a valuable work. We do not mean a caricatured history, with great
men turned into ridicule, and important events burlesqued; such
absurdities may provoke pity, but they will hardly extort a smile
from any whose suffrage is worth courting. We have had a vast deal
of comic literature in this country during the last dozen years;
quite a torrent of _facetiæ_, a surfeit of slang and puns. One or
two popular humorists gave the impetus, and set a host of imitators
sliding and wriggling down the inclined plane leading from wit
and humour to buffoonery and bad taste. The majority reached in
an instant the bottom of the slope, and have ever since remained
there. The truth is, the funny style has been overdone; the supply
of jokers has exceeded the demand for jokes, until the very word
"comic" resounds unpleasantly upon the public tympanum. It were
a change to revert for a while to the wit of our forefathers, at
least as good, we suspect, as much of more modern manufacture. And
therefore, we repeat, a comic English history, whose claims to
the quality should be founded on its illustration by the songs,
satires, and caricatures of its respective periods, would be
interesting and precious in many ways; particularly as giving an
insight into popular feelings and characteristics, and often as
throwing additional light upon the causes of important revolutions
and political changes. It would certainly be a very difficult book
to compile. Instead of beginning at the usual starting-post of Roman
invasion, it could hardly be carried back to the first William. The
Saxons may possibly have revenged themselves on their conquerors by
satirical ditties, and by rude and grotesque delineations; but it
may be doubted whether any authenticated specimens of either their
poetry or painting are in existence at the present day. It would not
surprise us if King John's courtiers had curried favour with their
master by lampooning the absent Coeur-de-Lion; and doubtless when
there were men sufficiently sacrilegious to slay a churchman at the
altar, others may have ventured to satirise in rude doggrel the
pride and presumption of Thomas à Becket. But have their graceless
effusions survived? Can they be traced in black letter, or deciphered
on the blocks of wood and stone referred to in Mr Wright's preface?
We fear not; and we believe that, up to the date of the invention
of printing, the history suggested would be very meagre, and the
task of writing it most ungrateful. For some time after that date
the humorous illustrations would be written, and not pictorial;
songs and lampoons, perhaps, but of caricatures few or none. For
although caricature, in one variety or other, is ancient as the
Pyramids, its introduction is recent into the country where, of all
others, it seems most at home. Fostered by political liberty, it has
naturalised itself kindly on English soil, but its foreign origin
remains undeniable. Already, in the sixteenth century, Italy had her
Caracci, and France her Callot; whilst in England we vainly seek,
until the appearance of Hogarth, a caricaturist whose name abides in
our memories, or whose works grace our museums.
It is evident, then, that the easiest way to write a history of the
kind we have spoken of, is to begin at the end and write backwards.
At any rate the historian avoids discouragement, at the very
commencement, from the paucity of materials. And that is the plan
Mr Wright has adopted. Breaking new ground, he naturally selected
the spot most likely to reward his toil, and pitched upon the reigns
of the first three Georges. He could hardly have chosen a more
interesting period; and certainly, without coming inconveniently near
to the present day, he could have fixed on none more prolific in the
satires and drolleries he has made it his business to disinter and
reproduce.
The contents of Mr Wright's book would sort into two comprehensive
classes--the social and the political; the former the least
voluminous, but the most entertaining. Political satires and
caricatures, under the first two Georges, possess but a moderate
attraction at the present day; and it is not till the period of
the American war--we might almost say not until that of the French
Revolution--that they excite interest, and move to mirth. The hits
at the follies of society at large have a more general and enduring
interest than those levelled at individuals and intrigues long since
passed away. The first ten years of the accession of the house of
Hanover were poor both in the number and quality of caricatures; and
the remoteness of the period has enhanced the difficulty of finding
them. Written satires and pasquinades were abundant, but, to judge
from those preserved, few were worth preserving. Of these ephemeral
publications there exists no important collection, either public or
private. Of caricatures, more are to be got at, although, strange
to say, the British Museum contains very few. There was far less of
humour and spirit in those that appeared during the early part of the
eighteenth century than in those produced during its latter portion.
