Part 28 (1/2)
CHAPTER XXIV.
COMIC ART IN ”PUNCH.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Boy who chalked up ”No Popery!” and then ran away!--Lord John Russell and the Bill for Preventing the a.s.sumption of Ecclesiastical t.i.tles by Roman Catholics. (John Leech, in _Punch_.)
Explanation by Earl Russell in 1874: ”The object of that bill was merely to _a.s.sert_ 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 b.u.t.tons, 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. .h.i.t 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 t.i.tled 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.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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. .h.i.ts 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 bunk.u.m” in the American press in 1848, Mr. Leech drew a picture of Liberty las.h.i.+ng 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, ent.i.tled ”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 s.h.i.+rt 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 citizens.h.i.+p.
In his whole public career there is nothing harder to forgive than that ign.o.ble 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.