i 7 ‘| “sd Mae ( " ae ey uv if F a a y N ¥ vss ef i ; i “ 1 - oat + * + i. Dig a, vale . ad rie & — Me he r>, * ' % * Betton by wedn Ldvwomt Koy, and * Gyre” warduning Wen Leng. Whe Re se Or Onna amir US Mt ac ce ee a me mi tormem ernment aime estina ge i 4 } Max Beerbohm. Philip Guedalla, Esq. THE CARICATURISTS *Bohun Lynch, Edmond Kapp, and ‘ Quiz’, wondering how long the veteran exile will go doddering on”. Wiis ORY eO Ts PARICATURE y Bohun Lynch JNOS:-HABEA 7 e i) C) eye § ® copa ra A a S vee 77. = Me G PON ee LA iiiS DSA |: CH Vertes Go Bape DO G > mice DH A RASS ey hy 4 sa (SNe i a OG eKLYe BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY af, . To H. M.M.B. r ia a PREFACE ik word history is rather portentous, and I feel that on the cover of a book of these dimensions it needs two or three words of apology. Handbook or guidebook would seem to me more appropriate titles but for certain qualities implied of which I have tried to be guiltless. If the art of caricature is regarded in its widest and most popular sense, the subject is enormous. It is big enough, in all conscience, if it embraces only that part of comic art which is definitely satiric. Reference to the bibliography at the end of this little book will show what I mean. Certain authors evidently re- gard caricature as a convenient word to cover all comic art: and this is a little too narrow as it is much too wide. The meaning given to the word by various authorities is discussed in the first chapter, but we arrive at a point beyond all discussion when the final definition virtually becomes personal, when a particular drawing is or is not caricature according to private perceptions or even the mood of the moment. Apart from satires upon in- dividuals, I can think of, as caricature, typifications by Callot, Daumier, or Max Beerbohm, but not of those made by du Maurier. With a field of inquiry diminished to a personal but at the same time decently antique definition, I beg the reader’s indulgence if it appears that I have sometimes shown myself a little inconsistent, and have allowed personal predilections to outweigh a sense of proportion. It will be found in the early chapters that much space is devoted to work which is not to be regarded as true caricature now; but which calls for detailed scrutiny as being the founda- tion of the art, as now understood. Besides acknowledgment to several authors whose books are 1X PLATES AT THE END OF THE BOOK Frontispiece. The Caricaturists. By Max Beerbohm Plate 1. Isaac of Norwich 11. Marginal Drawings from a Harleian MS. 11. Caricatures. By Leonardo da Vinci Iv. The Monk-Calf of Freiberg. After a German wood-engraving v. Martin Luther. After a German wood-engraving vi. The Toper. After a German wood-engraving vil. ‘I'wo Figures from Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel vill. ‘‘ Billy’s Political Plaything ”. By Richard Newton Ix. General Howe and Miss——. By Thomas Rowlandson x. The Czar Paul I of Russia. By James Gillray x1. An Oxford Don. By Robert Dighton x11. Irlande et Jamaique. By Honoré Daumier xl. Algernon Charles Swinburne: a study on blotting paper. By Ape (Carlo Pellegrini) x1v. Algernon Charles Swinburne. By Max Beerbohm Xv. “94”: Admiral the Hon. Sir Harry Keppel. By A-O (Roland le Strange) xvI. Mr. George Grossmith. By Henry Ospovat xvi. Monsieur Clemenceau. By Edmund Dulac xvill. ‘‘ Buffoon ”: Mr. George Graves. By Edmond X. Kapp xIx. Mr. Edmund Blunden. By Quiz (Powys Evans) xx. ‘‘ As Others see us ”’. By Ralph Barton Xill ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT H. M. M. B. By Bohun Lynch, page vii Mr. Stacy Aumonier. By Aubrey Hammond, x A Dwarf. By Jacques Callot, 10 La Divine Venus et Le Bel Adonis. After an early French caricature, 19 A Fifteenth-Century Fashion-Caricature. From a MS. in the Harleian Collection, 31 Two Heads. By Leonardo da Vinci, 45 Mask of Charles X of France. By Charles Philipon, 56 M. Maurice Barrés. By André Rouveyre, 69 Mr. W. Somerset Maugham. By Miguel Covarrubias, 92 Mr. H. L. Mencken. By Miguel Covarrubias, 96 M. Claude Debussy. By André Rouveyre, 108 The Earl of Lonsdale. By the Author, 120 X1V Chapter I THE NATURE OF CARICATURE HE word Caricature is derived from the Italian caricare, to load, so that to define the art as “‘ overloaded repre- sentation ’’ has the merit of age and the convenience of brevity: but the actual word Caricatura was not used in Italy until the second half of the seventeenth CECILY werecestala méme chose que charge en peinture”’ says an old French dictionary—which conveys a similar meaning. Dr. Johnson called it “an exaggerated resemblance in drawings ”; Walker and Webster a “ ludicrous representation ”. Murray defines caricature in art as “‘ grotesque and ludicrous representation of persons or things by exaggeration of their most characteristic or striking features”, and “a portrait or other artistic representation in which the characteristic features of the original are exaggerated with ludicrous effect”. For the ordinary traffic of discussion we may say that carica- ture is, amongst other things, the portrayal of an individual, as seen by another, without regard to the rules of drawing. Joseph Conrad, in Nostromo, speaks (and, as it happens, without any apparent thought of caricature in his mind) of ‘‘ putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth ”, which very neatly serves to describe at least one aspect of the art. A caricature may be none the worse for having a grotesque and impossible form: it may be none the better. Many academic portraits have elements of caricature in them, and Macaulay* suggests that the best histories contain a little of the exaggeration of fiction, just as “the best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature”, and thereby gives his * The essay on Macchiavelli, 1827. I B A HISTORY OF CARICATURE benediction to the intuitive faculties, which, in the want of absolute truth, serve better than the registration of mere “‘ fact ”’. On the other hand a good caricaturist needs no great talent in any other artistic direction: he is governed only by his own sense of truthful misrepresentation. He draws, as a rule, from memory and does not allow himself to be hampered by irrelevant exactitudes. Salient peculiarities remain in his mind’s eye, and these he puts down, exaggerated or not, at the expense of anatomical truths which do not interest him. Intertwined with physical individuality, he tries to make his drawing indicate character, and the better the caricaturist the less dependent is he, to this end, upon accessory properties. A greedy man, for example, is plainly and easily indicated if he is represented as sitting at a table “‘ groaning ”’ under masses of fine food. Such a drawing may be very funny, but the good caricaturist can suggest lips that are smacked at dishes left out of the drawing. Again, one method of caricature is to exaggerate these sen- sually smacking lips until they form the central content of the drawing, and even to repeat them in various forms, or suggest and hint at them by several symbols. Here the artist transcends mere exaggeration, and is making a drawing wherein fat lips stand for the victim: but the remainder of the face and body or the attitude should convey some likeness of the victim as well. And, when it comes to the point, considerable skill and talent are necessary in order that the caricaturist may preserve the unities of his own convention. He must not only be able to draw a man so that he looks like a pig: but the tweed cap he wears must look like a tweed cap and be unmistakable. It has been suggested that Horace’s vultum alicujus in pejus jfingere conveyed the notion of caricature; and an old English- Latin dictionary puts forward gryllorum pictor, a painter of comic figures, as a plausible rendering—which it is in so far as the Greek derivation of the word supplies us with the pig—the favourite vehicle of insult from time immemorial. Horace’s idea of putting the worse construction on anyone’s face is more generally true of caricature than not, but it is, like the symbolic porker, too narrow. 2 THE NATURE OF CARICATURE The occasional use of the word in England forestalled the true practice of the art. Sir Thomas Browne in his posthumous work on Christian Morals (1690) said: ‘“‘ When men’s faces are drawn with resemblance to some other animals the Italians call it, to be drawn in caricatura.” Later, in the Spectator for Novem- ber 15th, 1712, Pascal is quoted by Hughes in an essay on The Dignity of Human Nature : “ It is of dangerous consequence to represent to man how near he is to the level of the beasts, without showing him at the same time his greatness. It is likewise dangerous to let him see his greatness without his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave him ignorant of either; but very beneficial that he should be made sensible of both.” Hughes had been discussing partiality in the judgment of human nature, giving as instances politicians, who ‘‘ can resolve the most shining actions among men into artifice and design ”’; and satirists who “ describe nothing but deformity ”’. “‘ From all these hands,” he goes on, “ we have such draughts of mankind, as are represented in those burlesque pictures which the Italians call caricaturas; where the art consists in preserving, amidst distorted proportions and aggravated features, some distin- guishing likeness of the person, but in such a manner as to transform the most agreeable beauty into the most odious monster.”’ Francis Grose, in his Rules for Drawing Caricaturas (1788), demonstrates their origin in the following passage: “The sculptors of ancient Greece seem to have diligently observed the forms and proportions constituting 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, constitutes what is called character, and serves to dis- criminate the owner thereof, and to fix the idea of identity. This deviation or peculiarity, aggravated, forms caricatura.”’ 3 A HISTORY OF.CARTCATURYE Grose goes on to say that “ Caricaturists should be careful not to overcharge the peculiarities of their subjects, as they would thereby become hideous instead of ridiculous, and instead of laughter excite horror. It is therefore always best to keep within the bounds of probability. Ugliness, according to our local idea, may be divided into genteel and vulgar. The difference between these kinds of ugliness seems to be, that the former is positive or redundant, the latter wanting or negative. . . Con- vex faces give an air of dignity to their owners; whereas concave faces . . . always stamp a meanness and vulgarity. The one seems to have passed through the limits of beauty, the other never to have arrived at them.” Grose, who used as a frontispiece for his pamphlet, an en- graved plate giving a number of odd faces, representative of types subsequently classified, analyses each feature in turn. He distinguishes the concavo-convexo face from the convexo-recto face, and so forth. He prints also a plate illustrating various noses, mouths, and chins. “‘ The nose,” he says, “may be divided into the angular; the aquiline or Roman; the parrot’s beak; the straight or Grecian; the bulbous or bottled; the turned up or snub; and the mixed or broken.” Graham Everitt, in his English Caricaturists (1886), demands that Dr. Johnson’s definition be now regarded as obsolete and maintains that the word “ includes and has now for a 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 ’’. Everitt was writing a book the principal subjects of which were the Cruikshanks, Seymour, Leech, the Doyles, and Hablot Knight Browne (“‘ Phiz *’)—none of whom, except on the rarest occasions, were caricaturists in what I humbly maintain to be the true sense. It is true that the word “ has now for a long time been understood to include” all manner of things remote from the old meaning: caricature is not the only word of which this is vexatiously true. But it does seem rather a pity that the old word, even if it is not indigenous, should not be reserved 4 THE NATURE OF CARICATURE for its peculiar but important duty, and that “ comic art” should not be content with its own wider significance. The best elaborate description of caricature in modern literature, has been made by Monsieur Henri Bergson in his essay on Laughter*. “ However regular we may imagine a face to be, however harmonious its lines and supple its movements, their adjustment is never altogether perfect: there will always be discoverable the sign of some impending bias, the vague suggestion of a possible grimace, in short some favourite distortion towards which Nature seems to be particularly inclined. The art of the carica- turist consists in detecting this, at times, imperceptible tendency, and in rendering it visible to all eyes by magnifying it. He makes his models grimace, as they would do themselves if they went to the end of their tether. Beneath the skin-deep harmony of form, he divines the deep-seated recalcitrance of matter. He realizes disproportions and deformations which must have existed in Nature as mere inclinations, but which have not suc- ceeded in coming to a head, being held in check by a higher force. This art, which has a touch of the diabolical, raises up the demon who had been overthrown by the angel. Certainly, it is an art that exaggerates, and yet the definition would be very far from complete were exaggeration alone alleged to be its aim and object, for there exist caricatures that are more lifelike than portraits, caricatures in which the exaggeration is scarcely ‘noticeable, whilst, inversely, it is quite possible to exaggerate to excess without obtaining a real caricature.” Here M. Bergson evidently apprehends what the German pundits might call seelekartkatur, a physical exaggeration which makes manifest a spiritual tendency, and which represents the individual not necessarily as he usually appears, or, even, as he has ever appeared but as, in certain and possibly fabulous circum- stances he would appear. This is the highest form of caricature. * Laughter : an essay on the meaning of the Comic. Authorized translation by Cloudesly Brereton and Fred Rothwell. 5 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE The nature and province of the art is variously commented on. Thus:— “ La caricature, ou ce que nous appelons ainsi,” intimates M. Remy de Gourmont in a Preface to the brilliantly cruel Visages des Contemporains (1913) of M. André Rouveyre, “ n’est qu’un procédé de deformation, dont les miroirs convexes ou concaves nous donnent les types les plus ingénus,”’ leaving a loop-hole for individual interpretation in that “ ou ce que nous appelons ainsi ” ; and in a letter which introduces M. Paul Gaul- tier’s Le Rire et la Caricature (1906), M. Sully Prudhomme de- clares that before all else the essential accompanimentof caricature is laughter, though the caricaturist does not always himself laugh. In his Die Karikatur der Europaischen Volker ( rgor), Herr Eduard Fuchs tells us that caricature is a philosophical analysis of the comic elements and their media, adding that it is conscious comicality as opposed to naive comicality. From all these authorities there gradually emerges some sort of effectual starting-point whence we may begin to make detailed enquiries into the story of true Caricature, but first we must return for a moment to Mr. Everitt who, in the Preface to the work already referred to, makes an extremely suggestive estimate. ~ Depending oftentimes for effect upon overdrawing, nearly always upon a graphic power entirely out of the range of ordi- nary 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.” Caricature certainly does depend upon that emphasis which is commonly called over-drawing, but to say that this is out of the range of ordinary art is at the least debatable. For what is ordinary art? Is it necessarily strict and academic representation? It used to be, you may say? Yes, but is any past use or present wont, any admission of ancient or of modern theory, as such, allowable? Cannot we disentangle for ourselves, from our own observation of art, some sort of permanent 6 THE NATURE OF GARICATURE standard, without seeking the aid either of theorists or prac- ticians? It is very difficult to do so. Let us see whether a modern writer such as Mr. Roger Fry can help us. Whatever you may think of his conclusions, his approach to them is generally stimulating and lucid. In An Essay in Esthetics, which occurs in his book, Vision and Design (1920), he tells us that ‘“‘ we may . . . dispense once for all with the idea of likeness to Nature, of correctness or incorrectness as a test, and consider only whether the emotional elements inherent in natural form are adequately discovered, unless, indeed, the emotional idea depends at any point upon likeness, or complete- ness of representation ”’. And later: “ With the new indifference to representation we have become much less