The History of the Nineteenth Century in Caricature Part 3

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Cossack Bite.

An american cartoon of the war of 1812.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Bull and the Alexandrians.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Bull's Troubles.

A caricature of the war of 1812.

_From the collection of the New York Public Library._]

CHAPTER VIII

THE "POIRE"

Throughout the Napoleonic period England practically had a monopoly in caricature. During the second period, down to the year 1848, France is the center of interest. Prior to 1830, French political cartoons were neither numerous nor especially significant. Indeed they present a simplicity of imagination rather amusing as compared with the complicated English caricatures. A hate of the Jesuits, a mingling of liberalism, touched with Bonapartism, and the war of newspapers furnished the theme. The two symbols constantly recurring are the _girouette_, or weather-c.o.c.k, and the _eteignoir_, or extinguisher.

Many of the French statesmen who played a prominent part during the French Empire and after the Restoration changed their political creed with such surprising rapidity that it was difficult to keep track of their changes. They were accordingly symbolized by a number of weatherc.o.c.ks proportioned to the number of their political conversions, Talleyrand leading the procession, with not less than seven to his credit. The _eteignoir_ was constantly used in satire directed against the priesthood, the most famous instance appearing in the _Minerva_ in 1819. It took for the text a refrain from a song of Beranger. In this cartoon the Church is personified by the figure of the Pope holding in one hand a sabre, and, in the other, a paper with the words Bulls, crusades, Sicilian vespers, St. Bartholomew. Beside the figure of the Church, torch in hand, is the demon of discord. From the smoke of the torch of the demon various horrors are escaping. We read "the restoration of feudal rights," "feudal privileges,"

"division of families." Monks are trying to snuff out the memory of Fenelon, Buffon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montaigne, and other philosophers and thinkers. For ten years the caricaturists played with this theme.

A feeble forerunner of _La Caricature_, ent.i.tled _Le Nain Jaune_, depended largely for its wit upon the variations it could improvise upon the _girouette_ and upon the _eteignoir_.

Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that French art was quite dest.i.tute of humorists at the beginning of the century. M. Armand Dayot, in a monograph upon French caricature, mentions among others the names of Isabey, Boilly, and Carle Vernet as rivaling the English cartoonists in the ingenuity of their designs, and surpa.s.sing them in artistic finish and harmony of color. "But," he adds, "they were never able to go below the surface in their satire. It would be a mistake to enroll in the hirsute cohort of caricaturists these witty and charming artists, who were more concerned in depicting the pleasures of mundane life than in castigating its vices and irregularities." The 4th of November, 1830, is a momentous date in the history of French caricature. Prior to that time, French cartoons, such as there were, were studiously, even painfully, impersonal. Thackeray, in his delightful essay upon "Caricatures and Lithography," in the "Paris Sketch Book," describes the conditions of this period with the following whimsical allegory:

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Order of the Extinguishers.

_A typical French cartoon of the Restoration._]

"As for poor caricature and freedom of the press, they, like the rightful princess in a fairy tale, with the merry fantastic dwarf, her attendant, were entirely in the power of the giant who rules the land. The Princess, the press, was so closely watched and guarded (with some little show, nevertheless, of respect for her rank) that she dared not utter a word of her own thoughts; and, as for poor Caricature, he was gagged and put out of the way altogether."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Proudhon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Digging the Grave.]

On this famous 4th of November, however, there appeared the initial number of Philipon's _La Caricature_, which was destined to usher in a new era of comic art, and which proved the most efficacious weapon which the Republicans found to use against Louis Philippe--a weapon as redoubtable as _La Lanterne_ of Henri Rochefort became under the Second Empire. Like several of his most famous collaborators, Charles Philipon was a Meridional. He was born in Lyons at the opening of the century. He studied art in the atelier of Gros. He married into the family of an eminent publisher of prints, M. Aubert, and was himself successively the editor of the three most famous comic papers that France has had, _La Caricature_, _Charivari_, and the _Journal pour Rire_. The first of these was a weekly paper. The _Charivari_ appeared daily, and at first its cartoons were almost exclusively political.

