English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century Part 1

English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.

by Graham Everitt.

PREFACE.

The only works which, so far as I know, profess to deal with English caricaturists and comic artists of the nineteenth century are two in number. The first is a work by the late Robert William Buss, embodying the substance of certain lectures delivered by the accomplished author many years ago. Mr. Buss's book, which was published for private circulation only, deals more especially with the work of James Gillray, his predecessors and contemporaries, treating only briefly and incidentally of a few of his successors of our own day. The second is a work by Mr. James Parton, an American author, whose book (published by Harper Brothers, of New York) treats of "Caricature, and other Comic Art in all Times and many Lands." It is obviously no part of my duty (even if I felt disposed to do so) to criticise the work of a brother scribe, and that scribe an American gentleman. Covering an area so boundless in extent, it is scarcely surprising that Mr. Parton should devote only thirty of his pages to the consideration of English caricaturists and graphic humourists of the nineteenth century.

Under these circ.u.mstances, it would seem to me that, in placing the present work before the public, an apology will scarcely be considered necessary.

Depending oftentimes for effect upon overdrawing, nearly always upon a graphic power entirely out of the range of ordinary art, the work of the caricaturist is not to be measured by the ordinary standard of artistic excellence, but rather by the light which it throws upon popular opinion or popular prejudice, in relation to the events, the remembrance of which it perpetuates and chronicles. While, however, a lat.i.tude is allowed to the caricaturist which would be inconsistent with the principles by which the practice of art is ordinarily governed, it may at the same time be safely laid down that it is essential to the success of the comic designer as well as the caricaturist, that both should be _artists_ of ability, though not necessarily men of absolute genius.

It may be contended that Gillray, Rowlandson, Bunbury, and others, although commencing work before, are really quite as much nineteenth century graphic satirists as their successors. This I admit; but inasmuch as their work has been already described by other writers, and the present book concerns itself especially with those whose labours commenced after 1800, I have endeavoured to connect them with those of their predecessors and contemporaries, without unnecessarily entering into detail with which the reader is supposed to be already more or less familiar.

I am in hopes that the character in which I am enabled to present George Cruikshank as the leading caricaturist of the century; the account I have given of his. .h.i.therto almost unknown work of this character; together with the view I have taken of the causes which led to his sudden and unexampled declension in the very midst of an artistic success almost unprecedented, may prove both new and interesting to some of my readers.

I have to acknowledge the a.s.sistance I have derived from the 1864 and 1867 MS. diaries of the late s.h.i.+rley Brooks, kindly placed at my service by Cecil Brooks, Esq., his son; my thanks are likewise due to Mr.

William Tegg for some valuable information kindly rendered.

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.

Having been called on to write a Preface to a popular edition of this book, I seize the opportunity which is now afforded me of correcting an error which occurred in the original edition. By some unaccountable accident the printer omitted my sub-t.i.tle; and it was not unnatural that some of my reviewers should inquire _why_, in a work dealing with English Caricaturists of the Nineteenth Century, no mention should be made of the graphic humourists who succeeded John Leech. This question is answered by the restoration of the original t.i.tle, from which it will be seen that the work is simply "a _contribution_ to the history of caricature from the time of the first Napoleon _down_ to the death of John Leech, in 1864." To take in the later humourists, would be to carry the work beyond the limits which I had originally a.s.signed to it.

One word more, and I have done. My intention in writing this book was to show how the caricaturist "ill.u.s.trated" his time,--in other words, how he "interpreted" the social and political events of his day, according to his own bias, or the views he was retained to serve. While exhibiting him in the light of an _historian_--which he most undoubtedly is--I had no idea (as some of my too favourable critics seem to have imagined) of writing a history of caricature itself. For this task, indeed, I am not qualified, nor does it in the slightest degree enlist my sympathy.

G. EVERITT.

_11th August, 1893._

ENGLISH CARICATURISTS.

CHAPTER I.