interested in skill and not at all interested in know- ledge ; we are thus no longer cut off from a great deal of barbaric and primitive art the very meaning of which escaped the under- standing of those who demanded a certain standard of skill in representation before they could give serious consideration to a work of art.” This leap from the eighteen-eighties to the nineteen- twenties is not to be ascribed to mere wilfulness. It seems to be, on the whole, a fair way of demonstrating that an almost im- measurable change in critical appreciation does support the assumption that this kind of pictorial satire is to be regarded as a serious art, and not a lapse, when indulged in by “‘ serious ” artists, to be deplored or derided; not a mode “‘ lacking in elegance or descending to caricature ”? as Thackeray said of those drawings by George Cruikshank least admired by him. While, according to the modern way of thinking, much “ serious ” art may almost be said to be independent of exactness in representation, caricature, inversely, is almost dependent upon inexactness in representation. But the caricaturist must be suffi- ciently skilful in draughtsmanship to record his meaning plainly, and if he can add some zsthetic quality to his work, some beauty of line or of colour, or an adroit sense of design, so much the better. fi A HISTORY OF CARICATURE As to the light which the caricaturist throws upon popular opinion and popular prejudice, and by which, Mr. Everitt maintains, he is to be measured, this surely applies only to caricature in that author’s wide sense of the word—that is, the sum of comic art—after true caricature has been very carefully subtracted from it. It may be said indeed that the popularity of true caricature is in inverse ratio to its excellence. This especi- ally applies to the caricature of individuals. For one thing, a subtle caricature is wholly wasted upon the majority ; for another, caricature which involves adverse criticism, physical or other- wise, is apt to arouse feelings of personal hostility to the artist in the breasts of Opposing partisans. Moreover, the inner history of certain journals is as well supplied with evidence of the fury of individuals who have complained about caricatures made of them as it is of records of persons who have paid large fees for the publicity of being caricatured at all. use our eighteenth-century caricaturists made of their “ ears is for the literary side of their work was admirable. Later, when we come to investigate the caricaturists of that period, I hope to show that, really, their eyes were neither idle nor unperceiving ; and that in those less Squeamish days there was a widespread enjoyment of the art which may be said to have reached popu- larity, though it must be remembered that popularity then and now is an almost irrelative conception. It is probable that the more general satires—what are now usually called cartoons—of 8 ae eee ee eee mite NATURE OF CARICATURE Gillray and his like found more favour than his less eloquent, less “ literary ”’ caricatures; but the Dightons, who were strict caricaturists of individuals, had a considerable following, just as, much later, had Carlo Pellegrini, ‘‘ Ape” of Vanity Fair. Nowadays, the true caricaturist has fervent, intelligent, but few admirers in England, and the English in general find delight in political, polemical, or social “ cartoons”? from which all satire except of the broadest description has been ruthlessly eliminated. For the delectation of the educated classes the most genteel humour is mingled with an occasional drawing of serious import, not unfortified by pomposity. As for the purely popular cartooning of the twentieth century, we are condemned by our own old standards and without searching for odious comparison abroad. We have exchanged the savage, “‘ coarse’ vulgarity of a century ago for the more insidious vulgarity of an imbecile and spurious refinement. The napkin which served (etymologic- ally speaking) both to keep the infant dry and for use at meals has become the serviette which even vitiates the good traditional speech of the labouring classes: and the honest sweat of the gardener has been transmogrified into an almost unmentionable perspiration. But there is good and true caricature now, as in the past, and here in England, as abroad. And it is well enough understood and warmly enough liked to be encouraged to persist. That most lucid critic, Mr. Charles Marriott, once asked at what point between accuracy and interpretation was the truest portraiture to be found? He observed also (upon another occasion, in The Nation and Atheneum), that most people in their heart of hearts preferred a photograph to a painting. “Ask the lover or the bereaved parent,” he said, “.... we trust the camera because it has no opinions . . . or rather because its opinions are known and calculable . . . the simplest person knows that there is something to be allowed for the machine.”’ And— “ Following up this clue, we see that, next to the photograph, 9 A HISTORY: OF CARICATURE the human heart trusts the caricature—which is all opinion. We may not agree with the opinions of the caricaturist about that particular subject, but they are frankly exposed, and we know what allowance to make for them.” Here is a test, not watertight, but it will serve. Taking a cue from Mr. Marriott, take also a serious drawing, a portrait—plain, correct, uninspired—a simple likeness of a friend in a top hat, a tail coat, and so on. Frame it and hang it on a wall. How dull! Then take a caricature of him, with exaggerated eyebrows, no ears, the topper emphasized, the stoop made salient and— again—so on. Frame that, and hang it. How interesting! The first is silent, the second speaks. A fairly good caricature excites interest and admiration: but only a very good portrait does that. The critic was wrong who remarked that caricature is to portrait what farce is to comedy, and that it chooses the mon- strous instead of explaining the average. For that is exactly what good caricature can do and does, even if it seldom finds the subject worth while. A Dwarf: after a drawing by Jacques Callot a ee ee ee ee ee ee ee. ee Chapter II FROM THE ANTIQUE TO THE MIDDLE AGES ARICATURE, even of the conscious sort, is of the ( extremest antiquity. ‘The impulse which makes the small boy draw an unflattering likeness of his master upon the flyleaf of his ‘‘ Liddell and Scott” is about as old as human nature, just as is that other impulse under which ob- scenities are drawn or written upon walls. In the past the art was generally used as a weapon by sub- jection against authority. In the course of its long history caricature has been malign, benign, and impartial, but malice has preponderated. More often than not laughter is at some- body’s expense. The Egyptians made drawings of men as animals and their motive was not always obvious. On one papyrus at the British Museum (10016, 1) of the time of Rameses III, a lion is found playing draughts with an antelope. This papyrus is the proto- type of the modern “ strip-picture ’’. Next to the lion, a hyena plays the flute: then there is a cat apparently waving a crooked stick. The drawing in question may be a parody of two people playing draughts which is to be seen in the Book of the Dead. In another papyrus at Turin, used as the last plate in Lepsius’ Auswahl, the lion-headed Pharaoh is seen with a lady in the form of a gazelle. In a carving on the wall of a tomb Osiris on his throne condemns a soul to perdition. In the form of a pig the soul is ferried back in a boat to earthly life by two cynoce- phalic monkeys. The Reveller of the modern Punch finds realistic prototypes in ancient Egypt, one of whom—a lady too—is depicted in the act of being sick just before her handmaiden with a basin can reach her. Such a drawing as this may be a typification, or it may be a personal record. II A ALS TORY OF VCART CATO In Indian frescoes we find Krishna riding on an elephant daintily formed of a number of damsels in appropriate attitudes: one forms the trunk, the legs of another the tusks, the hair of the girl who is one of the hind legs makes the tail, and so on. The design is helped out by draperies. A similar arrangement represents a bird, one of the girls walking upon her hands. The Greeks burlesqued their gods, and on one large vase the oracle of Delphi is devastatingly satirized. In this, Chiron is seen being helped up the steps to consult the oracle, pushed from behind and pulled from above, while at the same time he leans upon a crooked stick. The faces and attitudes in this painting certainly belong to the realm of true caricature, as does the apotheosis of Heracles painted upon a vase in the Louvre. Here, frowning with repellent ugliness, he holds up his club, while beside him in the chariot a snub-nosed Hermes drives the team of four obviously unwilling centaurs. On another vase Zeus is found beneath the window of Alcmena, and Hermes is bringing him a ladder. Alemena in profile, with her hands upon the sill, is attractive enough, but the faces and especially the figures of Zeus and his attendant can only be described as rude. What may be a parody of this painting may be seen on an Etruscan vase, where the lover, hideous in a comic mask, climbs the ladder to the window giving what may be coins, or, more innocently apples, to the lady. N earby stands his servant holding a torch, a wreath, and a little bag of just the kind carried by women to-day. In several of the Greek caricatures the names of the victims are written, not over or under, but in and about the drawings themselves. Roman comic art, which was profuse, also included some caricature. Excavation at Pompeii and elsewhere has exposed many drawings of Little People, small bearded pigmies who are shown in perennial warfare with the geese, which are drawn as of about the same height. Pliny and others talk of these pigmies quite seriously. M. Jules Henri Champfleury* suggests that drawings of them were made to amuse children. They were, in * Hustowre de la Caricature Antique. I2 FROM THE ANTIQUE TO THE MIDDLE AGES fact, just the fairies whose lore so many modern mammas regard as reprehensible. The Romans delighted too in drawing animals and birds following the pursuits of men, driving chariots and so forth. While no doubt many a Roman soldier chalked up a malicious caricature of an unpopular centurion. At Hercu- laneum the famous fresco painting of the flight of Aeneas carrying Anchises on his shoulders and leading Ascanius by the hand can hardly be brought under the head of caricature as the drawing is or is intended to be exactly representational. But a parody of this flight was made in which the figures, though otherwise human, were given the heads and tails of dogs. ‘Tragic and comic masks for use in the theatres, on the other hand, were manifestly exaggerated. In 1857 demolition in a narrow street of Rome in the gladiators’ quarter, near the Forum, uncovered. a rough, scratched drawing which was intended as a caricature of the Figure on the Cross, which is given an ass’s head. Beneath stands a man with one arm uplifted. About them the legend is scrawled: AAEZAMENOS SEBETE(I) OEOZ—Alexamenos worship- ping his God. This merely exemplifies the contempt in which Romans held the early Christians. In the museum at Avignon there is a gross caricature of Caligula in bronze, and other instances will suggest themselves to students of Roman art, such as philosophers with huge heads and little bodies, the only form of caricature widely accepted and understood in England to-day; and persons of intemperate habits, like the Egyptian lady referred to, being sick. Early Chinese and Japanese art is full of caricature of a sort, or at least of comic drawings in which distortion plays a pro- minent part. James Peller Malcolm, in his Historical Sketch of the Art of Caricaturing (1813), devotes a good deal of space to the lusus nature, to people of whom we say in common speech: “ You can’t caricature them; they are caricatures to start with.” Taking this quite literally, Malcolm explores physical idiosyncrasies as such in life, and not as drawn, and proceeds to describe the ugliness of savages, the physical blemishes of unusual features. mY A HISTORY OF CARICATURE There is much in his book, ill-arranged as it is, of direct and of what I may call collateral interest. As an example of the latter he shows us that the desire to find an improving and uplifting purpose for his work, so frequently found in later years of the nineteenth century, had already set in; and did not await, as is often supposed, the accession of Victoria. Caricature has, he tells us, ‘‘ reached a degree of perfection which has rendered it one of the means for the correction of vice and improper con- duct”. And he goes on later: “ The History of Caricaturing though even intended to be general, would naturally narrow into that of English Caricatures; for the obvious reason, that in no other country has the art met with equal encouragement, because no other portion of the globe enjoys equal freedom.” Coming to Saxon times and later, Malcolm includes any in- complete or non-representational art within caricature, and in one of his plates he illustrates a pillar of the west door of Ledbury Church, in Herefordshire, which has a capital of “ neatly executed foliage”, which terminates in a head. From the mouth of this issues the shaft of the column. He also illustrates a drawing of the Temptation from a Liber Psalmorum (‘ cum versione Saxonica ”) in the British Museum in which Satan can be described as the caricature of a man, with claws and up-turned nose. He has no horns or hooves, but he is provided with hocks, and a subsidiary face appears from the back of his neck. These subsidiary faces in various inappropriate parts of the body were much favoured by the early monks in depicting fiendish personalities. Viollet-le-Duc (famous as the author of the great work on French furniture) tells us in his Dictionnaire d’ Architecture that Previous to the year a.D. 1100 there were few traces of the Devil in the churches, and in much earlier times none at all. But after the opening of the twelfth century, the Devil becomes important and is constantly found in sculptures and frescoes. Here perhaps we may trace the beginnings of the Religion of Terror, that punitive theology which is only now passing away. In the Middle Ages there was practically no art that was not 14 FROM THE ANTIQUE TO THE MIDDLE AGES definitely religious, so that we turn to carvings in cathedrals and churches and to missals without much hope of discovery else- where until the beginning of the fifteenth century. There are exceptions, some of which will shortly be quoted. But that religious art throughout Christian Europe produced actual and deliberate caricature in great abundance there is no doubt. When the world was younger and the succession of faith less protracted, simple people found a homely and everyday application for their religion, which was a matter-of-course, and which contained much provender for laughter and merry-making. People un- spoilt and unhampered by puritanical repressions find the same applications, with much of the same laughter, to-day. The Italian peasant, for example, sees nothing incongruous or un- seemly, at a village festa, in going into church to pray, in coming out for five minutes’ chat with a friend over an ice-cream and in returning to the church, much heartened by this carnal indul- gence. A similar attitude of mind prevailed amongst simple folk at one time in England. 