
caricature as a boy who had chalked up 'No Popery' upon a wall, and then
ran away. This was a very fair joke.... When my object had been gained,
I had no objection to the repeal of the bill."--_Recollections and
Suggestions_, p. 210.]
One happy consequence of the new taste was the publication of _Punch_,
which has been ever since the chief vehicle of caricature in England. As
long as caricature was a thing of the shop-windows only, its power was
restricted within narrow limits. Since the founding of _Punch_, in 1841,
about two years after the conclusion of the "Pickwick Papers,"
caricature has become an element in periodical literature, from which it
will perhaps never again be separated. And it is the pictures in this
celebrated paper which have prolonged its life to this day. It owes its
success chiefly to artists. There was and is an error in the scheme of
the work which would have been speedily fatal to it but for the
ever-welcome pictures of Richard Doyle, John Leech, John Tenniel, Du
Maurier, and their companions.
[Illustration: John Leech.]
One of the rarest products of the human mind is a joke so good that it
remains good when the occasion that gave rise to it is past. Probably
the entire weekly harvest of wit and humor gathered from the whole earth
would not fill a number of _Punch_ with "good things;" and if it did, no
one could enjoy so many all at once, and the surfeit would sicken and
disgust. The mere sitting-down for the purpose of being funny in a
certain number of lines or pages is death to the comic powers; and hence
it is that a periodical to which nearly the whole humorous talent of
England has contributed is sometimes dull in its reading, and we wonder
if there can be in any quarter of the globe a person so bereft of the
means of entertainment as to get quite through one number. Once or
twice a year, however, _Punch_ originates a joke which goes round the
world, and remains part of the common stock of that countless host who
are indebted to their memory for their jests.
But the pictures are almost always amusing, and often delightful. The
artists have the whole scene of human life, public and private, to draw
from, and they are able by their pencils to vividly reproduce the
occasions that gave birth to their jokes.
[Illustration: Preparatory School for Young Ladies. (John Leech,
"Follies of the Year," London, 1852.)]
In looking over the long series of political caricatures by Leech and
Tenniel, which now go back thirty-three years, we are struck, first of
all, by the simplicity of the means which they usually employ for giving
a comic aspect to the political situation. They reduce cabinet ministers
and other dignitaries many degrees in the social scale, exhibiting them
as footmen, as boys, as policemen, as nurses, as circus performers, so
that a certain comic effect is produced, even if the joke should go no
further. Of late years Mr. Tenniel has often reversed this device with
fine effect by raising mundane personages to celestial rank, and
investing them with a something more than a travesty of grandeur. It is
remarkable how unfailing these simple devices are to amuse. Whether Mr.
Leech presents us with Earl Russell as a small foot-boy covered with
buttons, or Mr. Tenniel endows Queen Victoria with the majestic mien of
Minerva, the public is well pleased, and desires nothing additional but
a few apt words explanatory of the situation. But, simple as these
devices may be, it is only a rarely gifted artist that can use them with
effect. Between the sublime and the ridiculous there is a whole step;
but in comic art there is but a hair's-breadth between the happy and the
flat.
Lord Brougham was supposed to be courting the conservatives when Leech
began to caricature. The superserviceable zeal of the ex-chancellor was
hit very happily in a circus scene, in which the Duke of Wellington
figures as the ring-master, Brougham as the clown, and Sir Robert Peel
as the rider. The clown says to the ring-master, "Now, Mr. Wellington,
is there any thing I can run for to fetch--for to come--for to go--for
to carry--for to bring--for to take?" etc. In another picture the same
uneasy spirit, restive under his titled and pensioned nothingness,
appears as "Henry asking for _more_." Again we have him dancing with the
Wool-sack, which is explained by the words, "The Polka, a new Dance,
introducing the old Double Shuffle." And again we see him in a tap-room,
smoking a pipe, with a pot of beer on the table, looking on with
complacency while Mr. Roebuck bullies an Irish member. Brougham says,
"Go it, my little Roebuck! Bless his little heart! _I_ taught him to
bounce like that."
[Illustration: The Quarrel.--England and France. (John Leech, 1845.)
_Master Wellington._ "You're too good a judge to hit me, you are!"
_Master Joinville._ "Am I?"
_Master Wellington._ "Yes, you are."