In fact, until the reign of George II., the art could hardly be said
to be cultivated. In the first hundred pages of the book before us,
which comprise nearly the whole reign of George I., we find only
fourteen cuts--a small proportion of the three hundred scattered
through the two volumes. And scarcely one of the fourteen has the
qualities essential to a genuine caricature. They aim at telling
a story, or conveying an insinuation, rather than at burlesquing
persons. Sometimes the prints or medals (the latter were a favourite
vehicle for the circulation of satire) were simply allegories, and
as such are incorrectly designated by the word caricature, which, as
derived from the Italian _caricare_, implies a thing overcharged or
exaggerated in its proportions. As an instance of these allegories,
we may cite a Jacobite medal, where Britannia is seen weeping, whilst
the horse of Hanover tramples on the lion and unicorn. The English
nation was at that period usually personified by Britannia and her
lion, until Gillray, much later--taking the idea, it is said, from Dr
Arbuthnot's satire--hit off the humourous figure of John Bull, which
has been preserved, with more or less modification, by all subsequent
caricaturists. Hogarth, who first attracted notice in 1723-4, by his
attacks upon the degeneracy of the stage--then abandoned to opera,
masquerade, and pantomime--brought up a broader style of caricature
than his predecessors, but still he was too emblematical. Then, for
a time, caricature got into the hands of amateur artists--female as
well as male. Thus a humorous drawing of the Italian singers, Cuzzoni
and Farinelli, and of Heidegger the ugly manager, is attributed to
the Countess of Burlington. Then, after an interregnum, during which
caricature languished, Gillray arose--Gillray, who, coarse and often
indecent as he was, (in which respects, however, he did but conform
to the tone and manners of his day,) was unquestionably the ablest
of his tribe, the most thoroughly English, and the most irresistibly
humorous caricaturist we have had. The refined might tax him with
grossness, but his delineations went home to the multitude; and to
the multitude the caricaturist must address himself, if he would
produce effect, and enjoy influence. For a while, during the war with
France, Gillray's active pencil was a power in the state. In his turn
he was surpassed in coarseness and vulgarity, but not in wit, by his
contemporary Rowlandson.
The sketches before us, of the history of England under the house of
Hanover, are not to be considered as dependent on the satires and
caricatures used to illustrate them. They form a general narrative
of the most prominent events of a very important century, with
which are interwoven, when opportunity offers, the most remarkable
pen and pencil pasquinades of the day. The latter, however, have
not always been obtainable, or are not worth recording. As we have
already mentioned, they are scarce at the commencement of the book,
which opens at the death of Queen Anne in 1714. When Jacobite plots
were rife, and party-feeling ran so high as to produce frequent
bloody struggles in London streets, between the Whigs or Hanoverians
and the "Jacks," as the adherents of the Pretender were styled by
their opponents, there appear to have existed no draughtsmen of much
talent for caricature; whilst the poetical satires, judging from
the specimens furnished by Mr Wright, are very middling in merit,
although exceedingly numerous. If there was little wit, there was
much violence and abuse on both sides. On the part of the Jacobites,
agitation was the order of the day; and the mob, both in London and
the provinces, were incited to many excesses--such as attacking
houses, robbing passengers, pulling down Dissenting chapels, and
drinking James the Third's health in the open streets. In Manchester,
in June 1715, the population were for several days masters of
the town. The results were the passing of the Riot Act, and the
quartering of cavalry in the places most disaffected. The Whigs, on
their part, were not idle, but carried on a brisk war of words, and
raked up all the old stories about the Pretender--that he was no
king's son, but a miller's offspring, conveyed into the Queen's bed
in a warming-pan by the Jesuit Father Petre. Of course such tales as
these gave a fine handle to squib and lampoon; and, in reference to
the Jesuit's name, the Whigs designated the Pretender as Peterkin or
Perkin--an appellation offering a convenient coincidence with that
of a previous impudent aspirant to the English crown. To sneers of
this kind the Jacobite minstrels manfully and spiritedly replied; and
although the muse was less propitious in England than in Scotland,
there is no doubt these effusions had a considerable effect upon the
people. But the suppression of the rebellion damped their spirits,
and with it their poetic fire; whilst the exulting Whigs triumphantly
flapped their wings, and crowed a yet louder strain. Perkin and the
warming-pan were the burden of every lay, and a peal of parodies
celebrated the flight of the Stuart.
"'Twas when the seas were roaring
With blasts of northern wind,
Young Perkin lay deploring,
On warming-pan reclined
Wide o'er the roaring billows
He cast a dismal look,
And shiver'd like the willows
That tremble o'er the brook."