'To them there was nothing irreverent in making jokes out of their religion. So we find gargoyles and corbels which are almost certainly personal caricatures, and groups sculptured at the heads of capitals and carved beneath miserere seats representing scenes in which individuals played their (often somewhat undignified) parts. Many of these carvings, both in wood and stone, were according to modern taste too gross to be endured and some of them, notably at Rheims, were long ago destroyed, or at least expurgated with the chisel, on that account. Here caricature and comic art in the wider sense alternate, and while sometimes they are distinct to the observer, they no doubt arose from similar impulses in the artist. Scenes of flagellation are common and a victim on a miserere seat at Sherborne is found in the appropriate attitude and appropriately unclothed in the act of being birched. Malcolm illustrates a number of these seats and carved capitals with his own engrav- ings, though only those, of course, of the eminently decorous type. But we may be sure that the writer who could trace no encouragement of caricature except in England will have some- 15 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE thing illuminating to say about those carvings which are obscene, and we are by no means disappointed. “ Had the dignitaries of these churches directed the persons employed in ornamenting them to confine their excursions within the bounds of decency, we might have smiled at the perversion of taste, though we condemned the introduction of anything ludicrous to a place of worship; but there is no demonstration extant more convincing of the general profligacy of manners amongst the clergy before the Reformation, than the discovery beneath their seats of subjects, which, if engraved at present, and placed in a print-seller’s window, would cause him to be prose- cuted as a promoter of vice. It has been said that this method was adopted by different orders of the religious to satirize each other; and some of the carvings I have seen were probably in- tended as caricatures of particular persons.” Malcolm was also, it seems, upset by the drawings in the prayer-book of Queen Mary (daughter of Henry VIII), and he contrived to twist her possession of the book to his own purpose in reviling her religion “in defence of which she spread ruin and desolation through her kingdom ”’. Certainly a good many carvings and drawings of the period under review are a little ‘“ rude ”’ in the nursemaid’s sense of the word, but a certain delight in indecency in one form or another somehow seems to linger in the generality of mankind, though the manners of the age have now (for the most part) supplanted the carved or designed record. Since Malcolm was writing within the lifetime of Gillray and Rowlandson one admires his restraint in not seeking to discover in their rather broad effects the covert devilries of a Popish plot. At all events, the expression of indecency has been and is a question of custom, and we may rest assured that so far as Malcolm’s argument is concerned the profligacy of the clergy is beside the point. M.Champfleury quotes a letter from the Maxima Bibliotheca 16 meOMO THE ANTIQUE TO THE MIDDLE AGES Patrum, in which St. Nilus* in the fifth century wrote to Olym- piodorus of Alexandria: Was it seemly to represent animals of all sorts on the walls of the sanctuary, so that one could see snares set for them, and hares, goats, and other beasts seeking safety in flight while, behind, the hunters weary themselves in the chase and without respite follow with their hounds... ? It was just childishness to amuse the eyes of the faithful. M. Champfleury also quotes St. Bernard, then Abbé of Clairvaux writing in the twelfth century to William, Abbé of Saint-Thierry and complaining of the monstrosities used in the decoration of sacred buildings. St. Nilus’ answer is significant and explains the presence of all caricature or ludicrous art of whatever kind in the cathedrals. Like the Roman pigmies referred to earlier it was done “ to amuse the children ’’—grown up or otherwise. “‘ The policy of that wonderful organization (the Roman Church) has been in every age’, comments James Parton in Caricature and other Comic Art, “to make every possible concession to ignorance that is compatible with the continuance of ignorance. It has sought always to amuse, to edify, to moralize, and console ignorance, but never to enlighten it.”’ This is not, perhaps, a perfectly fair statement of the case, but—one knows what he means. At any rate the crudities and barbarities referred to no doubt kindled the imagination and brought home to simple folk the horrors following misbehaviour. And the worst of them were harmless, if only because they were frank and not furtive. The Devil was the personality most often chosen as a subject for caricature, but as we are still a little uncertain (in despite of Mr. Beerbohm’s adventure in the company of Enoch Soames, and of other authorities) regarding his exact appearance, it is difficult to say what naturalistic merit these caricatures may have. In the British Museum there is a Biblia Pauperum of about * St. Nilus of Constantinople, who appears to have been a disciple of St. Chrysostom and one of the early Iconoclasts: not the later saint who founded a monastery of Basilians near Rome. 17 Cc ACHTS TORY OFSCARIG Al tre 1475, which was once the property of George III, and which contains a woodcut representing the Temptation. There are the figures of Christ and Satan, and the high mountain with one tree upon the top of it, and the pinnacles of the Temple. In this drawing the Devil has a man’s hands, horns, webbed feet and a second face da dietro, as the Italians say. His main face is dreadful, with an enormous mouth and huge teeth, and long flopping ears like a retriever’s. In his hands he holds the stones which he tempts Christ to turn into bread. In the cathedral at Strasburg one carving represents a fox leaning from a pulpit, with outstretched pad, preaching to a flock of geese: in another beasts of somewhat doubtful species form a procession ; one carries a mop and a pail, the next a cross, a little rabbit follows with a lit torch, and so on. At Magdeburg a tiny maiden milks a colossal sow, and on another capital nearby a monkey tucks a huge fiddle under his chin. A bas-relief at Autun shows souls being weighed in the scales—a much favoured subject—an archangel superintending the process on one side, a devil on the other. Neither is playing fair, for outstretched hands clutch at the balance, trying to drag it down. In this instance, happily, the archangel has tilted the scales well to his side, and the expression of horror and disgust upon the op- ponent’s face shows that he realizes all his effort to be futile. These instances are but a few from many which typify medizval stone carvings, and in most of them the caricaturish element (as opposed to unintentional crudity) is manifest. In all forms of art, exaggeration in one dimension or another is necessary to the comprehension of simple folk. In the eighteenth century, during the demolition of the ancient chateau of Pinon in Picardy, a bronze seal was found which bears the inscription LE : SCEL : DE : LEVECQUE : DE: LA: : CYTE : DE : PINON.—The seal of the Bishop of the City of Pinon. This seal is of the usual pointed oval shape, and engraved within the bordering legend is a monkey seated with legs crossed on a bishop’s throne, wearing vestments and a mitre, and holding a crooked staff. Two attendant monkeys are on either 18 feomelHE ANTIQUE TO THE MIDDLE AGES side of him. It has been suggested that this seal was made in order to ridicule the Church: but M. Champfleury shows that the more probable explanation involves no malice of the kind. On the contrary certain prelates, having a sense of humour, ordered comic seals of this sort to be made for them, and M. Champfleury quotes the instance of Guy de Munois, Abbé of Saint-Germain d’Auxerre from 1285 to 1309. The legend on his seal read: Abbé de singe air main d’os serre. The good man was, in the phraseology of the modern schoolboy, “ trying to be funny ’’—at his own expense. Down to the sixteenth century caricature was mainly confined to the presentment of good and evil, of God and the Devil. Then, with the great cleavage brought about by the Reformers and later, the Puritans, the art became the weapon of warring sects, and in its true form was most conspicuous in religious enmities. A more general application is, however, to be observed in the satirical drawing by Holbein and others in which the figure of Death predominates. But the Dance of Death series can hardly be included in the category of true caricature. a ( ~ ~ i ph Hig li Ap iy ! h (Hh NWN “‘ La Divine Venus et Le Bel Adonis.” After an early French caricature Chapter III EARLY SECULAR CARICATURE Ticats gargoyles and certain faces carved on the stalls of churches and beneath miserere seats were almost certainly personal caricatures, the more familiar medium of drawing brings satire home to our modern minds with greater facility. A manuscript, illustrated with a pen and ink drawing, or an early woodcut are more readily comparable with, say, an etching by Dighton or a design by Gulbransson. Very early drawings of the kind are rare and are peculiarly interesting when their subjects are the same as those exploited in a similar manner to-day. The Jews, for example, have been a source of inspiration to caricaturists from the very earliest times until the present day. They were foreigners by race and religion, and foreigners have usually been the subject of jokes. That is a short-coming, not solely English, seldom but sometimes excused by the quality of the satire. Down to the last hundred and fifty years the Jews were solely associated with usury in one form or another, and this occupation together with the Jewish (or rather, as I am assured by some Jewish friends, Hittite) nose naturally lend themselves to pictorial exaggeration—not infrequently at the hands of Jewish artists. And so we find it exaggerated so long ago as the year 1233 in a drawing on a vellum roll which is to be seen at the Record Office.* This caricature is the unofficial but relevant illustration at the head of a Rotulus Fudeorum, and presumably the work of a clerk in the Exchequer. At the period in question, Isaac of Norwich, an exceedingly wealthy Jew, was the principal creditor of the abbot and monks * Receipt Roll, Exchequer of Receipts, No. 1565, E. 401. 20 EARLY SECULAR CARICATURE of Westminster, who were supported by the especial sympathy of Pandulf, Bishop Elect of Norwich and Papal Legate. Pandulf was active in his endeavours to expel the Jews from the country. Isaac was a moneylender and merchant. He owned a quay at Norwich where his ships could load and unload, and whole districts were mortgaged to him. The caricature which is drawn with pen and ink represents Isaac standing in the midst of a group of Jews on the walls of a castle, and towering above them. He is crowned and is given three faces, one full and two in profile. Pike* suggests that a fourth face looking away from the observer, is, as the gram- marians say, to be understood; and Isaac is, therefore, looking towards his possessions North, South, East, and West. Beneath him are a less distinguished Jew called Mosse Mokke (subse- quently hanged for clipping coin) and a Jewess named Avegay. Between these two stands a horned devil with a forefinger upon the pronounced nose of each. On Avegay’s left is Dagon, god of Philistia, in a turret: and beyond him are certain friends in armour. On the other side of the drawing behind Mosse Mokke a figure holds up some scales loaded with coin. This drawing fills an apex at the head of the roll, the parchment having been cut to a point at some time and pasted onto another piece of parchment behind it. The ink used is of a reddish brown, and though rather crumpled the whole document is in a good state of preservation. To about the same period belongs a stout little book, which is rather confusedly referred to by Malcolm. This is No. 928 of the Harleian collection, preserved in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum. On the first page Harley’s librarian has written his own name—Humfredus Wanley. In the catalogue Wanley refers to the book as “ bought of me, being written by three different hands”, and he adds the following notes about it: “1. The main body of the book was (I believe) written in * History of Crime in England. By Luke Owen Pike. London. 1873. 21 A AI STORY (OFLC ARLCA Tae France, by some eminent Librarius or Book-writer, during the reign of our K. Henry the third; who also adorned it with many curious and well-drawn Pictures, the rudeness of the age considered. Among which pictures many (as may be seen) were intended to expose the wicked and inordinate lives of the then clergy, who were hated by the Librarij, as taking away much of their business. 2. I find certain Ejaculations to our Saviour, &c., written on several pages and Leaves at the beginning, not touched by the Book-writer; which may have been done a.D. 1428 according to the Observation, inserted by a recent hand. . . . 3. The latter part of the Book, is of an English hand, and of English Parchment, written about the latter end of the reign of K. Henry the VI. The Book contains the Hore B. Mariz, with Collects, &c. for the Holy days, whose Rubricks are in F rench; the Office for the Dead; and some of the Psalms: all in Latin.” The book, which is in almost perfect condition, is exquisitely written, with illuminated capitals. The margins of all the pages in the earlier part contain coloured drawings which emphatically belong to the realm of caricature in the old Italian sense, as the following rough descriptions will show: a. An animal, with the head of a monk, has his tail knotted with that of another having the head of a dog. The two faces exchange glances of disapproval. 8. On the contorted bodies of lions are seen two monks’ heads. y. An animal whose fore-paws are turned backwards has the head of a man in a cowl: the tail becomes the neck of a Gorgon, from whose head in turn another neck-tail is joined to a second animal with a monkey’s face beneath its cowl. 6. A woman and a bearded man share a neck and a body without arms, but having a large tail. e. ‘The head of a priest, in vestments, has the body of a dog: and there is another head upon the end of the tail which turns and bites its own neck-tail. 22 4 = = — -— ne ee ee ee er. SS 2 a ne a ee ee ee ea eee ee —— . er MARL YeSEGULAR CARICATURE ¢. A boar’s head on a monkey’s body grins at the face of an old man which grows from a dubious four-footed creature. ». Another doubtful beast wears a Bishop’s mitre and is in evident colloquy with a web-footed animal half-fish and half-dog. g. A kind of monk-centaur has a nun riding on his back. .. A blue-cowled monk, with a scarlet body and cloven feet. Then there are numerous animals without any human characteristics. A red-jacketed monkey rides on the back of a (St. Bernard) dog. A blue dragon with a white face bites his own tail. A strange four-footed beast wears the most engaging little curls at the side of his face. A little fat animal with no tail is of a beautiful pink and has innocent blue eyes. The drawing and colour of these little caricatures are alike beautiful. The faces belong to the best tradition of thrifty pen and ink work, without one unnecessary line; and the expressions on the faces are delightfully rendered. It is easy to imagine that some of these faces were first-rate caricatures, and, as it happens, if I may find present opportunity in old occasion, some of them do make admirable caricatures of living persons. May it be suggested, with no lack of respect, that Mr. Birrell and Mr. Bertrand Russell, for example, would find themselves as faith- fully dealt with here as they have since been dealt with by Max Beerbohm. In his History, Thomas Wright illustrates the English con- ception of an Irish warrior of the year 1280. This ferocious champion, wearing a tasselled cap and a sort of trousers strapped over his bare feet, stands in an attitude of defiance, frowning over his shoulder, with his arms flung back to give play to an enor- mous battle-axe, the favourite weapon of the Irish at that time. This fellow and another very like him are drawn in the margin of a volume, which forms a register of treaties, marriages, and so on, of the time of Edward I and which is in the Record Office. The drawings follow the written description of Giraldus Cambrensis, the historian (Gerald de Barri) who was made an Archdeacon in Wales in 1184. Later he visited Ireland as King’s chaplain, with Prince John. His travels in Ireland resulted in 23 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE two works Topographia Hibernica and Expugnatio Hibernica. Here he writes of the Irish battle-axe with especial horror, as a most barbarous and frightful weapon; and he describes the close- fitting hoods worn by the natives, which hang a cubit’s length below the shoulders, and breeches and hose of one piece. Other marginal drawings in this manuscript show types of Welshmen, one with a bow and arrow, and another with a spear. Enemies, spiritual and otherwise, have always been the inevitable victims of caricaturists: so too have been the pre- valent extremes of fashion. Across the field of operations where Gillray, Isabey, Cham, Ape, and almost innumerable others in their respective days down to the present found food for satire, a French artist of the fifteenth century seems to have led the way. And he gave us a milch sow on ted stilts, playing a red harp, and wearing a tall pointed hat of pale pink. From this a transparent veil, exquisitely suggested with white paint, de- pends, falling over face and shoulders. This is a marginal painting amidst brilliant foliage with a gold background which accompanies a scene of jousting between Pierre de Courtenay and the Sire de Clary. The Harleian catalogue has the entry: ‘ Beautiful vellum MS. containing the fourth volume of Frois- Sart, divided into two parts; finely written and illuminated.” The manuscript which contains many fine scenes of jousting, with all manner of odd beasts in the margins, was written to the order of Philipe de Commines about the year 1475.