_Master Joinville._ "Oh, am I?"
_Master Wellington._ "Yes, you are."
_Master Joinville._ "Ha!"
_Master Wellington._ "Ha!"
[Moral--_And they don't fight, after all._]]
Russell, Peel, Wellington, O'Connell, and Louis Philippe were other
personages whom Mr. Punch often caricatured at that period of his
existence, and he generally presented them in a manner that still
coincides with public feeling in England, and was probably not
disagreeable to the men themselves at the time. One of Leech's hits was
a picture designed to ridicule certain utterances of the Prince de
Joinville concerning the possible invasion of England in 1845, when some
irritating conduct of the French ministry had been met by Wellington
with good temper and firmness. The prince, as a boy, is "squaring off,"
with a great show of fight, at the duke, who stands with his hands in
his pockets, not defiant, but serene and watchful. This picture is
perfectly in the English taste. Leech liked to show great Britannia as
infinitely able to fight, and not so very unwilling, but firmly resolved
not to do so unless compelled by honor or necessity.
In these sixty-nine volumes of _Punch_ there is much of the history of
our time which words alone could not have preserved. We can trace in
them the progress of ideas, of measures, and of men. The changes in
public feeling are exhibited which enabled Cobden and Peel to strike
from British industry the gilt fetters of protection, for _Punch_ is
only another name for Public Opinion. These pictures have a particular
interest for us, since we are to travel the same road in due time, and
thus, at length, give Great Britain a rival in the markets of the world.
Nothing could be better than Mr. Leech's picture showing Sir Robert Peel
as the "Deaf Postilion." In a debate on the Corn Laws he had said, "I
shall still pursue steadily that course which my conscience tells me I
should take; let you and those opposite pursue what course you think
right." The picture shows us a post-chaise, the body of which has become
detached from the fore-wheels--a mishap which the deaf postilion does
not discover, but goes trotting along as though his horses were still
drawing the load. The chaise, named Protection, is occupied by Tory
lords, who shout in vain to the deaf postilion. Again, we have Disraeli
as a viper biting the file, Sir Robert. Leech continued his effective
support of the movement until the victory was won, when he designed a
monument to the victor, consisting of a pyramid of large cheap loaves of
bread crowned by the name of Peel.
The Puseyite imbecility was as effectively satirized by Leech in 1849 as
the ritualistic imitation has recently been by Tenniel. American slavery
came in for just rebuke. As a retort to "some bunkum" in the American
press in 1848, Mr. Leech drew a picture of Liberty lashing a negro,
while Jonathan, with rifle on his arm, cigar in his mouth, and bottle at
his side, says, "Oh, ain't we a deal better than other folks! I guess
we're a most a splendid example to them thunderin' old monarchies." The
language is wrong, of course; no American ever said "a deal better."
English attempts at American slang are always incorrect. But the satire
was deserved. Leech was far from sparing his own country. Some readers
must remember the pair of pictures by Leech, in 1849, entitled
"Pin-money" and "Needle-money," one exhibiting a young lady's boudoir
filled with luxurious and costly objects, and the other a poor
needle-woman in her garret of desolation, sewing by the light of a
solitary candle upon a shirt for which she is to receive three
half-pence. In a similar spirit was conceived a picture presenting two
objects often seen in agricultural fairs in England--a "Prize Peasant"
and a "Prize Pig:" the first rewarded for sixty years of virtuous toil
by a prize of two guineas, the owner of the fat pig being recompensed by
an award of three guineas.
Toward Louis Napoleon _Punch_ gradually relented. At first Mr. Leech
gave just and strong expression to the world's contempt for that
unparalleled charlatan; but as he became powerful, and seemed to be
useful to Great Britain, _Punch_ treated him with an approach to
respect. A similar change toward Mr. Disraeli is observable. Seldom
during the first fifteen years of his public life was he presented in a
favorable light. Upon his retirement from office in 1853, Leech
satirized his malevolent attacks upon the new ministry very happily by a
picture in which he appears as a crossing-sweeper spattering mud upon
Lord Russell and his colleagues. "Won't give me any thing, won't you?"
says the sweeper: "then take _that_!" Nor did the admirable Leech fail
to mark the public sense of Disraeli's silence during the long debates
upon the bill giving to English Jews some of the rights of citizenship.