_OF THE ENGLISH CARICATURE AND ITS DECAY._

DEFINITION OF CARICATURE

If you turn to the word "_caricatura_" in your Italian dictionary, it is just possible that you will be gratified by learning that it means "caricature"; but if you refer to the same word in old Dr. Johnson, he will tell you, with the plain, practical common-sense which distinguished him, that it signifies "an exaggerated resemblance in drawings," and this expresses exactly what it _does_ mean. Any distinguis.h.i.+ng feature or peculiarity, whether in face, figure, or dress, is _exaggerated_, and yet the likeness is preserved. A straight nose is presented unnaturally straight, a short nose unnaturally depressed; a prominent forehead is drawn unusually bulbous; a protuberant jaw unnaturally underhung; a fat man is depicted preternaturally fat, and a thin one correspondingly lean. This at least was the idea of _caricature_ during the last century. Old Francis Grose, who, in 1791, wrote certain "Rules for Drawing Caricaturas," gives us the following explanation of their origin:--"The sculptors of ancient Greece," he tells us, "seem to have diligently observed the form and proportions const.i.tuting the European ideas of beauty, and upon them to have formed their statues. These measures are to be met with in many drawing books; a slight deviation from them by the predominancy of any feature const.i.tutes what is called character, and serves to discriminate the owner thereof and to fix the idea of ident.i.ty. This deviation or peculiarity aggravated, forms caricatura."

As a matter of fact, the strict definition of the word given by Francis Grose and Dr. Johnson is no longer applicable; the word caricature includes, and has for a very long time been understood to include, within its meaning any pictorial or graphic satire, political or otherwise, and whether the drawing be exaggerated or not: it is in this sense that Mr. Wright makes use of it in his "Caricature History of the Georges," and it is in this sense that we shall use it for the purposes of this present book.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROWLANDSON.

THE TRUMPET AND THE Ba.s.sOON.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROWLANDSON. _January 1st, 1796._

"ANYTHING WILL DO FOR AN OFFICER."

"What shall we do with him?"

"Do with him? Why, make an officer of him!"

_Face p. 2._]

CHANGE IN THE SPIRIT OF ENGLISH CARICATURE.

Since the commencement of the present century, and more especially during the last fifty years, a change has come over the spirit of English caricature. The fact is due to a variety of causes, amongst which must be reckoned the revolution in dress and manners; the extinction of the three-bottle men and topers; the change of thought, manners, and habits consequent on the introduction of steam, railways, and the electric telegraph. The casual observer meeting, as he sometimes will, with a portfolio of etchings representing the men with red and bloated features, elephantine limbs, and huge paunches, who figure in the caricatures of the last and the early part of the present century, may well be excused if he doubt whether such figures of fun ever had an actual existence. Our answer is that they not only existed, but were very far from uncommon. Our great-grandfathers of 1800 were jolly good fellows; was.h.i.+ng down their beef-steaks with copious draughts of "York or Burton ale," or the porter for which Trenton, of Whitechapel, appears to have been famed,[1] fortifying themselves afterwards with deeper draughts of generous wines--rich port, Madeira, claret, dashed with hermitage--they set up before they were old men paunches and diseases which rendered them a sight for G.o.ds and men. Reader, be a.s.sured that the fat men who figure in the graphic satires of the early part of the century were certainly _not_ caricatured.

[Ill.u.s.tration: T. ROWLANDSON. _April 13th, 1807._

"ALL THE TALENTS."

The "Broad-Bottom Administration," known as "All the Talents," showing the several qualifications of the Ministry.

_Face p. 3._]

THE THREE GREAT CARICATURISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY.

In connection with the subject of graphic satire, the names of the three great caricaturists of the last century--Gillray, Rowlandson, and Bunbury--are indispensable. The last, a gentleman of family, fortune, and position, and equerry to the Duke of York, was, in truth, rather an amateur than an artist. Rowlandson was an able draughtsman, and something more; but his style and his tastes are essentially coa.r.s.e and sensual, and his women are the overblown beauties of the Drury Lane and Covent Garden of his day. George Moutard Woodward, whose productions he sometimes honoured by etching, and whose distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics are carelessness and often bad drawing, follows him at a respectful distance. The genius of James Gillray has won him the t.i.tle of the "Prince of Caricaturists," a t.i.tle he well earned and thoroughly deserved. The only one of the nineteenth century caricaturists who touches him occasionally in _caricature_, but distances him in everything else, is our George Cruikshank.