* The subject has never been better, nor more cruelly treated since. The fashionable head-dress of the first half of the fifteenth century is seen in a caricature of an ugly and obviously ill- tempered old woman whose face and head are distinctly and skilfully carved on a miserere seat in Ludlow church. 'T'wo young men, one on either side of her, seek to protect themselves with sword and shield respectively. Yet another marginal drawing, in the Luttrell Psalter, of the fourteenth century, shows two men, clothed, but having tails * No. 4379 of the Harleian collection. 24 EARLY SECULAR CARICATURE and furry, animals’ feet, fighting with beer mugs. One of them smashes his mug on his opponent’s pate. Ugliness for ugliness’ sake has from time to time throughout history fascinated artists who were concerned for the most part with its antithesis. And the principal claim that Italy has to be the home of caricature rests mainly on the few grotesquely ugly heads drawn by Leonardo da Vinci. The artists of the Renaissance liked to dwell, for a moment, now and then, on the various un- seemly departures made by Nature from the ideal. In one carica- ture by Leonardo you see the profile of a hideous old man repeated in the folds at the back of his neck. In another, Darby and Joan—or, rather, let us say—Amedeo and Giovanna, face each other, the man showing a three-quarter face, the woman in profile with one hand upon his shoulder. Giovanna is repulsive, with a meagre but protruding forehead, a squat upturned nose, long, simian upper lip, and no chin: her ugliness is enhanced by the ornate cap of the period. Amedeo, on the other hand, is not really ugly, nor is he grossly exaggerated. The liberties that Nature has taken with his features are merely the obtrusions of old age. He is quite typical of the ancient peasants of Northern Italy: his like may be seen to-day, leaning on a wall in Verona, drawing the sunshine into his old bones, and spitting, without bitterness against the world at large, into the Adige. His toothless mouth has fallen in, so that strong chin and fine hooked nose are nearly met; his curly hair is still abundant, and the lines and creases on his face are but those of normal toil and trouble. His eyes are sad, but so would yours be if you had to look for long upon the excessive homeliness of that Giovanna. In the Print Room of the British Museum, amongst original drawings by Leonardo, there is a page of caricatures, one or two of which are superb exaggerations. The ‘“‘ Giovanna ” referred to is repeated there together with a caricature of (it would seem) her sister. These drawings are made with a pen and red pigment. The exact travesty of the Laocoon made by Titian, about the year 1540, who substituted monkeys for men, is only super- ficially funny. This drawing was engraved on wood by Boldrini. 25 A HISTORY OF (CARICATURE Titian is said to have made this parody in order to pour ridicule upon a school of art in Rome, which insisted upon academic correctness of form as observed by the antique sculptors in order, so Titian held, to cover their own lack of perception in colour. The Laocoon has been frequently travestied since then. Giuseppe Ribera, claimed at one time to have been by birth an Italian, but really a Spaniard, was also responsible for some grotesques, which may or may not have been caricatures of individuals. One of these represents the head of an ancient of evil mien, loathesomely afflicted with goitre, and with hairs upon his nose and chin. His expression of insolence mingled with low cunning is felicitously caught. To return for a moment to the opening of the sixteenth century, Herr Fuchs illustrates an early German woodcut, dated 1510, of a gluttonous wine-bibber, with a belly so pro- digious that he has to wheel it before him in a barrow. His bristling chins pass with mere undulations into that colossal paunch. His head is fixed in an upward direction: upwards he vomits, with a slight frown. But his hat is jauntily adorned with feathers, and the empty gourd strapped to his back shows that he must trundle his barrow along the road before he can get more wine. A German rhyme accompanying this caricature is here, very roughly and with due apologies, done into English: As toper I have made a name: On barrow pushed before me I rest my wine-distended wame And grin when folk deplore me. It’s true I am a laughing-stock At whom the common people mock. But when I’m far away from inns My inward nullibiety* Evokes reflexion on my sins, Enforcing strict sobriety. * Used only by Bishop Wilkins, inventor of the Philosophic Handwriting, in 1668. 26 EARLY SECULAR CARICATURE It’s true I drink too much: and hence —Severe attacks of flatulence. The gentleman with the stomach and the wheelbarrow served more than one turn—as well he might, for the idea is a good one. Sixty years later we find a German caricature of Luther treated in the same way. This is described in the next chapter. ‘Then in 1635 a French caricature adopted the precise figure of the German toper, in reverse, except that he is breathing smoke. This drawing is meant to represent Matthias Gallas (1584-1647), Count of Campo and Duke of Lucera, who was general of the Austrian Army during the wars in the Netherlands, and who beat the French. In the caricature he is made to say: Je suis ce grand Gallas, autrefois dans l’armée La gloire de l’Espagne et de mes compagnons ; Maintenant, je ne fuis qu’un corps plein de fumeée, Pour avoir trop mangé de raves et d’oignons. Gargantua jamais n’eut une telle panse, etc. .. . The Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel, attributed to the im- mortal Maitre Francois Rabelais, were said also to have been illustrated by him. We know that the Master was an architect and M. Champfleury says that the savants of the sixteenth century had no doubt but that he was a draughtsman in a wider sense. The drawings illustrating the Songes are, undoubtedly, in his spirit; but then so from time to time, though rarely, have been other illustrations with the matter illustrated. Champfleury quotes a letter written by Rabelais in Latin from Lyons to Cardinal du Bellay in September, 1534, in which occurs the phrase Urbis faciem calamo perinde ac penicillo depingere: and he then proceeds to quote M. Paul Lacroix’ argument regarding the precise value of perinde ac. M. Lacroix* held that the words meant that Rabelais proposed to use pen and pencil in order to describe the city of Rome; M. Champfleury denies that perinde * Francois Rabelais : sa vie et ses ouvrages. 1854. 2] A HISTORY OF CARICA? ine ac ever had the meaning implied, and declares that Rabelais merely meant that he used his pen as if it were a pencil. This little falling-out of two learned men is mentioned in order that the reader may judge by what threads reputations hang. If perinde ac means what Lacroix takes it to mean, Rabelais was an artist: if, on the other hand, Champfleury is right, . . . “‘ ce passage . . . doit donc étre retiré du débat”’. It is possible that these drawings were made by Pieter Brueghel, the elder, and Champfleury’s argument supports this theory. Whoever made them they are delightful. Here we have a caricature of Pope Julius II* as a dwarf, with bees buzzing around his head, his under-lip hugely protruding, his nose upturned and his collar curving forward and ending ina star. ‘This design is of peculiar interest, for it very obviously inspired one of the minor drawings of Aubrey Beardsley. In another woodcut, a man also snub-nosed, whose shoes dwindle to heels a yard or more long and end in enormous spurs, sticks out his under-lip considerably further than does Pope Julius and observes a large bird perched on the end of it. In a third, a villain with sword and dagger glowers out of the plate. He wears a very small cap tied with a string onto a very large head: and a pair of gloves dangle by a cord from his arm. A fourth represents a man from whose head a bent leg grows and whose nose is a horribly twisted monstrosity with seven hairs upon it. Some of these caricatures are regarded as, in all probability, personal. There is also a somewhat gross wood-engraving in this book of a gentleman who, like the toper, carries his stomach on a wheel before him. In others, a grasshopper suckles little birds, and a man with an elephant’s face has a trunk which runs along the ground before him, like the other fellow’s stomach, on a wheel. Pieter Brueghel did at all events sign and date, 1 563, a pair * Formerly Cardinal Guiliano della Rovere, Papal Legate to France in 1480, and a rival of Roderigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI, q. v.). Subsequently he was helped to the papal throne by Cesare Borgia, son of Roderigo. He did much in the cause of literature and art, and laid the foundation-stone of St. Peter’s, Rome. 28 Peiwiay O6GULAR CARICATURE of drawings called respectively The Lean and The Fat. These are typifications rather than caricatures and are a shade too horrible to be funny. The thin folk are seen in a miserable kitchen with a meagre fire. Those at the table quarrel over a bowl full of dubious shell-fish, a mother with wasted breasts sits in a cradle and feeds her infant with a horn. A dog, all skin and bone, lies under the table. A small child upturns a big cooking- pot to lick out the remnants of the soup, and a couple of shrewish women are seen driving a fat man from the door. The antithesis is complete. A fat man pushes out the lean beggar: a fat dog bites him. 'T'wo hearty lads are mopping up the fat from a roasting dish. Another and protuberant dog is seen with a long roll in his mouth. An immoderately buxom mamma suckles a gross infant: and at the table which is heaped with sausages and pies and sucking-pigs, disgusting, replete brutes sit, guzzling. One of their number stretches out an arm to carve a huge lump from a ham. A maid-servant bastes a whole pig upon its spit before the roaring fire. To contemplate this draw- ing positively spoils the appetite. Another drawing of Brueghel is a detailed allegory, describing physical greed. Here people and beasts, mostly of an apocryphal kind, are seen in the act of over-drinking: a monkey lifts the tankard to his lips, even as he draws a fresh supply from the barrel; a naked man is seen head-down in another barrel; a dog tilts up the tray on a servant’s head and snatches at the wine cup that is sliding from it. In the background is a windmill in the form of a man’s head. A ladder leads up to the open mouth, which is intended to be the entrance to hell. People are climbing up this ladder, and disappearing inside. One, however, seems to be getting a breath of fresh air by peering out of the windmill’s right ear. Pieter Brueghel was a masterly inventor of ingenious devils and imps, which he devised with a mingling of obvious laughter and implied depravity which is highly entertaining. The last caricaturist to be mentioned in this chapter 1s Jacques Callot, who was born at Nancy in Lorraine in 1592. He 29 A HISTORY OF CARIGATOURG is one of the few caricaturists of that period about whom much is known, and his story—a very old and oft-repeated one—is worth mention. As a child he was extremely precocious, his artistic taste always running towards satire. He had lessons in drawing from Claude Henriet and in engraving from Demange Crocq, engraver to the Duke of Lorraine. When Callot was still only a lad of twelve, the painter Bellange returned to Nancy from Italy and excited him with his stories about the wonders of art to be seen in that country. In the spring of 1604, young Callot wan- dered off from home, joined a troop of gipsies and with them tramped to Florence. Here he worked in the studio of Canta Gallina who tried, quite in vain, to eradicate his taste for the grotesque. Later he moved on to Rome where he joined an old friend, Israel Henriet. Not long afterwards, however, he was recognized by some merchants from Nancy and by them taken home. He soon escaped again and by way of Mt. Cenis he journeyed to Turin, but was immediately caught there by his elder brother who had been sent to find him. At last, however, his parents gave way, and he was allowed to study in Rome together with Henriet under Tempesta. For a living he worked as an engraver. In 1611 he returned to Florence where he came under the patronage of Cosimo dei Medici. In 1616 he made a series of drawings, the Caprici di Varie Figure, which he followed later with the Gobbi and the Balli. In the second of these series he was especially skilled, drawing hunchbacks and cripples that are odd rather than horrible. Some beg comically for alms, one looks slyly through a hole in his ragged hood and leans upon a grotesquely short thick crutch, and so forth. One of his drawings, dated 1615, caricatures the fashions of the age. In the background a number of fine folk strut and attitudinize and amongst them runs a poodle shaven in the mode of the present time. In the foreground two bespectacled raggamuffins dance with a kind of grim humour. The drawing of these lank figures, especially of their gesturing hands, is very skilful indeed. In 1628, Callot went to Brussels in order to pursue a more academic art 30 Mathie SGU LAR CARTOCATURE and there made the acquaintance of Vandyck. He is better known by his more elaborate work such as the fantastic and wonderfully invented Temptation of St. Anthony. He died in 1635. A Fifteenth-Century Fashion-Caricature Chapter IV THE CARICATURE OF BIGOTRY ARICATURE of a kind, as we have seen, had been ( used mainly in the Middle Ages to point a broad differ- ence between Good and Evil. The Reformers made use of the art in a narrower field, and by its means ridiculed the monks, and discovered the devil beneath the triple tiara. Nor did their antagonists abstain from reprisals in kind. The age of book-illustration had begun, and Holbein, before coming to England and settling comfortably as a painter at the court of Henry VIII, made designs for a number of works, most of which seem to have been derived in a greater or less degree from Brandt’s Ship of Fools. This book was published in 1494, and Jacob Geiler, of Strasburg, made immediate use of it as a model for his savage indictment of the monastic system. The Boats of Foolish Women by Badius was another imitation; but the most considerable of the books to which Brandt gave precedent was I'he Praise of Folly written by Desiderius Erasmus while he was living in England between 1497 and 1506, when he was between thirty and forty. In Holbein’s illustrations to this book general satire here and there becomes caricature. A fool in cap and bells preaches from the pulpit to a congregation which includes another fool: a monk is represented as absurdly short and inordinately fat. To go back a little, a miserere at the Church of St. Spire, at Corbeil, near Paris, now destroyed, used to show a Bishop of Fools clasping instead of his pastoral staff a fool’s bauble. Erasmus, with Holbein’s assistance, prepared the way for Martin Luther by drawing attention to certain discrepancies between sweet reasonableness and those aspects of the Roman 32 MirreCARTGATURE OF BIGOTRY persuasion which were considered and no doubt, from the prag- matic standpoint, quite rightly considered as good enough for a stable world and an imperishable tradition. Few traditions, how- ever, are imperishable, and the world, not always in pleasant directions, moves on. Erasmus saw fit to ridicule, as does the modern Protestant, the place in the Roman observance given to the Mother of God: he railed as the opponent faction still rails against the offering of gifts at the shrines of the saints. The most ferocious caricatures of the Lutheran school are attributable to Hans Cranach, and his better-known son, the German master whose paintings show so clearly the influence of the wood-carving in which the Germans of that epoch excelled. He made also drawings to interpret the opinions of the Re- formers. ‘The series illustrating the text of Philip Melanchthon, published in 1521, and cut on wood by Hans Cranach, set out to expose the divergence between the humble life of Christ and the pomp and magnificence of His Vicar. These woodcuts are arranged in pairs, labelled respectively Christ and anti-Christ. They came rather under the head of general satire than of actual caricature, but since Cranach did make caricatures and since the line between the two wavers and demands indulgence—even papal indulgence—they are worth reference. Thus in one drawing Christ is scourged and the crown of thorns is forced upon His brow: whilst complementary to that the triple crown is put upon the head of the Pope by a couple of cardinals. 