In his whole public career there is nothing harder to forgive than that
ignoble and unnecessary abstinence. During the last few years Mr.
Disraeli has won by sheer persistence a certain solidity of position in
English politics, and _Punch_ pays him the respect due to a person who
represents a powerful and patriotic party.
One quality of the _Punch_ caricatures is worthy of particular regard:
they are rarely severe, and never scurrilous. The men for whom Mr. Leech
entertained an antipathy, such as O'Connell, O'Brien, Brougham, and
others, were usually treated in a manner that could not have painfully
wounded their self-love. We observe even in the more incisive works of
Gillray a certain boisterous good-humor that often made their satire
amusing to the men satirized. Mr. Rush, American minister in London in
1818, describes a dinner party at Mr. Canning's, at which the minister
exhibited to his guests albums and scrap-books of caricature in which he
was himself very freely handled. Fox and Burke, we are told, visited the
shop where Gillray's caricatures were sold, and while buying the last
hit at themselves would bandy jests with Mrs. Humphrey, the publisher.
Burke winced a little under the lash, but the robuster and larger Fox
was rarely disturbed, and behaved in the shop with such winning courtesy
that Mrs. Humphrey pronounced him the peerless model of a gentleman.
_Punch_, likewise, does not appear to irritate the men whom he
caricatures. Lord Brougham used to laugh at the exceedingly ugly
countenance given him by Leech, and to say that the artist, unable to
hit his likeness, was obliged to designate him by his checked trousers.
Lord Russell, as we see, does not object to Leech's delineations; and
Palmerston, long a favorite with the _Punch_ artists, may well have been
content with their handsome treatment of him.
During the last fifteen years Mr. Tenniel has oftenest supplied the
political cartoon of _Punch_. His range is not so wide as that of Leech,
but within his range he is powerful indeed. He has produced some
pictures which for breadth, strength, aptness, good feeling, and finish
have rarely been equaled in their kind. He gives us sometimes such an
impression of his power as we fancy Michael Angelo might have done if he
had amused himself by drawings reflecting upon the politics of his time.
If, as the _Quarterly Review_ lately remarked, Tenniel's pictures are
often something less than caricature, being wanting in the exuberant
humor of his predecessors, we can also say that they are frequently much
more than caricature. Mr. Tenniel was an artist of repute, and had
furnished a cartoon for the Westminster Parliament-house before he
became identified with _Punch_.
[Illustration: "Obstructives." (John Tenniel, 1870.)
_Mr. Punch_ (to Bull A 1). "Yes, it's all very well to say 'Go to
school!' How are they to go to school with those people quarreling in
the door-way? Why don't you make 'em 'move on?'"]
In common with John Leech and the ruling class of England generally, Mr.
Tenniel was so unfortunate as to misinterpret the civil war in America.
He was almost as much mistaken as to its nature and significance as some
of our own politicians, who had not his excuse of distance from the
scene. He began well, however. His "Divorce a Vinculo," published in
January, 1861, when the news of the secession of South Carolina reached
England, was too flattering to the North, though correct as to the
attitude of the South. "Mrs. Carolina asserts her Right to 'larrup' her
Nigger" was a rough statement of South Carolina's position, but we can
not pretend that the Northern States objected from any interest they
felt in the colored boy. On the part of the North it was simply a war
for self-preservation. It was as truly such as if Scotland or Ireland,
or both of them, had seceded from England in 1803, when the Peace of
Amiens was broken, and the English people had taken the liberty to
object. Again, Mr. Tenniel showed good feeling in admonishing Lord
Palmerston, when the war had begun, to keep Great Britain neutral.
"Well, Pam," says Mr. Punch to his workman, "of course I shall keep you
on, but you must stick to _peace_-work." Nor could we object to the
picture in May, 1861, of Mr. Lincoln's poking the fire and filling the
room with particles of soot, saying, with downcast look, "What a nice
White House this would be if it were not for the Blacks!"
[Illustration: Jeddo and Belfast; or, A Puzzle for Japan. (John Tenniel,
in _Punch_, 1872.)
_Japanese Embassador._ "Then these people, your Grace, I suppose, are
heathen?"
_Archbishop of Canterbury._ "On the contrary, your Excellency; those are
among our most enthusiastic religionists."]