Philipon had gathered around him a group of artists, men like Daumier, Gavarni, Henry Monnier, and Travies, whose names afterward became famous, and they united in a veritable crusade of merciless ridicule against the king, his family, and his supporters. Their satire took the form of bitter personal attacks, and a very curious contest ensued between the government and the editorial staff of the _Charivari_. As Thackeray sums it up, it was a struggle 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; it was something like Thersites girding at Ajax." Time after time were Philipon and his dauntless aids arrested. More than a dozen times they lost their cause before a jury, yet each defeat was equivalent to a victory, bringing them new sympathy, and each time they returned to the attack with cartoons which, if more covert in their meaning, were even more offensive. Perhaps the most famous of all the cartoons which originated in Philipon's fertile brain is that of the "Pear," which did so much to turn the countenance of Louis Philippe to ridicule--a ridicule which did more than anything else to cause him to be driven from the French throne. The "Pear" was reproduced in various forms in _La Caricature_, and afterward in _Le Charivari_. By inferior artists the "Pear" was chalked up on walls all over Paris. The most politically important of the "Poire" series was produced when Philipon was obliged to appear before a jury to answer for the crime of provoking contempt against the King's person by giving such a ludicrous version of his face. In his own defense Philipon took up a sheet of paper and drew a large Burgundy pear, in the lower parts round and capacious, narrower near the stalk, and crowned with two or three careless leaves. "Is there any treason in that?" he asked the jury. Then he drew a second pear like the first, except that one or two lines were scrawled in the midst of it, which bore somehow an odd resemblance to the features of a celebrated personage; and, lastly, he produced the exact portrait of Louis Philippe; the well-known _toupet_, the ample whiskers--nothing was extenuated or set down maliciously. "Gentlemen of the jury," said Philipon, "can I help it if His Majesty's face is like a pear?"

Thackeray, in giving an account of this amusing trial, makes the curious error of supposing that Philipon's _nave_ defense carried conviction with the jury. On the contrary, Philipon was condemned and fined, and immediately took vengeance upon the judge and jury by arranging their portraits upon the front page of _Charivari_ in the form of a "Pear." In a hundred different ways his artists rang the changes upon the "pear," and each new attack was the forerunner of a new arrest and trial. One day _La Caricature_ published a design representing a gigantic pear surmounting the pedestal in the Place de la Concorde, and bearing the legend, "_Le monument expia-poire_." This regicidal pleasantry brought Philipon once more into court. "The prosecution sees in this a provocation to murder!" cried the accused.

"It would be at most a provocation to make marmalade." Finally, after a picture of a monkey stealing a pear proved to be an indictable offense, the subject was abandoned as being altogether too expensive a luxury.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Facsimile of the Famous Defense presented by Philipon when on Trial for Libeling the King.

"Is it my fault, gentlemen of the jury, if his Majesty's face looks like a pear?"]

CHAPTER IX

THE BAITING OF LOUIS PHILIPPE

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Pious Monarch. Caricature of Charles X.]

But although the "Pear" was forced to disappear, Philipon continued to hara.s.s the government, until Louis Philippe, who had gained his crown largely by his champions.h.i.+p of the freedom of the press, was driven in desperation to sanction the famous September laws, which virtually strangled its liberty. Yet, in spite of the obstacles thrown in their way, the work of Philipon and of the remarkable corps of satirical geniuses which he gathered round him, forms a pictorial record in which the intimate history of France, from Charles X.'s famous _coup d'etat_ down to the revolution of 1848, may be read like an open book.

The adversaries of the government of 1830 were of two kinds. One kind, of which Admiral Carrel was a type, resorted to pa.s.sionate argument, to indignant eloquence. The other kind resorted to the methods of the Fronde; they made war by pin-p.r.i.c.ks, by bursts of laughter, with all the resources of French gayety and wit. In this method the leading spirit was Philipon, who understood clearly the power that would result from the closest alliance between _la presse et l'image_. Even before _La Caricature_ was founded the features of the last of the Bourbons became a familiar subject in cartoons. Invariably the same features are emphasized; a tall, lank figure, frequently contorted like the "india-rubber man" of the dime museums; a narrow, vacuous countenance, a high, receding forehead, over which spa.r.s.e locks of hair are straggling; a salient jaw, the lips drawn back in a mirthless grin, revealing huge, ungainly teeth, projecting like the incisors of a horse. In one memorable cartoon he is expending the full crus.h.i.+ng power of these teeth upon the famous "charter" of 1830, but is finding it a nut quite too hard to crack.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Charles X. In the Role of the "Great Nutcracker."

In this caricature Charles X. is attempting to break with his teeth a billiard ball on which is written the word "Charter." The cartoon is ent.i.tled "The Great Nutcracker of July 25th, or the Impotent Horse-jaw" (ganache)--a play upon words.]