'Through a window we get a crude glimpse of an army, blazing away very heartily against, no doubt, the enemies of His Holiness. In another pair Christ overturns the tables of the money- changers and uplifts a whip against those who sell doves. Antithetically, the Pope sits on his throne and sells sealed indulgences for cash down. Finally Cranach portrays the Ascension and, upon the oppo- site page, shows the end of the Pope who is cast into the furnace of hell by a number of delightfully and ingeniously devised fiends. The tonsured head of a monk, expressing obvious dis- 33 S A HISTORY OF CARTGATOU Re comfort, rises from the curling flames to watch his master’s headlong arrival. Another caricature of the period is known as the Monk-Calf of Freiberg. It is superb. He has a fat grinning face in which the human and bovine likeness is wonderfully mingled, with a flattened nose, enormous lips, and a rather merry eye: warts grow upon his tonsured pate. He is putting out his tongue. His ragged habit clings tightly to his body, except where the folded cowl hangs upon his broad back. His extremities, including the tail, are those of a calf. The most brutal caricature of the papacy, attributed to Lucas Cranach, occurs in a pamphlet by Luther dated 1545. This was in answer to some verses issued from the opposing camp, which declared that Luther was the child of one of the Furies. Tu quoque seems always to have been a good enough retort in the sixteenth century. This woodcut* together with some others presently to be mentioned are to be found in the Department of Printed Books in the British Museum. In this first caricature a black, grinning female demon, por- trayed, as it were, in flagrante dolore, gives birth to the pope and, in the antique manner, successive scenes of his infancy are represented on the same plate: he is rocked in his cradle by his nurse Alecto, with serpents in her hair; by Megaera he is suckled ; Tisiphone leads him by the hand. All the time, even in the article of birth he wears his triple crown, which emblem seems pecu- liarly to have incensed the reforming party. The sympathies of a modern obstetrician would have been with the devilish mamma. (In 1545 Cranach painted a picture, which has been lost, of hares catching and roasting their hunters. Mere inversion of the usual has evidently been a stock form of humour from time immemorial.) The same series contains a caricature of Pope Alexander VI. * ‘The following is the entry in the British Museum catalogue: Luther, Martin. Abbildung des Bapstum. A collection of thirteen satirical wood-cuts relating to the Papacy, with German legends, most of them bearing the name of Luther. [Nuremberg?] 1545. 34 ST > ae i hes oy CARICATURE Ome BG Orley: There has been an attempt made during recent years to white- wash Alexander, and indeed all the Borgia family, especially Cesare, who owed a great deal in life both in worldly success and (possibly) in spiritual depravity to having a pope for a father. Luther, of course, maintained that Roderigo Borgia had sold himself to the devil, and it was hardly to be expected that his evident shortcomings as the Head of the Church would fail to provide munition for his enemies. The caricature referred to is of a kind not unknown to the purveyors of vulgar postcards to-day. A leaf folds from the top and at the first glance you see the usual face and figure of the Pope in his robes. Lift up the leaf, which reaches to his middle, and you see a devil with more than a fair share of demoniacal attributes. The apex of the triple crown is blazing, and from out of its sides grow the twisted horns of a ram. The bearded face is really horrible: the bifurcated nose ends in two sharp beaks. Sabre teeth curve up from the shallow under-jaw. Enormously muscular arms end in pro- digious talons, the left hand clasping a huge pronged fork with a hangman’s noose caught on it. Dragon’s wings attached to the arms pass imperceptibly into a flowing embroidered robe. Each black shoe is decorated with a cross. The breast and belly become a leonine face, and the inscription above, Ego Sum Papa, has no doubt a double intention. Another caricature of the series reproduced in this book shows a pope with an ass’s head, playing the bagpipes which is in- tended to demonstrate that Romish theology is comparable with the music of asses. A pamphlet by Luther and Melanchthon, was illustrated by another woodcut which accompanies those already mentioned. This describes the Pope-Donkey of Rome, “ Papa Doctor Theologiae et Magister Fidei”. In the background a flag with a device of crossed keys flies from a triple-turreted castle. The animal which is to represent the Pope is no mere donkey. He stands erect with ass’s head: he is for the most part covered with scales, one leg ending in an ox’s hoof, the other in a dragon’s claw. The right hand is an elephant’s foot which is to symbolize 35 A HISTORY OF CARICATURS the Pope’s ghostly army which treads the weak heavily under foot: the left, a human hand, represents his earthly army. The creature has a woman’s breasts and belly which stand, according to Melanchthon for bishops, cardinals, students, and so on. A bearded face as well as the head of a dragon emerge from the hind-quarters and these are to make manifest the fact that the Papacy must come to an end. Was this Pope-Donkey intended as a caricature? No. Luther and Melanchthon explained to simple folk that the beast was miraculously thrown dead out of the Tiber in the year 1496— Monstrum Romae inventum mortuum in Tiberi, anno 1496—just as the monk-calf was a real monstrosity sent by God for a Pur- pose and born at Freiberg in Saxony. It was understood, more- over, that God had made the original drawings Himself. These atrocities were taught by Luther as a substitute for the beautiful devilries of the Church, just as to-day—but the reader will supply the modern equivalent according to personal taste. Another medium was used at about this time, which supplies a good instance of caricature. A medal was struck in Germany, which may briefly be described as follows: On the obverse within the legend Ecclesia Perversa Tenet Facem Diabol the crowned head of the Pope is very skilfully merged into that of the Fiend. Looked at one way, the Pope’s nose is the Devil’s chin. Turn it upside down, and the Devil’s nose is the Pope’s chin. They have a mouth in common. The Devil looks pleased: the Pope does not. The same procedure is followed on the reverse of the medal, where a Fool in cap and bells shares a mouth in the same way with a gentleman in a hat. The legend around this second device is Stulti aliquando Sapi- entes. “ The cowl does not make the monk ”’ is the title given to a drawing of a wolf from whose long ears the hood has fallen back, and whose bushy tail shows beneath his habit and needlessly gives the lie to the rosary in his paw. But these caricatures had to be entirely fool-proof. The title-page of another pamphlet of 1530 has a caricature 36 MEV GCARICATURE OF BIGOTRY of the Pope as a wolf, and two wolf-cardinals attend him on either side. Before him are a number of geese, two of them crowned, carrying rosaries in their beaks. A net is stretched from the Pope’s paw to that of a bishop in the foreground, in which it is intended, according to the German script, to catch these geese. Another favourite caricature directed against the Papacy was drawn by Tobias Stimmer in 1577. This is called the Papal Gorgon and represents the head of the Pope as made up of various objects relating to the Roman observance and cere- monial. Thus, the nose is a fish, the hat is a bell diversely deco- rated, the mouth is a wine-flagon, the cheek a patten, the eye a chalice with a wafer upon it, the shoulder a mass-book bearing the triple crown and crossed keys. Peering from the orifices of a decorated oval border we see a bespectacled donkey, a wolf with a lamb in its mouth, a goose with a rosary hanging from its beak, and so forth. Above the heads are the words Gorgoneum caput. Another version of this drawing, attributed to Master Bat- man was made four years later. It is almost exactly the same as Stimmer’s, except that the various emblematic animals’ heads are arranged as looking out from the sides of the bell-crown. Beneath the main drawing appear feet resting respectively on a dragon and a lion. These are pierced and are intended to be the feet of Christ whose Body is covered and hidden by the Pope. The frontispiece of La Danse des Femmes of Marcial d’Au- vergne is a woodcut of the Pope and some of his companions being sucked through the air into the mouth of an undesirable beast, which serves as the entrance to hell. Over their heads gallops Death on horseback, arrow in hand and coffin under arm. And, finally, Luther wrote a pamphlet making fun of Cle- ment VII and to illustrate it ordered a drawing to be made, of an extremely intimate impropriety. These pamphlets and drawings were hawked through Germany during the early years of the sixteenth century from town to town and from village to village, gaining many followers for Martin Luther amongst the simple. 37 A HISTORY OF GARICATURE It is to be deplored that so much stronger are Protestant countries in works upon ancient caricature than those of the Roman communion, that while it is easy to multiply accounts of satires directed against the old faith, I have not found the same hospitality afforded me for research in the contrary direction. Nevertheless the impartial observer will be relieved to know that Luther and his followers did not go quite scatheless. Martin Luther lived from 1483 to 1546. He was ordained priest at the age of twenty-four, and became professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg. He revolted from Rome in 1517, mainly owing to his views regarding the sale of indul- gences, and married in 1525 a nun, Katherine von Bora. It is not to be expected that his enemies would let such an opportunity as that escape them. One of the caricatures relating to this (very happy) union was that already referred to, which follows the convention of the fat toper who wheeled his stomach before him in a barrow. Here you have “ my rib, Kate”’, as Luther called her, dressed as the nun she had been, with a tub on her back to which is strapped a Bible. In her arms she carries a baby and she leads a man-faced dog by a string. Luther pushes his wheelbarrow loaded with his enormous belly, some books, and a few bearded friends. In a box slung on his back he carries a dozen or so of his enemies. In his left hand he holds the papal tiara inverted as a cup. This caricature is dated so late as 1580. A more impartial French critic made a drawing in which Luther and Calvin stand on each side of the Pope pulling his ears. At the same time Luther tweaks Calvin’s beard, who in his turn throws a book at Luther’s head. The scene takes place before a High Altar, and another version of this drawing is shown in the reverse and is the same as the first but that a curtain is drawn to hide a scene of martyrdom painted on the wall of the apse in the background. An unknown master made a caricature of Luther called “ Martinus Luther Siebenkopff”. A big body, girdled by a decorated belt, but with the loose sleeves and hood of a monk, 38 BME CARICATURE OF BIGOTRY and the hands holding open a book, is provided with seven small heads labelled according to his names and to the various aspects of the man, thus: Doctor—Martin—Luther—ecclesiast—vision- ary—visitationer—Barabbas. As caricature and as design the best of the drawings ad- dressed to the discomfort of Luther is that in which he is shown to be inspired by Satan. This is called the Devil’s Bagpipes and is dated 1521. It is a large German woodcut celebrating the Reformer’s examination before the Diet of Worms. Satan with bird’s head and claws and a face of more doubtful origin growing out of his belly, plays the pipes, the bag of which is represented by Luther’s tonsured head. The Devil is blowing into his right ear, while his claws manipulate the keys on the ex-monk’s long nose, which forms a chanter. Apart from the evident meaning, that is, Luther’s direct inspiration from Below, we are also to be reminded of the manner in which both then and since, pro- testing preachers have been apt to utter their enthusiasms, drawling through their noses. This caricature, like that of the wheelbarrow, has been repeated for one purpose or another, again and again, until mid-Victorian times when it served its purpose for party political warfare. Maintaining the completest innocence of any sectarian bias, the modern observer cannot ignore the fact that Luther and Calvin, whatever fruit was subsequently borne of their rebellion, in their own time only succeeded in substituting one set of in- fatuations for another. They startled simple minds into discon- tent by means of fables which were far-fetched, ugly, and on the whole less infused with the human conception of Divine Love than the fables they supplanted. The warfare that ensued, waged with dual sincerity, the terrors and suspicions and hatred still fill us in our not quite godless freedom with amazement. It is difficult to make real in our minds an age when such words as these, from a more responsible pen, and speaking without undue presumption, might have earned torture and death. But bigotry which adds a flavour to life, both for the bigot and for the 5 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE spectator, is not quite dead: it is still within the bounds of the human imagination to conjure up the attitude of intolerance, felt at large in England, of the Papacy. There are living even yet those who would find personal ‘and present delight in the drawing, made in England and engraved in Holland, called Spayne and Rome Defeated. This drawing, reproduced by Mal- colm and others, and to be seen in the British Museum, is what we now call a “ cartoon ”’ as distinguished from a caricature, and it is worth a digression in order to point the difference between the two, as well as to exemplify the satiric art of its period. This engraving, published in 1621, illustrated a broadsheet the text of which was composed by Samuel Ward, of Ipswich, a vigorous Protestant, who dedicated it "To God. In memorye of his double deliveraunce from ye invincible Navie and ye unmatcheable powder Treason, 1605.” Events remained topical far longer in those days than they do now. Mr. Parton is at pains to suggest that some of the Pilgrim Fathers, then living at Leyden, may have been responsible for the work of graving the plate. The Pope with a cardinal, a bishop, a Spaniard, some monks, and a Jesuit sit in conclave with Satan in a tent the flaps of which are held open by attendant fiends. A large winged devil urges Guy Fawkes, with his lantern, towards the cellars of Westminster. A snake at the head of the steps seems to await him. In one hand this devil holds a papal Bull giving Fawkes his sanction. Various symbolic birds and animals are seen upon the roof of the tent. Nearby is Tylbury Camp, and Queen Elizabeth waiting for news; and in the sea the Spanish Armada is arrayed in an oval formation broken at one end by an English vessel firing broadsides. Cherubs blow upon the Armada and an eye looks down a shaft of light from Heaven towards the powder barrels at Westminster. Video Rideo: I see and smile, is written upon this beam. I Blow and Scatter, say the cherubs. Opus Lenebrarum: a Deed of Darkness. November ye 5, 18 written be- neath the windows of Westminster Hall. Most of the inscriptions 40 tre GARTCATURE OF BIGOTRY are in Latin and English, and the text adds the Dutch tongue as well. Here too is a piece of verse which delightfully ends: But Hee, whose never slumb’ring Eye did view The dire intendments of this damned crew, Did soon prevent what they did think most sure. Thy mercies, Lord! for everymore endure. Mr. Samuel Ward was flattered by the annoyance of the Spanish Ambassador regarding this broadsheet, which gave it a flaming advertisement. Ward was put in gaol, but was released after petitioning the king. The Thirty Years’ War produced bitter satires in Germany, including a drawing which typifies the Beast of War, his mouth full of spoils and his hand holding a pike and two torches, trampling grapes under foot. Starving folk flee from a burning village and men do battle on an arid plain. This satire would stand equally well for another war, more recently remembered; which, however, was not fought upon German soil. Many lampoons, vulgarities, and cheap caricatures were published against Charles I, the Cavaliers, and Archbishop Laud. One of these last illustrated a play called Canterburie . . . pri- vately acted neare the palace yard at Westminster, 1641. ‘The following Acts are described: Act I. The Bishop of Canterbury, having variety of dainties, is not satisfied till he be fed with tippets of men’s eares. Act II. He hath his nose held to the grindstone. Act III. He is put into a Bird-cage with the Confessor. Act IV. The Jester tells the King the story. Act II is illustrated, and (caricaturists as well as historians repeat one another) the same device was used ten years later, with regard to the exiled monarch, who is held to the grindstone by Scottish Presbyterians. In another drawing of that time we see Folly in his cap riding 41 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE on the back of a Sectarian who is on his hands and knees: he has an ass’s ears and he wears a bridle which is held by Folly. This is called “ The Picture of an English Persecutor, or a Fool- ridden anti-Presbeterian Sectary ’’: and beneath are the lines: Folly. Behould my habit, like my witt, Equals his on whom I sitt. Anti-Presbeterain. My cursed speeches against Presbetry Declares unto the world my foolery. Most of the satire of the early seventeenth century in England issued from the Puritan side. Tyranny or, perhaps, feeling too deep for satire (if it ever is) kept Oliver Cromwell out of this harm’s way. A caricature of Prince Rupert was made in 1647, and called “ England’s Wolfe with Eagle’s clawes”’. He is dressed as a Cavalier, but with a snarling wolf’s head and a pigtail tied with a bow falls below one ear. This drawing, we are to understand, was intended to expose “ the cruell Impieties of Bloodthirsty Royalists and blasphemous Anti-Parliamentarians — under the Command of that inhuman Prince Rupert, Digby, and the rest, wherein the barbarous Crueltie of our Civill uncivill Warres is briefly discovered’’. But during the domination of the Puritans, after the Horrable Murder, everything of a humorous intention passed into abeyance. On the other hand Mr. Parton quotes a very happy descrip- tion written in 1636 of Puritans’ behaviour in church; this being occasioned by the imprisonment in Newgate of two weavers, ‘‘ infamous, upstart prophets ”’ for heresy. ‘’ His seat in the church is where he may be most seene. In the time of the Sermon he drawes out his tables to take the Notes, but still noting who observes him to take them. At every place of Scripture cited he turnes over the leaves of his Booke, more pleased with the motion of the leaves than the matter of the Text; For he folds downe the leaves though he finds not the place. Hee lifts up the whites of his eyes towards Heaven when 42 2m ; PeaeseCARIGATURE.OF BIGOTRY hee meditates on the sordid pleasures of the earth; his body being in God’s Church, when his mind is in the Divel’s Chap- pell.”’ After the Restoration many amusing caricatures of the Parliamentary leaders were printed on playing-cards, such as “ Don Haselrigg of ye Codled Braine ” and ‘‘ Lambert ”—that is, General Lambert—* of ye Golden Tulip ”’. Directly Charles II married a Portuguese princess “‘ Popish Plot ” caricatures were revived, and Maria of Modena the second queen of James II is found making her confession to Father Petre, in the guise of a wolf. Over this drawing are the words Converte Angliam; and under it the proverb “ It is a foolish sheep that makes the wolf her confessor”’. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was an especially prolific occasion for caricature; and this opportunity was admirably seized by Cornelis Dusart, the Dutch artist, and pupil of Adrian van Ostade. The Huguenots fled into England and the Netherlands that year (1685) and the next: and for their delec- tation no doubt, in 1691, Dusart brought out a book* containing twenty-five caricatures engraved by Gole, of notable adver- saries, including Louis XIV himself. Almost from his accession and certainly to his grave this king was pitilessly pursued by the scorn of his enemies. Here we have a caricature of him in a circle labelled LE ROY DE FRANCE: Vhomme immortel Chef de la Ste. Ligue. A mean little face is drawn as a sun surrounded by its rays and enveloped in a huge monk’s hood. The hand is seen holding a smoking torch. Beneath the engraving is the rhyme: Mon soleil parsa force eclaira l’heritique, I] chassa tout d’un coup les brouillards de Calvin: Non pas par un Zele divin. Mais a fin de cacher ma fine politique. * La Procession Monacale conduite par Louis XIV pour la conversion des Pro- testants de son Royaume. 43 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE This is followed by some splendidly malicious caricatures of which three are particularized here. The first is Madame de Maintenon—Veuve de Scarron. She too is given the monkish cowl, falling away from her almost bald head: her eyes are set crookedly, her mouth wide open, her upturned nose is adorned with a large pimple. Her ear-rings alone faintly suggest her sex. The Archbishop of Paris (Plus ami des Dames que du Pape), leers horribly with a cap over a winking eye and put his tongue out: his contours and expression suggest debauchery. He is made to say: Le grand Louis et moi avons mémes desseins: Nous somes fort galans, nous aimons fort les dames: Il est vray que cela nous rend tout de infames: Mais nous serons pourtant un jour au rang des saints. Asne Mitré is the title given to the Archbishop of Rheims the famous Pére la Chaise. He has a snub nose, open animal mouth, and heavy bearded jowl. Huge keys dangle at his neck; and his mitre, composed of playing cards, bottles, and clay pipes, is tilted so as completely to cover one eye. This series is pleasingly drawn, the linen of vestments being most deftly treated. Louis XIV was an easy butt. He stood only two inches over five foot; but his shoemaker and perruquier between them gave him another ten. He was caricatured as a cock pursued by William IIT as a fox, as a town-crier of Versailles, as a jay, as a tiger on trial by the other beasts, trompé by de Maintenon, sharing the stocks with the Pope, while the Devil behind them bangs their heads together. Finally, Thackeray illustrates an essay on this much-abused king, with a threefold caricature which represents Rex—a dummy figure in robes: Ludovicus—a poor plain diminutive discontented Louis, with bald head and low shoes, pot-bellied and knock-kneed: and Ludovicus Rex—that same Louis in the kingly robes with high heels and towering wig. 44 mareeGARITGATURE (OR BIGOTRY Dotted lines across the page draw spiteful attention to the comparative heights. Well, at least Louis XIV encouraged literature and the arts, and his name is associated with some very lovely walnut-wood furniture. SY Caricatures by Leonardo da Vinci (from Die Karikatur der Europaischen Vélker, by Eduard Fuchs) Chapter V THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND art had a hold upon our imagination, we both encouraged it and deserved that encouragement: and the century which, from that point of view, began with some indifferent prints satirizing the trial of Doctor Sacheverell in 1710, ended in an orgy of caricature, poured out with Rabelaisian effusion, in the midst of torrential laughter. Religion, in fact, ceased to be the only subject for caricature, and though sectarian squabbles have persisted in pictorial commentary in some sort to the present day, as time went forward we see less and less of them and more and more of quarrels and persuasions, absurdities and enthu- siasms which are secular. As has been shown, though caricature of a kind did exist in fact from the remotest times, its recognition as a special form of art with a name of its own is comparatively recent. Indeed, during the Sacheverell trial the Tories believed that caricature had only just been imported from Holland, which country was then famous for its engravers as well as designers. “ Young man,” said Sarah Duchess of Marlborough to George Bubb Doddington (afterwards Lord Melcombe and the defender of Admiral Byng), when he was introduced to her at Brussels. ‘“ Young man, you come from Italy. They tell me of a new invention there called caricatura drawing. Can you find me somebody that will make me a caricatura of Lady Masham, describing her covered with running sores and ulcers, that I may send to the Queen to give her a slight idea of her favourite? ” This was in 1710, when Sarah had been ousted from royal favour and supplanted by the other lady. 46 |: in England we were slow in adopting caricature, once the PperlGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND Many years later the poet Gray writes to his friend John Chute in Florence: “* The wit of the times consists in satirical prints; I believe there have been some hundreds within this month. If you have any hopeful young designer of caricaturas that has a political turn, he may pick up a pretty subsistence here; let him pass through Holland to improve his taste by the way.” In Italy Stefano della Bella, whom the French called Etienne de la Belle, and who had been born in Florence at the beginning of the previous century, had, like Callot, studied under Canta Gallina, and had so imitated Callot that their works are often confused. He is said to have etched not less than fourteen hun- dred plates. He made a great reputation and when he visited Paris he was employed by Cardinal de Richelieu to make drawings of the siege and capture of Arras and La Rochelle. In 1646 he published a series of eighteen prints called Raccolta d vari capriccit, which proves his fidelity even to Callot’s titles. He also made a series of sixteen small square plates which are often attributed to Callot. It was della Bella no doubt who inspired a school of caricature which was actually Italian. Romeyn de Hooghe in Holland established a school of drawing at Haarlem and enjoyed the patronage of our William III, and through his agency much caricature came to England: and our own first great painter, William Hogarth, copied, in his youth, many Dutch prints or adapted them for publica- tion in England. Though more often satirical than not, he was only a caricaturist on occasion. The faces and figures in his congregations and crowds are often exaggerated with a view to being amusing or repulsive, and in an age which did produce true caricature scarcely warrant inclusion. Hogarth on one occasion, however, made a plate called Characters and Carica- turas, to illustrate the difference, as he saw it; and though here and there in over a hundred heads the distinction is not easy to perceive, the plate is worth careful study. In the margin beneath it occur various other heads and faces, including that of Gio- vanna (as I have called her) by Leonardo da Vinci. Amedeo is omitted. 47 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE No doubt the lessons he learned from the Dutch and his own inclination bent his mind towards the genre for which he was most famous. His portrait, however, of Simon Lord Lovat in 1746 certainly contains a strong element of caricature, whilst in that of John Wilkes, made the year before he died, the wig of that dissolute wit is drawn so as to suggest the growth of devil’s horns, and the expression, with violently squinting eyes, is fiendishly derisive. This without any gross exaggeration is pure caricature. Hogarth is supposed to have invented the trick, still so favoured by boys of all ages, of drawing a trooper and his dog going through a doorway—in three strokes. In 1753 he made a most ingenious picture demonstrating every conceivable error in perspective. It is a marvel of ingenuity and, though not caricature, would only have been attempted by a man who had a childlike love of nonsense which is so important an ingredient in the art. It is also probable that he made the drawing in order to teach students some of the pitfalls of their craft. When a topic, foolish or otherwise, runs away with people, as we say, so that nothing else is talked about by high or low: so that intelligent folk utter platitudes about it, and foolish people look forward to the morrow’s newspaper: so that it gives point to catchwords, essence to songs, and kernel to jokes, we may be quite sure that its central figure will not lack the attention of the caricaturist. Such a topic was formed by the machinations of John Law, and the series of schemes with which he is associated. The Bubbles, South Sea and otherwise, “‘ ran away with” people not merely in England and France but everywhere, and it is doubtful if there has ever been a craze like that one, regarded only as a matter of common discussion. Since then robberies, murders, and cinematograph actresses had their share of popular attention, rather more perhaps than a fair share, and people have been idiotic about them and (relatively) similar concerns, and will go on being idiotic, but no whim nor fatuity has ever yet matched that stirred out of men’s idleness and empty-headed- ness by the Bubbles. 48 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND John Law, the son of a Scottish goldsmith-banker, bred to a practical knowledge of finance, unhampered by a conscience, and fortified to a wonderful degree with impudence, the gift of talking, charm of manner, and fine presence, with riches too at his command, ingratiated himself with the French Regent. In the financial chaos of the country during the end of and following the reign of Louis XIV, any suggestion for raising funds and relieving the debt was welcome. Law came forward with a system, with a series of systems. There is no need to describe _ them. For nearly a year these systems worked. Then suspicion, followed hard by certainty, caused holders of stock to seek for realization. There was a rush, and frantic disillusionment. Jean Lass, as he was called in Paris, speech with whom had been social apotheosis, honoured by the Regent, and pursued by all the court, escaped not without difficulty from the French capital at the end of 1720; and, long outlawed from England for having broken the prison in which he had been confined on account of a questionable duel, he was forced to eke out the remaining eight years of his life as a polite gambler in Germany and Italy— which at face value seems to be a far pleasanter way of passing the time than in what is nowadays called Big Business. Naturally, he was caricatured: naturally his schemes and systems were the subjects of innumerable “ cartoons”. You see him, as Amsterdam saw him, a loathesomely ugly dwarf, which he was not, hawking his wares with a magic lantern slung on his back, and a walking-stick on the head of which is a windmill. Wind, reasonably enough, figured largely in these caricatures. Law is made to resemble Don Quixote, riding Sancho Panza’s donkey. The animal is loaded with gold coin in a box and in bags slung round his neck. Everywhere paper is scattered by the breeze, and the rider carries a banner on which is inscribed “ I come, I come, Dulcinea”’. In another satire of that time Folly drives the chariot of Fortune, to which are harnessed figures with foxes’ brushes, representing the Bubble companies. Fortune scatters paper to the crowd, and the Devil in the clouds blows soap-bubbles. 