But from that time to the end of the war all was misapprehension and
perversity. In July, 1861, "Naughty Jonathan," an ill-favored little boy
carrying a toy flag, addresses the majesty of Britain thus: "You
_sha'n't_ interfere, mother--and you ought to be on my side--and it's a
great shame--and I don't care--and you _shall_ interfere--and I won't
have it." During the Mason and Slidell imbroglio the Tenniel cartoons
were not "soothing" to the American mind. "Do what's right, my son,"
says the burly sailor, Jack Bull, to little Admiral Jonathan, "or I'll
blow you out of the water." Again, we have a family dinner scene. John
Bull at the head of the table, and Lord Russell the boy in waiting.
_Enter_ "Captain Jonathan, F.N.," who says, "Jist looked in to see if
thar's any rebels he-arr." Upon which Mr. Bull remarks, "Oh, indeed!
John, look after the plate-basket, and then fetch a policeman." This was
in allusion to a supposed claim on the part of Mr. Seward of a right to
search ships for rebel passengers. Then we have Mr. Lincoln as a "coon"
in a tree, and Colonel Bull aiming his blunderbuss at him. "Air you in
earnest, colonel?" asks the coon. "I am," replies the mighty Bull.
"Don't fire," says the coon; "I'll come down." And accordingly Mason and
Slidell were speedily released. In a similar spirit most of the events
of the war were treated; and when the war had ended, there was still
shown in _Punch_, as in the English press generally, the same curious,
inexplicable, and total ignorance of the feelings of the American
people. What an inconceivable perversity it was to attribute Mr.
Sumner's statement of the damage done to the United States by the
alliance which existed for four years between the owners of England and
the masters of the South to a Yankee grab for excessive damages! In all
the long catalogue of national misunderstandings there is none more
remarkable than this. Mr. Tenniel from the first derided the idea that
any particular damage had been done by the _Alabama_ and her consorts:
certainly there was no damage, he thought, upon which a "claim" could be
founded. "Claim for damages against _me_?" cries big Britannia, in one
of his pictures of October, 1865. "Nonsense, Columbia; don't be mean
over money matters."
[Illustration: "At the Church-gate." (Du Maurier, in _Punch_, 1872.)
"So now you've been to church, Ethel! And which part of it all do you
like best?"
"_This_ part, mamma!"]
All this has now become merely interesting as a curiosity of
misinterpretation. The American people know something of England through
her art, her literature, and press; but England has extremely imperfect
means of knowing us. No American periodical, probably, circulates in
Great Britain two hundred copies. We have no Dickens, no Thackeray, no
George Eliot, no _Punch_, to make our best and our worst familiar in the
homes of Christendom; and what little indigenous literature we have is
more likely to mislead foreigners than enlighten them. Cooper's men,
women, and Indians, if they ever existed, exist no more. Mr. Lowell's
Yankee is extinct. Uncle Tom is now a freeman, raising his own bale of
cotton. Mark Twain and Bret Harte would hardly recognize their own
California. It is the literature, the art, and the science of a country
which make it known to other lands; and we shall have neither of these
in adequate development until much more of the work is done of smoothing
off this rough continent, and educating the people that come to us, at
the rate of a cityful a month, from the continent over the sea. At
present it is nearly as much as we can do to find spelling-books for so
many.
To most Americans the smaller pictures of Leech and others in _Punch_,
which gently satirize the foibles and fashions of the time, are more
interesting than the political cartoons. How different the life of the
English people, as exhibited in these thousands of amusing scenes, from
the life of America! We see, upon turning over a single volume, how much
more the English play and laugh than we do. It is not merely that there
is a large class in England who have nothing to do except to amuse
themselves, but the whole people seem interested in sport, and very
frequently to abandon themselves to innocent pleasures. Here is a young
lady in the hunting field in full gallop, who cries gayly to her
companion, "Come along, Mr. Green; I want a lead at the brook;" which
makes "Mr. Green think that women have no business in hunting." England
generally thinks otherwise, and Mr. Punch loves to exhibit his
countrywomen "in mid-air" leaping a ditch, or bounding across a field
with huntsmen and hounds about them. He does not object to a hunting
parson. A churchwarden meets an "old sporting rector" on the road, and
says, "Tell ye what 'tis, sir, the congregation do wish you wouldn't put
that 'ere curate up in pulpit; nobody can't hear un." To which the old
sporting parson on his pony replies, "Well, Blunt, the fact is,
Tweedler's such a good fellow for parish work, I'm obliged to give him
_a mount_ sometimes." And in the distance we see poor Tweedler trudging
briskly along, umbrella in hand, upon some parish errand. Another
sporting picture shows us three gentlemen at dinner, one of whom is a
clergyman whose mind is so peculiarly constituted that his thoughts run
a little upon the duties of his office. Perhaps he is Tweedler himself.