From the very beginning _La Caricature_ a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of hostile suspicion toward Louis Philippe, the pretended champion of the _bourgeoisie_, whose veneer of expedient republicanism never went deeper than to send his children to the public schools, and to exhibit himself parading the streets of Paris, umbrella in hand. Two cartoons which appeared in the early days of his reign, and are labeled respectively "_Ne vous y frottez pas_" and "_Il va bon train, le Ministere!_" admirably ill.u.s.trate the public lack of confidence. The first of these, an eloquent lithograph by Daumier, represents a powerfully built and resolute young journeyman printer standing with hands clinched, ready to defend the liberty of the press. In the background are two groups. In the one Charles X., already worsted in an encounter, lies p.r.o.ne upon the earth; in the other Louis Philippe, waving his ubiquitous umbrella, is with difficulty restrained from a.s.suming the aggressive. The second of these cartoons is more sweeping in its indictment. It represents the sovereign and his ministers in their "chariot of state," one and all las.h.i.+ng the horses into a mad gallop toward a bottomless abyss. General Soult, the Minister of War, is flouris.h.i.+ng and snapping a military flag, in place of a whip. At the back of the chariot a Jesuit has succeeded in securing foothold upon the baggage, and is adding his voice to hasten the forward march, all symbolic of the violent momentum of the reactionary movement.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Louis Philippe at the Funeral of Lafayette.

_"Enfonce Lafayette!... Attrape, mon vieux!"_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The s.h.i.+p of State in Peril--Its Sailors know not to what Saints to commend Themselves.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The People thrown into the Pit held by the Monsters of Various Taxes.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Once more, Madame, do you wish divorce, or do you not wish divorce? You are perfectly free to choose?"]

It was not likely that the part which Louis Philippe played in the revolution of 1789, his share in the republican victories of Jemappes and of Valmy, would be forgotten by those who saw in him only a pseudo-republican, a "citizen king" in name only, and who seized eagerly upon the opportunity of mocking at his youthful espousal of republicanism. The names of these battles recur again and again in the caricature of the period, in the legends, in maps conspicuously hung upon the walls of the background. An anonymous cut represents the public gazing eagerly into a magic lantern, the old "Poire"

officiating as showman: "You have before you the conqueror of Jemappes and of Valmy. You see him surrounded by his n.o.bles, his generals, and his family, all ready to die in his defense. See how the jolly rascals fight. They are not the ones to be driven in disgrace from their kingdom. Oh, no!" Of all the cartoons touching upon Louis Philippe's insincerity, probably the most famous is that of Daumier commemorating the death of Lafayette. The persistent popularity of this veteran statesman had steadily become more and more embarra.s.sing to a government whose reactionary doctrines he repudiated, and whose political corruption he despised. "_Enfonce Lafayette!... Attrape, mon vieux!_" is the legend inscribed beneath what is unquestionably one of the most extraordinary of all the caricatures of Honore Daumier. It represents Louis Philippe watching the funeral cortege of Lafayette, his hands raised to his face in the pretense of grief, but the face behind distorted into a hideous leer of gratification. M. a.r.s.ene Alexandre, in his remarkable work on Daumier, describes this splendid drawing in the following terms: "Under a grey sky, against the somber and broken background of a cemetery, rises on a little hillock the fat and black figure of an undertaker's man. Below him on a winding road is proceeding a long funeral procession. It is the crowd that has thronged to the obsequies of the ill.u.s.trious patriot. Through the leaf.a.ge of the weeping willows may be seen the white tombstones. The whole scene bears the mark of a profound sadness, in which the princ.i.p.al figure seems to join, if one is to judge by his sorrowful att.i.tude and his clasped hands. But look closer. If this undertaker's man, with the features of Louis Philippe, is clasping his hands, it is simply to rub them together with joy; and through his fingers, half hiding his countenance, one may detect a sly grin." The obsequious att.i.tude of the members of Parliament came in for its share of satirical abuse. "This is not a Chamber, it is a Kennel," is the t.i.tle of a spirited lithograph by Grandville, representing the French statesmen as a pack of hounds fawning beneath the lash of their imperious keeper, Casimir Perier. Another characteristic cartoon of Grandville's represents the legislature as an "Infernal laboratory for extracting the quintessence of politics"--a composition which, in its crowded detail, its grim and uncanny suggestiveness, and above all its _bizarre_ distortions of the human face and form, shows more plainly than the work of any other French caricaturist the influence of Gillray. A collection of grinning skulls are labeled "a.n.a.lysis of Human Thought"; state doc.u.ments of Louis Philippe are being cut and weighed and triturated, while in the foreground a legislator with distended cheeks is wasting an infinite lot of breath upon a blowpipe in his effort to distill the much-sought-for quintessence from a retort filled with fragments of the words "Bonapartism," "anarchy,"

"equality," "republic," etc. One of the palpable results of the "political quintessence" of Louis Philippe's government took the form of heavy imposts, and these also afforded a subject for Grandville's graphic pencil. "The Public Thrown to the Imposts in the Great Pit of the Budget" first appeared in _La Caricature_. It represented the various taxes under which France was suffering in the guise of strange and unearthly animals congregated in a sort of bear pit, somewhat similar to the one which attracts the attention of all visitors to the city of Berne. The spectacle is one given by the government in power for the amus.e.m.e.nt of all those connected in any way with public office: in other words, the salaried officials who draw their livelihood from the taxes imposed upon the people. It is for their entertainment that the tax-paying public is being hurled to the monsters below--monsters more uncouth and fantastic than even Mr. H.