Commencing work when George the Third was still a young man, Gillray and Rowlandson necessarily infused into it some of the coa.r.s.eness and vulgarity of their century. With Gillray, indeed, this coa.r.s.eness and vulgarity may be said to be rather the exception than the rule, whereas the exact contrary holds good of his able and too often careless contemporary. As might have been expected, every one who excites their ridicule or contempt is treated and (in their letterpress descriptions) spoken of in the broadest manner. Bonaparte is mentioned by both artists (in allusion to his supposed sanguinary propensities) as "Boney, the carcase butcher;" Josephine is represented by Gillray as a coa.r.s.e fat woman, with the sensual habits of a Drury Lane strumpet; Talleyrand, by right of his club foot and limping gait, is invariably dubbed "Hopping Talley." The influence of both artists is felt by those who immediately succeeded them. The coa.r.s.eness, for instance, of Robert Cruikshank, when he displays any at all, which is seldom, is directly traceable to the influence of Rowlandson, whom (until he followed the example of his greater brother) he at first copied.

INFLUENCE OF GILLRAY ON CRUIKSHANK.

Gillray wrought much the same influence upon George Cruikshank. I have seen it gravely a.s.serted by some of those who have written upon him,[2]

that this great artist never executed a drawing which could call a blush into the cheek of modesty. But those who have written upon George Cruikshank--and their name is legion--instead of beginning at the beginning, and thus tracing the gradual and almost insensible formation of his style, appear to me to have plunged as it were into _medias res_, and commenced at the point when he dropped caricature and became an ill.u.s.trator of books. Book ill.u.s.tration was scarcely an art until George Cruikshank made it so; and the most interesting period of his artistic career appears to us to be the one in which he pursued the path indicated by James Gillray, until his career of caricaturist merged into his later employment of a designer and etcher of book ill.u.s.tration, by which no doubt he achieved his reputation. In answer to those who tell us that he never produced a drawing which could call a blush into the cheek of modesty, and never raised a laugh at the expense of decency, we will only say that we can produce at least a score of instances to the contrary. To go no further than "The Scourge," we will refer them to three: his _Dinner of the Four-in-Hand Club at Salthill_, in vol. i.; his _Return to Office_ (1st July, 1811), in vol. ii.; and his _Coronation of the Empress of the Nares_ (1st September, 1812), in vol.

iv.

REVOLUTION EFFECTED BY H. B.

As the century pa.s.sed out of its infancy and attained the maturer age of thirty years, a gradual and almost imperceptible change came over the spirit of English graphic satire. The coa.r.s.eness and suggestiveness of the old caricaturists gradually disappeared, until at length, in 1830, an artist arose who was destined to work a complete revolution in the style and manner of English caricature. This artist was John Doyle,--the celebrated H. B. He it was that discovered that pictures might be made mildly diverting without actual coa.r.s.eness or exaggeration; and when this fact was accepted, the art of caricaturing underwent a complete transition, and a.s.sumed a new form. The "Sketches" of H. B. owe their chief attraction to the excellence of their designer as a portrait painter; his successors, with less power in this direction but with better general artistic abilities, rapidly improved upon his idea, and thus was founded the modern school of graphic satirists represented by Richard Doyle, John Leech, and John Tenniel. So completely was the style of comic art changed under the auspices of these clever men, that the very name of "caricature" disappeared, and the modern word "cartoon"

a.s.sumed its place. With the exception indeed of Carlo Pellegrini (the "Ape" of _Vanity Fair_), and his successors, we have now no caricaturist in the old and true acceptation of the term, and original and clever as their productions are, their compositions are timid compared with those of Bunbury, Gillray, Rowlandson, and their successors, being limited to a weekly "exaggerated" portrait, instead of composed of many figures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES GILLRAY. _May 14th, 1799._