One of the laymen, a fox-hunter, says to the other, "That was a fine
forty minutes yesterday." The other replies, "Yes; didn't seem so long
either." _Punch_ remarks that "the curate is puzzled, and wonders, do
they refer to his lecture in the school-room?"
[Illustration: An Early Quibble. (Du Maurier, in _Punch_, 1872.)
_George._ "_There_, Aunt Mary! what do you think of _that_?
_I_ drew the horse, and Ethel drew the jockey!"
_Aunt Mary._ "H'm! But what would mamma say to your drawing
jockeys on a Sunday?"
_George._ "Ah, but look here! We've drawn him _riding to
church_, you know!"]
And what a part eating and drinking play in English life and English
art! Every body appears to give dinners occasionally, and all the
dealers in vegetables seem to stand ready to serve as waiters at five
shillings for an evening. Food is a common topic of conversation, and
it is a civility for people to show an interest in one another's
alimentary pleasures. "Glad to see yer feed so beautiful, Mrs. B----,"
remarks a portly host to a corpulent lady, his Christmas guest. "Thank
yer, Mr. J----," says she, with knife and fork at rest and pointing to
the ceiling; "I'm doin' lovely." Again, old Mr. Brown, entertaining
young Mr. Green, says, with emphasis, "That wine, sir, has been in my
cellar four-and-twenty years come last Christmas--four-and-twenty years,
sir!" To which innocent Mr. Green, anxious to say something agreeable,
replies, "Has it really, sir? What must it have been when it was new?"
Little Emily asks her mother, "What is capital punishment?" Master Harry
replies, "Why, being locked up in the pantry! _I_ should consider it
so." Even at the theatres, we may infer from some of the pictures, ale
and porter are handed round between the acts of the play. In one picture
we see two lovers looking upon the sky; poetical Augustus says, "Look,
Edith! how lovely are those fleecy cloudlets, dappled over the--" Edith
(not in a spirit of burlesque) replies, "Yes, 'xactly like gravy when
it's getting cold--isn't it?" Then we have two gentlemen in the
enjoyment of a little dinner, one of a long series given in the absence
of the family at Boulogne. The master of the house receives a telegram.
He reads it, heaves a deep sigh, and says, dolefully, "It's all up!"
Bachelor friend asks, "What's the matter?" Paterfamilias replies,
"Telegram! She says they've arrived safe at Folkestone, and will be
home about 10.30." No more little dinners. Only a wife and children for
comfort. And here are two of Mr. Du Maurier's pretty children eating
slices of bread too thinly spread with jam, and Ethel says, with
thoughtful earnestness, "I dare say the queen and her courtiers eat a
whole pot of jam every day, Harry!" There are many hundreds of pictures
in _Punch_ which show a kind of solemn interest in the repair of wasted
tissue never seen in this country. It is evident that the English have a
deep delight in the act of taking sustenance which is to us unknown. Mr.
Thackeray himself, in speaking of an Englishman's first glass of beer on
returning home from a long journey in other lands, casts his eyes to
heaven and gives way to something like enthusiasm.
[Illustration: John Tenniel.]
Many pictures bring into juxtaposition extremes of civilization rarely
witnessed in America. So many traps are set for ignorance in this
country that a child can scarcely hope to get by them all, and escape
into maturity an absolute dolt. Observe this conversation between a
squire and a villager: "Hobson, they tell me you've taken your boy away
from the national school. What's that for?" "'Cause the master ain't
fit to teach un. He wanted to teach my boy to spell taters with a P."