G. Wells's fertile brain conceived in his "War of the Worlds," or "First Men in the Moon." Daumier in his turn had to have his fling at the ministerial benches of the government of July--the "prost.i.tuted Chamber of 1834." At the present day, when the very names of the men whom he attacked are half forgotten, his famous cartoon, "Le Ventre Legislatif," is still interesting; yet it is impossible to realize the impression it must have made in the days when every one of those "ventrigoulus," those rotund, somnolent, inanely smiling old men, with the word "_bourgeoisie_" plainly written all over them, were familiar figures in the political world, and Daumier's presentment of them, one and all, a masterly indictment of complacent incapacity. As between Daumier and Grandville, the two leading lights of _La Caricature_, there is little question that the former was the greater. Balzac, who was at one time one of the editors of _La Caricature_, writing under pseudonym of "Comte Alexandre de B.," and was the source of inspiration of one of its leading features, the curious _Etudes de Genre_, once said of Daumier: "_Ce gaillard-la, mes enfants, a du Michel-Ange sous la peau._" Balzac took Daumier under his protection from the beginning. His first counsel to him was: "If you wish to become a great artist, _faites des dettes_!" Grandville has been defined by later French critics as _un nevrose_, a bitter and pessimistic soul. It was he who produced the cruelest compositions that ever appeared in _La Caricature_. He had, however, some admirable pages to his credit, among others his interpretation of Sebastian's famous "L'Ordre regne a Varsovie." Fearfully sinister is the field of carnage, with the Cossack, with b.l.o.o.d.y _pique_, mounting guard, smoking his pipe tranquilly, on his face the horrible expression of satisfaction over a work well done. Grandville also conceived the idea, worthy of a great cartoonist, of Processions and Corteges. These enabled him to have pa.s.s before the eye, under costumes, each conveying some subtle irony or allusion, all the political men in favor. Every occasion was good. A religious procession, and the men of the day appeared as choir boys, as acolytes, etc. _Un vote de budget_, and then it was _une marche de boeuf gras_, with savages, musketeers, clowns forming the escort of "_M. Gros, gras et bete_." It is easy to guess who was the personage so designated. Nothing is more amusing than these pages, full of a _verve, soutenue de pince sans rire_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Resuscitation of the French Censors.h.i.+p.

_By Grandville._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Louis Philippe as Bluebeard.

"Sister Press, do you see anything?"

"Nothing, but the July sun beating on the dusty road."

"Sister Press, do you see anything?"

"Two Cavaliers, urging their horses across the plain, and bearing a banner."]

It is one of the many little ironies of Louis Philippe's reign that, after having owed his election to his supposed advocacy of freedom of the press, he should in less than two years take vigorous measures to stifle it. Some of the best known cartoons that appeared in _La Caricature_ deal with this very subject. One of these, which bears the signature of Grandville and is marked by all the vindictive bitterness of which that artist was the master, represents Louis Philippe in the role of Bluebeard, who, dagger in hand, is about to slay his latest wife. The wife, the "Const.i.tution," lies prostrate, hound with thongs.

The corpses of this political Bluebeard's other victims may be seen through the open door of the secret chamber. Leaning over the balcony and scanning the horizon is the figure of Sister Anne, in this case symbolic of the Press. The unfortunate "Const.i.tution," feeling that her last minute has come, calls out: "Sister Press, do you see nothing coming?" The Press replies: "I see only the sun of July beating down, powdering the dusty road and parching the green fields." Again the Const.i.tution cries: "Sister Press, do you see nothing coming?" And this time the Press calls back: "I see two cavaliers urging their horses across the plain and carrying a banner." Below the castle of Bluebeard may be seen the figures of the two cavaliers. The banner which they carry bears the significant word, "Republic!"

Another cartoon bearing upon the same subject represents Liberty wearing a Phrygian cap, driving the chariot of the sun. The King and his ministers and judges, above whom a crow hovers ominously, flapping its black wings, are seeking to stop the course of liberty by thrusting between the spokes of the wheels sticks and rods inscribed "Lawsuits against the Press," while Talleyrand comes to their aid by throwing beneath the wheels stones symbolizing "standing armies,"

"imposts," "holy alliance," and so forth. This cartoon is inscribed: "It would be easier to stop the course of the sun," and is the work of Travies, who is best known as the creator of the grotesque hunchback figure, "Mayeux."