49 . AYtHIS TORY (ORVCARIC AT One In the reign of George II, before English talent had widely developed, a number of foreigners were regularly employed by the sellers of prints, who took a pride in buying plates from beggarly artists for little more than their melting value as copper. With the rise to long-lived power of Sir Robert Walpole political caricaturists on both sides were extremely active; or, to be more exactly within the limits of the definition set down— political “* cartoonists ’’: of true caricature of the best kind there was little till the end of the century. Many artists lent their hands to political absurdity and the list of their names and works is an imposing one; but when examined in detail, we find nearly all the satire in the situation and not in the personal exaggeration. Clothes and attitudes, it is true, were often burlesqued, but the faces and figures of people whom the artist regarded or was paid to regard sympathetically were merely portrayed. Those of the enemy were made ugly: that was enough. In fact, caricaturists were content with, or were presumably unable to conceive anything but, what was obvious. Subtlety of perception is not always accompanied by the ability to record it; but the per- ceiving eye can to some extent force the hand, though the utmost skill of hand can never supply a lack of profundity of judgment. And while unskilled hands which could point a joke found employment—William Hanlon’s, for example, whose drawings though interesting were often “ messy” and incompetent— — they were not of the kind which falter under inspiration. With certain exceptions to be mentioned high technical skill was likewise uninspired. Caricature became too the hobby of amateurs, as it has been almost ever since. The Italian opera gave almost as many oppor- tunities for ridicule as did the passions and politics of the day, and the Countess of Burlington, whose husband built Burlington House, made caricatures of Farinelli, the singer in opera and of Heidegger, the manager. General (afterwards, Marquess) Town- send was another amateur. The most celebrated ‘‘ amateur ”’ of the eighteenth century (though his status in the narrow and ° 50 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND sporting sense of that ill-used word may be called in question) was Henry William Bunbury, who lived from 1750 to 1811, and was an almost exact contemporary of Gillray. He was equerry to the Duke of York and his position gave him an obvious advantage for the exercise of his talent. Caricatures at this period were reproduced in all manner of ways, even upon ladies’ fans, indicating the intense interest taken by women in politics. A contemporary rhyme expresses a view of their activities not entirely obsolete at the present day. It is quoted from memory. If women sat in Parliament— A thing unprecedented— The great part of our nation, then, Would be Miss-represented. Shops were entirely devoted to the sale of caricature, and in more than one drawing of that century a print-shop is used as a convenient background for any street scene: while, in 1808 Gillray made a drawing of an old gentleman slipping and falling on the pavement outside Humphreys’ shop at 27 St. James’s Street. In the window are seen a number of his own caricatures, including rough suggestions of two or three which are well- known to collectors at the present day and are easily recognizable. In the early part of the eighteenth century the word carica- tura was little used, and satirical drawings of that kind were called hieroglyphics, largely because their precise meaning was not always immediately plain. In despite of the many charges that have been brought against the English of obviousness in all matters concerned with art we have, as a matter of fact, always delighted in a little mystery, meanings that at the first glance are hidden, and a most admirable allusiveness in style. A volume of seventy-five political caricatures entitled A Political and Satirical History of the Year 1756 and 1757 was published in the latter of these. It was described as ‘‘ A series of humorous and entertaining prints, containing all the most remarkable Trans- 51 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE actions, Characters, and Caricatures of these two Memorable Years”’. These were published from the shop of Darly and Ed- wards, at the Acorn, facing Hungerford, Strand. During the first part of George III’s reign, by favour of the Prince of Wales, Lord Bute and Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, were the most prominent members of the Court, and as such became natural targets for the shafts of contemporary satire. Some of the caricatures directed against them, judged by the finest standards, are a little coarse. The harmless ones gave Lord Bute an enormous boot and a petticoat as an emblem of influence. Prints appeared, illustrating processions in which a Scotsman always figured, carrying a banner, bearing the signs of a boot and petticoat. Bute retaliated by employing Hogarth to draw satires in the opposing interest, and the artist received, it is said, a pension for so doing. Hogarth’s transactions in this regard becoming known, a lampoon was invented which con- sisted of a letter from Mr. Hog-garth to Lord Mucklemon, and his lordship’s reply. “ My Lord,— The enclosed is a design I intend to publish; you are sensible it will not redound to your honour, as it will expose you to all the world in your proper colours. You likewise know what induced me to do this; but it is in yt power to prevent it from appearing in publick, which I would have you do immediately. Will™, Hog-garth.” ‘‘ Maist,—By my saul, mon, I am sare troobled for what I have done; I didna ken y* muckle merit till noow; say na mair aboot it; I’ll mak au things easy to you, and gie you bock your Pension. Sawney Mucklemon.”’ The comic rendering of Scots speech was about as good then as it is the noo. 52 MEP EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND Malcolm observes that Hogarth “‘ seldom indulged in carica- ture beyond the limits which Nature assigns when she thinks fit to be capricious”’. This is really a little less than the fact. Ho- garth certainly pointed the way to true caricature if he did not very often practise the art. Our national proclivity for repeating jokes, or over a long period for finding humour in the same subject, can be easily discovered by a reference to the old files and to the new ones of such a paper as Punch. But we can go further than that, a full century further back: Punch only began his career as a paper in 1841. An essay in the Spectator or the Tatler of the mid-eigh- teenth century might, so far as subject and the writer’s attitude towards it goes, frequently have been written at the present time. It is part of the great pleasure to be gained from reading the eighteenth-century essayists to find how unchanging is human nature, how “‘ modern ” was the outlook of Johnson, of Addison and the rest. In 1913 Max Beerbohm exhibited a caricature of (then) Colonel Seely in the reading-room of the Cavalry Club, pointing to the card on the mantelshelf on which is written SILENCE. About him plethoric old generals are represented as upon the verge of apoplexy, shouting with rage and shaking their newspapers. This caricature set out to emphasize the attitude of the regular Army towards the Territorials. Go further back and you will find that the Volunteers were satirized in analogous ways in the ’sixties. And then go back to 1731, and in Read’s Weekly Fournal in September of that year you will find that the City Trained Bands, the municipal troops of the City of London, irregulars who had served with distinction down to the seventeenth cen- tury, but who had now deteriorated, are the objects of quite savage ridicule. “On Tuesday,” we read, “ the Cripplegate, Whitechapel, St. Clement’s, and Southwark Grenadiers rendezvous’d in Bridgewater Gardens: from whence they marched through the City, and afterwards attacked Cripplegate, both posterns, and 53 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE Great Moorgate, with their usual bravery, and thence proceeded to attack a dunghill near Bunhill Fields, which gloriously com- pleted their exercise of arms.”’ These observations accompany a caricature, showing various animals in uniform: a monkey, an elephant ‘in a wig (whose head, by the way, is reproduced by Malcolm in his Historical Sketch), carrying a spear ; an ox, and a drummer-monkey, leading the rank and file, who are also monkeys. The ox carries a banner with roast beef and a plum-pudding delineated upon it. They are drawn up outside the ‘‘Hog in Armour ” : and a monkey in the foreground holds a bill on which is written: Come, taylers and weavers, And sly penny shavers, All haste and repair, To the Hog in Rag Fair, To ‘list in the pay Of great Captain Day, And you shall have cheer, Beef, pudding, and beer. During the eighteenth century and for a decade or so of the nineteenth the history of caricature follows the political history of Europe, though, to be sure, aspects of life other than political or “ historical ’’ have usually produced the best satires because the best artists have, as a rule, been somewhat indifferent to party politics and have been more concerned with wider tendencies. And the best caricatures of all have been of individuals whose faces, figures, clothes and bearing have told their own story, and not of groups of people “doing things”. It is easier to get an effect, especially a “* popular ” effect, by crowding a drawing with accessories—" John Bull taking a luncheon ” of battleships, or Napoleon, surrounded by his marshals, staring in fright towards the Writing on the Wall,—as Gillray did, than it is by making the solitary caricature of the Czar Paul of Russia, as he also did 54 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND on another occasion, or as Pellegrini did with single personalities for twenty years in Vanity Fair. The great names of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were those of Gillray and Rowlandson, whose work has been extensively and exhaustively described by several writers, though not always from quite the same angle. Mr. Everitt is, for example, quite overcome by the “‘ coarseness ” of Gillray and Rowlandson. He complains that George Cruikshank, his especial hero, displayed, from time to time at the outset of his career, signs of this coarseness which are “ directly traceable to the influence of Rowlandson”’, whose shortcomings in that respect were particularly marked. Grego, on the other hand, declares that Rowlandson was ‘“‘ master of the most elegant refinement, both of delineation and colouring, and produced the most delicious female heads, with that brightness and daintiness of touch, which was his peculiar gift, bringing all the graces, sparkle and animation of the French school to bear upon the models of winsome female beauty ”. But even he adds, “ we are constrained to admit . . . that too many of his productions are strongly tinctured with that coarseness of subject and senti- ment which has been held to disfigure the works of contemporary humorists: his wit . . . was of the jocose school of Smollett and Fielding, and in justice it must be taken into consideration that his designs, even in their most uncompromising and grosser aspects, simply reflect the colour of a period which was the reverse of squeamish... . ” That is fair enough, but Everitt and others do not give that merry devil his due. Much of the humour of that era was of the kind that we associate with small boys in the lower forms of schools and with that vague generic term, the “smoking-room”’. Our present mode of civilization has proscribed that kind of humour in print or picture, but so far it has failed to eradicate it from the aural tradition. Without the slightest desire either to palliate or to impeach any kind of impropriety, it must in justice be pointed out that while it used to be printed and accepted, by word of 55 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE mouth it is still accepted and persists. When coarse humour has ceased to be generally accepted and chuckled over in private, then the public uplifting of pious hands in horror at the brutalities of the eighteenth century may be defended. Mask of Charles X of France By Charles Philipon Chapter VI THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND (continued) year before Gillray, in 1756, and he survived that artist, with whom his name is so often and so unconscionably coupled, twelve years, dying in 1827. He began as a serious painter in water-colour, occasionally making portraits in oils, and he exhibited in the Royal Academy, where his work was regularly hung. He composed too a book of etchings, not copies of other men’s work, but done in various styles, so that he seems to have got into the very skins of other artists. This knack of parody, satirical or otherwise, is a marked characteristic of the mind which finds delight at some time or another in caricature. In 1774 Rowlandson ceased from sending his portraits to the Academy and sent instead drawings such as those in which he describes Vauxhall Gardens, where extreme daintiness and re- finement are a great deal more evident than humour. To-day we realize that Grego’s apologies for Rowlandson in his capacity of satirist are rather beside the point. His exquisite draughtsmanship and the elegance with which all his subjects —even the coarse ones—were conceived and carried out, are widely appreciated. A water-colour drawing which shows some drunken old reprobate in the act of being sick after blowing kisses, as one might say, to Bacchus, does not suggest beauty. But beauty is there, if only in the treatment which compensates the subject. His landscapes and military scenes, in camp and field, are as devoid of coarseness as violets in the hedgerow. He was a landscape painter, indeed, of great distinction; his trees which were done to some extent after the convention of the time 57 TT ver tet ROWLANDSON was born in London, a A HISTORY OF CARICATURE yet nevertheless invariably show individual qualities of their own. His use of blue and red is a joy of connoisseurs, his architectural sense in the treatment of houses was precise and scholarly. His interiors were filled but not over-filled with decorative detail which always refreshes the eye. If he felt that a subject warranted that particular form of comment he would be coarse enough to indicate his meaning. The etching that he made of the Boxing Match* between Ward and Quirk in 1812 is quite evidently the expression of his opinion of the noble art. Gross beasts are pounding each other, their faces distorted with anger, their attitudes quite unsug- gestive of science. ‘The onlookers, held back by no rope such as would in fact have kept them from the ring, are meant no doubt to be typical of the ordinary crowd at a prize fight. That they remain typical of the crowd at a modern boxing match says as much for Rowlandson’s perceptions as it does for the collateral unsavouriness of the Ring to-day. He seldom practised true caricature, but instances do occur here and there amongst his personal satires. There was a series known as the Delicate Investigation, which made fun of the scandal involving the Duke of York and Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, a lady of more brains than virtue, whose activities in and out of the law courts formed one of the causes célébres at the beginning of the last century. In the illustration in this book made from an original water-colour drawing the caricaturish element is probably slight and subtle: sometimes it was broader. No doubt its implications are highly scandalous. Living in Wardour Street as he did from 1777 to 1781, Rowlandson had a wide knowledge of the world of Pleasure: he was a popular and genial personality, as his self-portrait very readily tells us. He had the wide eye, the good nose and sensitive mouth, one of which features at least is usually to be found in men who understood the art of being worldly and at the same time of enjoying its practice. He was a desperate * This etching, with notes regarding the curious mistakes both in names and dates which it records, is reproduced in The Prize Ring (Country Life), 1925. 58 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND gambler and is said upon one occasion to have sat for thirty-six hours at a stretch at the card table. As a lad, he had been to the same school—Dr. Barrow’s Academy in Soho Square—with Henry Angelo, who went thence to Eton, and who shared rooms at No. 13 Old Bond Street with John Jackson the pugilist champion of England. In Rowlandson’s day the principal print-sellers were Fores, Tegg, and Ackermann, besides Mrs. Humphreys. The first and third of these are still represented by members of their respective families in Piccadilly and Regent Street at the present day. Rowlandson found an especially good friend in the Mr. Acker- mann of 1800. He was apt to lose all his money at the card table, but without regrets he would hold up his reed pen and assure his friends that it would soon produce more pelf. Rowlandson was used to strengthening his outlines with a mixture of vermilion and indian ink. The tint of his pen line is therefore distinctive without being unique: and yet such is the stupidity of modern forgers (and since original Rowlandsons have become valuable in the market, there are many) that they use plain indian ink, sometimes without even taking the trouble to dilute it, in making their spurious drawings. This and Rowland- son’s own very infrequent use of large spaces of yellow are two points, apart from the general character and manner of drawing, for the collector to bear in mind. One rather notorious “ adapter”’ of Rowlandson, who was also one of his biographers, was ex- tremely apt to give himself away by introducing into pictures large patches of a brightish yellow. Generally, however, pictures by a master of Rowlandson’s measure proclaim their authenticity by the treatment of line and composition. Moreover, the forgers are fond of signing their pictures (to increase the value)—a thing that Rowlandson very seldom did. James Gillray was born in 1757 and worked as a lad as a letter engraver. The monotony of this labour, however, induced him to run away with a company of strolling players, in much the same way as Callot had done nearly two hundred years before. Creative artists have not seldom shown a disposition to 59 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE prefer vagabondage to the bondage of spirit which is inseparable from dull, unpromising, and settled occupations. The desire to roam and to be a rolling stone is yet not to be regarded as the measure of talent. Gillray had a quite genuine love of drawing which almost amounted to genius. “ This coarseness and vulgarity,” Everitt says of him, ‘‘ 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 ”—that is Rowlandson. Leaving subject out of the question Gillray’s technique, vigorous and masculine, suggests that quality (which writers of the later nineteenth century found so