Here, again, is a scene in a London picture-gallery that presents a
curious incongruity. A group is standing before one of the works of Ary
Scheffer, and an East-ender, catalogue in hand, makes this comment upon
the artist's name: "'Ary Scheffer! Hignorant fellers, these foreigners,
Bill! Spells 'Enery without the Haitch!" In New York we have doubtless
people that would be as incongruous as this in such a scene, but they do
not visit picture-galleries. Nor have we among us a photographer who
could essay to bring a smile to a sitter's face by saying, "Just look a
little pleasant, miss: think of _'im_!" It is evident from many hundreds
of such sketches that there are great numbers of people in England who
exercise difficult callings, hold responsible positions, dress in silk
and broadcloth, and are in many particulars accomplished and well
equipped for the stress of city life, who are destitute of mental
culture to a degree which is associated in our minds only with squalor
and degradation.
The spirit of caste, which appears to be only less strong in England
than in India, affords countless opportunities to English comic art.
Imagine a coster-monger profusely and laboriously apologizing to a
well-dressed passer-by for presuming to speak to him in order to let him
know that his coat-tail is burning: "You'll excuse my addressin' of you,
sir--common man in a manner of speakin'--gen'leman like you,
sir--beggin' pardon for takin' the liberty, which I should never 'a
thought of doin' under ordinary succumstances, sir, only you didn't seem
to be aware on it, but it struck me as I see you agoin' along as you
were _afire_, sir!" During the delivery of this apology combustion had
continued, and Brown's coat-tail was entirely consumed, his box of
fusees having ignited some seconds before the coster-monger began his
discourse. A few years ago _Punch_ gave a little "Sea-side Drama" that
illustrates another phase of the same universal foible. Mrs. De Tomkyns
to her husband: "Ludovic dear, there's Algernon playing with a strange
child! Do prevent it." "How on earth am I to prevent it?" "Tell its
parents Algernon is just recovering from the scarlet fever." Mr. De
Tomkyns accordingly makes this fictitious statement to the father of the
obnoxious child, who replies, "It's all right, sir; so's our little
girl." _Punch_ hits it fairly, too, in a pictured _tete-a-tete_ between
Mr. Shoddy and Mrs. Sharp. Mr. Shoddy remarks, as he sips his coffee,
that he never feels safe from the ubiquitous British snob until he is
south of the Danube. To this Mrs. Sharp responds by asking, "And what do
the--a--South Danubians say, Mr. Shoddy?"
The moral feeling of the _Punch_ artists is so generally sound that it
is surprising to find them often taking the wrong and popular side of
the "conflict of ages" between mistress and maid. But if they usually
laugh with the mistress and at the maid, they occasionally laugh with
the maid and at the mistress; and truly the wildest absurdity attributed
to the British servant seems venial compared with the thoughtless
arrogance of the typical British mistress. _Punch_ does not wholly
neglect her morals. Another hundred volumes or so will doubtless bring
her over to Sydney Smith's opinion, that _all_ the virtues and graces
are not to be had for seven pounds per annum. It was a happy retort upon
"No Irish need apply," to present an English servant-girl peremptorily
leaving a place because she had discovered that the family was Irish,
alleging that her friends would never forgive her if they knew she had
lived in an Irish family. The picture, too, is good of a pretty servant
walking home in the evening behind an elderly and ill-favored lady to
"protect" her from insult. _Punch_ wishes to know who is to protect the
pretty girl on her return through London streets alone. We see also from
numberless pictures that the British mistress deems it her right to
control the dress of the British maid. When crinoline came in, she
thought it impudent in a servant to wear it; but when crinoline went
out, she deemed it no less presuming in her to lay it aside.
For some years past the pictures of children and their ways by Mr. Du
Maurier have been among the most pleasing efforts of comic art in
England. There is not the faintest intimation in them of the malevolent
or sarcastic. All good fathers, all good mothers, and all persons worthy
to become such, delight in them. They are such pictures as we should
naturally expect from an artist who was himself the happy father of a
houseful of happy children, and who consequently looked upon all the
children of the world in a fond, parental spirit. Surely no Bohemian, no
hapless dweller in a boarding-house, no desolate frequenter of clubs, no
one not sharing in the social life of his time, could so delightfully
represent and minister to it. Du Maurier vindicates the generation that
has produced Gavarni and Woodhull. He reminds us from week to week that
children are the sufficient compensation of virtuous existence, worth
all the rest of its honors and delights.