One would think the "Oxford scholars," accounted such fervent
Jacobites, might have replied victoriously to such tepid couplets as
this. But their hearts were down at their King's repulse. And poor
as the verses were, no doubt they took wonderfully at the time,--so
much, in such things, depends upon the _apropos_. And now a large
section of the Tories, previously favourable to the Jacobites, broke
away from them in their misfortune, made their peace with the ruling
powers, and took the oath of allegiance. But long after fighting
was over in the North--to be revived only in '45 by the chivalrous
Charles Edward--the Jacobite mob kept London in hot water, and,
thanks to the inefficiency of the police, might have done serious
mischief, but for the Muggite Societies formed at that period. These
were simply Whig clubs, meeting at certain public-houses, (the
Magpie and Stump, in Newgate Street, was one,) and sallying out
upon occasion to fight the Jacobites. The latter had also taverns
of rendezvous, but these were few, and it was chiefly the lowest
mob that in London still sported the White Rose, and cursed the
Hanoverian. In most of the many conflicts that then occurred, the
"Jacks" got the worst of it. If they assembled to break windows on an
illumination night, or to burn William or George in effigy, they were
soon assailed by the Loyal Society, or some other Whig association,
who, acting as special constables without having taken the oath,
drubbed them with cudgels, and extinguished their bonfires. It would
appear that the Jacks did not often venture to impede the Whig mob
in the performance of analogous ceremonies; since we read of a
certain Fifth of November, when caricature effigies of the Pretender
and his chief adherents and supporters were carried in triumph
through the streets. "First, two men bearing each a warming-pan,
with a representation of the infant Pretender--a nurse attending
him with a sucking bottle, and another playing with him by beating
the warming-pan. These were followed by three trumpeters, playing
Lillibulero and other Whig tunes. Then came a cart with Ormond and
Marr, appropriately dressed. This was followed by another cart,
containing the Pope and Pretender seated together, and Bolingbroke
as the secretary of the latter. They were all drawn backwards, with
halters round their necks." The sole opposition made by the Jacobites
to this outrageous demonstration, was by the somewhat paltry
proceeding of stealing the faggots collected for the Whig bonfire.
Four months after this, the Jacobites attempted a procession, and a
great fight ensued, in which the Whigs were victorious, after having
"made rare work for the surgeons." The government of the day showed
little mercy to the rioters. Seditious ballad-singers, and persons
holding disloyal discourse, were flogged and pilloried; and at last,
the hanging of several of the disaffected for storming a Mug-house,
put an end to the disturbances. That the Whigs did not bear their
triumph very meekly appears from the following paragraph, extracted
from _Read's Weekly Journal_ of June 15, 1717.
"Last Monday being supposed to be the birthday of the Sovereign
of the White Rose, in respect to the anniversary, an honest Whig
went from the Roebuck to St James's, with a jackdaw finely dressed
in white roses, and set on a warming-pan bedeckt with the same
sweet-scented commodity, which caused abundance of laughter all
the way, to the great mortification of the Knights Companions of
that order, and all the other Jacks, to see their sovereign so
maltreated in the person of his representative."
The poor crushed Jacobites were fain to grin and bear it.
The suppression of political riots was followed by a great prevalence
of highway robberies, in and around the metropolis. The streets
of London were not safe, even in the daytime; and ladies went out
in their chairs guarded by servants with loaded blunderbusses.
The following extracts from newspapers of the time read oddly
enough--especially when we remember that not a hundred and thirty
years have elapsed since the crimes recorded in them occurred.
"Thursday, 21st January 1720. About five o'clock in the evening,
the stage-coach from London to Hampstead was attacked and robbed
by highwaymen, at the foot of the hill, and one of the passengers
severely beaten for attempting to hide his money."
"Sunday 24. At eight o'clock in the evening, two highwaymen
attacked a gentleman in a coach on the south side of St Paul's
churchyard, and robbed him."
"Sunday 31. A gentleman robbed and murdered in Bishopsgate street."
"Monday, February 1. The Duke of Chandos, coming from Canons, had
another encounter with highwaymen, whom he captured."
"Tuesday 2. The postboy was attacked by three highwaymen in Tyburn
road, but the Duke of Chandos, happening to pass that way, came to
his rescue."
His grace of Chandos seems to have been a sort of amateur
thief-taker. Then we read of stage-coaches stopped and robbed
between London and Stoke Newington, and of a certain day, when
"_all_ the stage-coaches coming from Surrey to London were robbed
by highwaymen." At last a reward of one hundred pounds was offered
for the apprehension of any highwayman within five miles of London.
Amongst those captured were several persons of good repute in their
respective callings. They included a London tradesman, a duke's
valet, and the keeper of a boxing-school.