The recent agitation in England of questions relating to religion has
not escaped the caricaturist. For two centuries or more the
caricaturists of Great Britain have been hearty Protestants, though not
long Puritan, and we still find them laughing at the fulminations of the
testy old clergyman who lives in the Vatican. Nor have they failed to
reflect upon the too evident fact that it is the contentions of
clergymen in England that have blocked the way into the national school.
The old-fashioned penny broadside, all alive with figures and words, has
been revived by "Gegeef," to promote the secularization of the schools.
In one of them all the parties to the controversy are exhibited--the
candidate for the mastership of a Government school, who "believes in
Colenso and geology, but don't mind teaching Genesis to oblige;" the
minister who holds up the text, "One faith, one baptism," but demands
that the baptism taught should be _his_ baptism; Thomas Paine, too, who
points to his "Age of Reason," and says, "When you finish, _I_ shall
have something to say;" the compromiser, who is willing to have Bible
lessons given in the schools, provided they are given "without comment;"
and, of course, the radical Bradlaugh, who demands secularization pure
and simple. The same draughtsman, whose zeal is more manifest than his
skill, has attempted to show, in various penny sheets, that amidst all
those sectarian conflicts the one true light for the guidance of
bewildered men is Science.
The only hit, however, in caricature, which these controversies have
suggested is the "Soliloquy of a Rationalistic Chicken." It has had
great currency in England among the clergy, many of whom have assisted
in spreading it abroad; and even secularists have found it passable--as
a caricature. Another recent "sensation" was the caricature by Mr. Matt
Morgan, in the _Tomahawk_, which represented the Prince of Wales
"_following_" the ghost of his predecessor, George IV. It had a great
currency at the time, and may have served a good purpose in warning an
amiable and well-disposed prince to be more careful of appearances.
[Illustration: Soliloquy of a Rationalistic Chicken. (S. J. Stone,
London, 1873.)
How do I know I ever _was_ inside?
Now I reflect, it is, I do maintain,
Less than my reason, and beneath my pride,
To think that I could dwell
In such a paltry, miserable cell
As that old shell.
Of course I couldn't! How could _I_ have lain,
Body and beak and feathers, legs and wings,
And my deep heart's sublime imaginings,
In there?
I meet the notion with profound disdain;
It's quite incredible; since I declare
(And I'm a chicken that you can't deceive)
_What I can't understand I won't believe._
What's that I hear?
My mother cackling at me! Just her way,
So prejudiced and ignorant _I_ say;
So far behind the wisdom of the day.
What's old I _can't_ revere.
Hark at her! "You're a silly chick, my dear,
That's quite as plain, alack!
As is the piece of shell upon your back!"
How bigoted! upon my back, indeed!
I don't believe it's there,
For I can't _see_ it; and I do declare,
For all her fond deceivin',
_What I can't see, I never will believe in!_]
[Illustration: _The P{****}e of W{***}s to K{**}g G{****}e IV._
(_loq._). "I'll follow thee!"--MATT MORGAN, in the _Tomahawk_, 1867.]
During the life-time of the venerable Cruikshank comic art in England
has won the consideration due to a liberal profession, and now enjoys a
fair share of reward as well as honor. He found the comic artist
something of a Bohemian; he leaves him a solvent and respectable
householder. He may have visited Gillray at work in the little room
behind his publisher's shop; and he doubtless often enjoyed the elegant
hospitality of John Leech, one of the first in his branch of art to
attain the solid dignity of a front-door of his own. It is mentioned to
the credit of Richard Doyle, son of HB, that when he resigned his
connection with _Punch_ on account of its caricatures of Wiseman and the
Pope, he gave up an income of eight hundred pounds a year. There is no
worthy circle in Great Britain where the presence of a Tenniel, a Leech,
a Du Maurier, a Doyle, or a Cruikshank would not be felt as an honor and
their society valued as a privilege. England owes them gratitude and
homage. They have not been always right, but they have nearly always
meant to be. Nothing malign, nothing unpatriotic, nothing impure,
nothing mean, has borne their signature; and in a vast majority of
instances they have led the laughter of their countrymen so that it
harmonized with humanity and truth.