The speculative madness that prevailed in the year 1719-20, the
"bubble mania," as it was called, offered a fertile field to the
satirist. The contagion was caught from France, where, about that
time, John Law projected his celebrated Mississippi Company, and,
by his wild financial manoeuvres, first rendered money a mere
drug, then plunged Paris and France into the profoundest misery. The
outline of Law's history is familiar to most persons. It will be
remembered how, having killed a man in a duel in his own country, he
broke his prison, and fled to France, met the young Duke of Orleans
at the house of a courtesan named Duclos, and, being handsome,
accomplished, and graceful, contracted with him an intimacy that led
eventually to the hatching of the notable Mississippi scheme. The
delusion began to flourish towards the middle of 1718, and was at its
apogee at the close of the following year. The market for the shares
was in an insignificant street, still existing in Paris under the
name of the Rue Quincampoix, where every house was soon subdivided
into an infinity of little offices, and a dwelling whose usual rent
was of six hundred livres yielded one hundred thousand; where a
cobbler gained two hundred livres a-day, by hiring out his shed to
ladies who came to share in and look on at the game; and a hunchback
earned a handsome income by lending his shoulders as a writing-desk.
The five-hundred-livre shares rose to twenty thousand livres--to a
premium, that is to say, of four thousand per cent. Money was for the
time so abundant, that goods rose immensely, and articles of luxury
were all bought up. Cloth of gold, a French writer tells us, became
exceeding rare, except in the streets, where it was seen draping the
plebeian persons of the newly-enriched speculators. A nobleman and
a Mississippian disputed a partridge in a cook's shop: the latter
obtained it for two hundred livres, or more than eight pounds!
Beranger has devoted a witty stanza to that year of madness.
"C'était la régence alors
Et sans hyperbole,
Grâce aux plus drôles de corps,
La France étoit folle;
Tous les hommes s'amusaient,
Et les femmes se prêtaient
A la gaudriole an gué,
A la gaudriole."
As an essential preliminary to holding the office of
Comptroller-general of the French finances, Law allowed the Abbé
de Tençin to convert him to the religion of Rome. This apostasy,
and its disastrous consequences to France, became the subject of
many squibs and satirical verses when the fallacy of the system
ultimately appeared. Before the panic came, however, and an attempted
realisation on the part of some of the largest holders proved
the exaggerated and fictitious value of the bonds, the mania for
speculation had crossed the Channel, and raged in this country. The
South-Sea bill passed through parliament, and received the royal
assent; and on a sudden stock-jobbing seemed to become the sole
business of all classes. The Tory papers ridiculed the folly. Sir
Robert Walpole published a warning pamphlet, a proclamation forbade
the formation of unauthorised companies; but all in vain. Shares
in the most absurd bubbles were eagerly caught at. "A company was
even announced, and its shares bought, which was merely advertised
as 'for an undertaking which shall in due time be revealed.' Among
other odd projects were companies 'for planting of mulberry trees,
and breeding of silk-worms in Chelsea Park;' 'for importing a number
of large jack-asses from Spain, in order to propagate a larger breed
of mules in England;' 'for fattening of hogs.' In August, the stock
of the various London companies was calculated to exceed the value
of five hundred millions." About this time Law's credit balloon
began to collapse, which was a hint to the English jobbers of what
they might in their turn expect. It was nearly the end of the year
when he was compelled to fly from Paris, and take refuge in Venice,
where he died, an impoverished gambler, in May 1729, leaving for sole
inheritance a diamond worth about 1500 pounds sterling, which he had
been in the habit of pawning when hard pushed. Many weeks before his
departure from France, however, the London companies were discredited
and turned into ridicule by a host of songs and satirical pieces, one
of the best of which was the celebrated _South-Sea Ballad; or, Merry
Remarks upon Exchange-Alley Bubbles_.
"From the month of October to the end of the year, songs, and squibs,
and pamphlets of all descriptions, on the misfortunes occasioned by
the explosion of the bubble system, became exceedingly numerous....
The general feeling against the directors was becoming so strong in
the month of November, that we are told it had become a practice
among the ladies, when in playing at cards they turned up a knave,
to cry, 'There's a director for you!'" The period of the South-Sea
bubble was particularly prolific in caricatures. A vast number
appeared in Holland and France, and for the first time political
caricatures became common in England. Those of which copies are given
in Mr Wright's book have small claims to wit. Most of the foreign
ones were aimed at Law, and those published in this country at the
'Change Alley speculators. Hogarth's first political caricature
related to the bubbles of 1720, and appeared the following year.