deplorable) far more strongly than does Rowlandson’s. There was nothing pretty-pretty about Gillray’s work and—not that personal character is any too surely indicated by a man’s work, or at all events not obviously in- dicated—James Gillray was a drunkard and a raffish fellow who descended, as drunkards do, to the most reprehensible tricks in order to supply funds to spend in taverns. In a miniature portrait, painted by himself, we seem to see a heavy-eyed weari- ness, almost despair, which ill accords with the vigour and high spirits of his work. Here, in the portrait, is a man of great intellect, but no illusions. It is a sad face. For a long time he lived in the house of Mrs. Humphreys the print-seller of Old and New Bond Streets, before she moved to St. James’s Street. He had contracted with her not to sell his work elsewhere, but it is known that, in order to raise a little extra money, he disguised his name and manner of drawing on various occasions and etched plates for Fores of Piccadilly. Some of his work is signed—J. Hurd, some—J. Kent, and—J. Penn. In his earliest plates, the scrupulous care of the practised en- graver is manifest to the detriment of freedom and spontaneity. Later on his work as a student at the Royal Academy enabled him to throw off these shackles and to maintain a line which shows little sign of being cramped. Upwards of twelve hundred caricatures and satires are known to have been made by him, the best known being concerned with Napoleon Buonaparte and 60 Mire hIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND Josephine, whom, as is generally conceded, he treated pictorially with the grossest possible injustice. We have John Bull holding up the dripping severed head of Napoleon on a pitchfork: this indicating what would happen if he invaded England. “Ha! my little Boney! What do’st think of Johnny Bull now? Plunder Old England, hay? Make French slaves of us all, hay? Ravish all our wives and daughters, hay? O, Lord help that silly head! To think that Johnny Bull would ever suffer those lanthorn jaws to become king of Old England’s Roast Beef and Plum Pudding! ” The meaning of this last sentence seems a little difficult to catch. The ‘‘ hay ” is no doubt aimed at George III who was always represented as using that form of interrogation in every sentence that he uttered. “Hay? Hay?” says the old king, under a caricature, de- signed to perpetuate the memory of an ancient joke against him. He is looking into a telescope through an open window at an old woman making apple dumplings. “‘ Hay? Hay? Apple dumplings ?—How get the apples in?—How? Are they made without seams? ” Another drawing is an amusing but extremely cruel carica- ture of the same monarch, reaching up to whose arm is a dwarf- like, hideous little woman, intended to be the Queen. This is called “‘ Royal Affability””, the object of that affability, hat in hand, being about to feed pigs. ‘Well, friend, where a’ you going, hay? What’s your name, hay? Where do you live, hay ?—hay?” Gillray burlesqued the French Revolution: he dealt with new fashions as they arose, but his exaggerations were mainly confined to expression, clothes, and postures, and did not include to any marked extent the facial peculiarities. An excellent drawing by Gillray, published in 1796, most copies of which, however, are greatly spoiled by being clumsily and tastelessly daubed with water-colour, is called “ A Peep at 61 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE Christie’s, or Tally-ho and his Nimeney-Pimeney Taking the Morning Lounge: a study of Lord Derby and Miss Farren (the Actress), a few months before their marriage enjoying the Fine Arts, he studying the Death of Reynard, she Zenocrates and Phryne.” In the background a lady wears a hat with a feather of the period exaggerated to about the size of her body, standing with some other people whose costumes are somewhat less eccentric. The main interest of the print lies in the tall thin figure of the actress standing beside an absurd tubby dwarf, with an enor- mous bulging forehead, a nondescript hat loosely set upon it, spurs, and a crop. Each holds a catalogue and stares at the respective choice. In the same year Gillray found an opportunity in a remark of Lord Kenyon, for satirizing two women of fashion. Mrs. Hobart (afterwards Lady Buckinghamshire) and Lady Archer were notorious not only for playing for high stakes, but for inveigling reckless young men into their houses with that end in view, and fleecing them. Kenyon, in the Court of King’s Bench, hearing a peculiarly flagrant case which arose from these ladies’ play, observed that he wished women in no matter what position could, for keeping gambling houses, be put in the pillory. In those days there would be no delicate restraint from with- in, nor public opinion pressing from without to keep Gillray from publishing “‘ The Exaltation of Faro’s Daughters”, which was to be the cure for that type of gambling as prescribed by the Lord Chief Justice. The two ladies in question are seen with their necks encircled, looking out from the rough boards of the pillory, beneath which is pinned a paper bearing Lord Kenyon’s observations. Another caricature was published in that same year, 1796, by Isaac Cruikshank, the father of George, drawn on almost exactly the same lines except that it includes the figure of the learned judge in the foreground. This print is entitled “‘ Cocking the Greeks ’’. In personal caricatures Gillray made conspicuous successes of Grattan, Shelburne, and ‘‘ Tommy Paine, the American Tailor”’. 62 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND George Moutard Woodward, for whom Rowlandson en- graved some plates, also made a considerable name at this period, his earliest work appearing in 1792. He was less fortunate than the others, dying in destitution seventeen years later. 'T'wo years before his death, however, he initiated The Caricature Magazine, which achieved a certain success. William Heath excelled in his caricatures of fashion, which he signed P. Pry: and James Sayer also made a name for himself, and being under the patronage of Pitt his treatment of Charles James Fox will readily be imagined. The savagery with which Fox was caricatured is scarcely equalled by the treatment meted out even to Napoleon. This is probably due to the fact that a fellow-countryman is instinctively abler to find the really open joint in the armour. It is easy to call the general commanding enemy troops “ Boney the Carcase Butcher’, and to make a drawing to match: such a drawing would enjoy the certainty of popular acceptance, just as in recent times similar (but less skilful) satires upon the ex-Emperor Wilhelm have delighted thousands of people to whom that vain, unwise, and disappointed man was a symbol of brutal enmity. People in general could know little more of the Kaiser than they did of Napoleon Buonaparte—that little being supplied by infrequent appearances in this country, for friendly or for practical purposes, such as Boney never made. But Charles James Fox could always be seen and not infrequently heard: and he could be interpreted, or misinterpreted, to the populace with shrewder venom and real insight. In this book will be found a caricature “ Billy’s Political Plaything ” in which Pitt is seen with whip held high about to beat the severed head of his opponent on a spinning top. This drawing is a little ferocious, but a most admirable piece of designing. The caricature was made by Richard Newton, who lived only from 1777 to 1798, and in his short career made caricatures and satirical drawings which, few as they are, should be better known. He was also a painter of portraits in miniature. Another caricature by him on the fashion prevalent in 1795 is 63 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE called “ The Rage”. A lady is represented in the then new Directoire style of dress, seen from in front and from behind. Beneath the drawing is the rhyme: Shepherds, I have lost my waist! Have you seen my body? Sacrificed to modern taste, I’m quite a Hoddy-Doddy. To return for a moment to “ Billy’s Political Plaything ” it should be added that the caricature, at all events that copy of it preserved in the Print Room of the British Museum, is most delightfully coloured, with a simplicity, taste, and clarity which is extremely uncommon in the hand-colouring of the etchings and engravings of that time. In 1810, a Fashion-caricature was made and called ‘“‘ The Invisibles”’, showing women whose faces were entirely hidden by bonnet and frills: men who could perhaps just see out be- neath their hats, and over their high stocks. It is interesting to compare this convention with one of Max Beerbohm, who in successive caricatures of Lord Spencer, over a number of years, made his collar higher and higher until at length you see his eyes, glancing kindly and gravely out through two round holes in a starchy pillar. Dandy was the name in current use for an exquisitely dressed man about the year 1819: well-dressed and over-dressed women were called Dandizettes. The Hobby-horse, the forerunner of the bicycle, became at this time a fashionable mania; and we see the Duke of York, who was Commander-in-Chief, and also, for reasons which to-day we should regard as insufficient, Prince-Bishop of Osna- burg, riding one. There had been considerable outcry against the enormity of the Civil List, a decent proportion of which was ear-marked for H.R.H. He nevertheless led the van in calling for economy and here we see him tearing along the road to Windsor on his hobby in order to save the expense of a stable. John Bull apostrophizes him: 64 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND “ Dang it, Mr. Bishop, thee art saving, indeed; thee used to ride in a coach and six: now I pay thee ten thousand pounds a year more, thee art riding a wooden horse for all the world like a gate-post.”’ A few years before, Vansittart had introduced a tax on soap, so that we got a drawing the scene of which is a washhouse, where the figure of that minister jumps out of a frothing tub to the amazement of the washerwoman. “ Here I am, Betty; ”’ he says, ‘‘ How are you off for suds? ” “Lord, Mr. Vansittart! who could have thought of seeing you in the washing-tub? ”’ Francis Grose, whose work was referred to in the first chapter of this one, lived from about 1731 to 1791. He was the son of an Irish jeweller, and was elected a member of the Society of Artists, held the rank of captain in the Surrey Militia, and the post of Richmond Herald. He goes down to fame almost every day, if one of his own national bulls be permitted, without being mentioned by name, for he was “the chiel amang us takin’ notes ’’ of Robert Burns. He made a portrait of himself with a good deal of obvious caricature in it, leaning on a twisted stick, with a face and figure that scarcely belie his name. George Cruikshank is another artist who has been copiously discussed and whose work as a caricaturist is somewhat over- shadowed by his better-known and nowadays more popular work as an illustrator of books. In his youth he finished some of Gillray’s plates for him, when that unfortunate genius went off his head in 1811. Thackeray in his critical essay on him in the Westminster Review for June, 1840, speaks of him as the champion of woman: who had an honest, hearty hatred for everyone who abused her. For example, Cruikshank took the princess’s part against the Regent. Indeed, it may be said, quite rightly, that most of the more distinguished caricaturists have been of the Whiggish persuasion. 65 F A HISTORY OF CARIGCAT GORE “ Canning, Castlereagh, Bexley, Sidmouth, he is at them, one and all; and as for the Prince, up to what a whipping-post of ridicule did he tie that unfortunate old man! And do not let squeamish Tories cry out about disloyalty; if the Crown does wrong, the Crown must be corrected by the nation, out of respect, of course, for the Crown. In those days and by those people who so bitterly attacked the son, no word was ever breathed against the father, simply because he was a good husband, and a sober, thrifty, pious, orderly man.” It is doubtful whether any simple thrift, piety or sobriety would really have broken the pencil point of the ferocious satirists of that day, but the old King’s infirmities might have done so; and probably when they had done with the Regent they had no time for anyone else. Cruikshank’s work between 1811 and 1815 appeared in periodicals, called respectively The Scourge and The Satirist ; or Monthly Meteor. The Scourge was edited by one Jack Mitford, a man of education who had fought in the Navy under Nelson and Hood, and who edited besides The Bon Ton magazine, and The Quzzical Gazette. He was a loafer, a vagabond, and a drunkard. For one book of which he was the author his pub- lisher paid him a shilling a day till he had finished it. Mitford died in the workhouse.* Cruikshank contributed his quota to the satires regarding Napoleon. He directed a most pointed caricature at fohn Bull buying stones at the time his numerous family want bread. This refers to the indemnification by the Government of Lord Elgin for his much greater expenses in procuring the marbles from the frieze of the Parthenon at Athens. Like the others Cruikshank caricatured the fashions with grotesque exaggeration, both of garments male and female, as well as of faces and figures. So late as 1850 we find him making fun of crinolines so enormous that men are handing plates and glasses to women by means of long sticks on the ends of which are trays. * Everitt’s English Caricaturists. 66 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN.ENGLAND Of Cruikshank’s drawings Philip Gilbert Hamerton writes in his Etching and Etchers : “ 'They are full of keen satire and happy invention, and their moral purpose is always good; but all these qualities are compatible with a carelessness of art, which is not to be tolerated in anyone but a professional caricaturist.”’ There lies implicit the later English attitude to caricature. Bah! The thing’s a caricature: it can be done as badly and as carelessly as you please. We must reserve our serious endeavours for the Royal Academy, for pictures of sea-shells in a be- ribboned basket, for the Sailor’s Return, the Soldier’s Farewell. Caricature must never be confused with Art; and it is such a pity that opportunities for such confusion should arise in the minds of uninstructed persons, because men like Cruikshank could draw a bit and displayed a good moral purpose. The one caricaturist of this period who devoted himself almost entirely to the face and form of current celebrities was Robert Dighton, who born about 1752 and who died in 1814. Many authorities refuse the name of caricaturist to Dighton, because, it must be presumed, he was the first artist of that kind to rely on a very slight exaggeration of salient peculiarities, and who introduced into that form of portraiture a good deal of subtlety. It is extremely doubtful whether we should feel im- pelled to say of, for example, the caricature reproduced in this book—“* 'That is the old Don incarnate: that is Oxford,” unless there was some element of over-statement. Most art, whether writing, or acting, or painting, is to some extent chargé. If it were not, there is always a question whether we should ever see the point: and Dighton whose unskilfulness seldom went further than a certain inability to draw a man’s hands, treated their faces, figures, and clothes with just that slight extravagance which the connoisseurs of caricature most keenly enjoy. He was in point of fact a portrait painter as well, and between 1769 and 1773 he exhibited heads done in chalk at the Free Society of Arts. In 1775 he hung at the Royal Academy a number of what he called ‘‘ stain’d drawings’; and two years later—and this shows him without any doubt to have been of 67 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE the genuinely caricaturish turn of mind—‘“ A Drawing of a Gentleman from Memory ”’. He seems to have lived all his life in London, and was the forerunner of some modern carica- turists in that he classified his subjects by occupation, running through the Bar, the Army, the Navy, Oxford and Cambridge, actors and actresses, and other groups. In 1795 he etched a Book of Heads, exhibiting a number of men in various walks of life. He signed his etchings R. Dighton, and Dighton. (His son, Richard, a lesser performer, signed in full.) Some years before his death it was discovered that he had removed some prints from the British Museum, a dealer, named Woodburn, giving evidence before the Trustees to the effect that he had bought a Rembrandt etching from the carica- turist. Dighton confessed his guilt and all the prints were returned. There is an unusually large collection of Dighton’s carica- tures to be seen in the rooms of Rule’s restaurant in Maiden Lane, near Covent Garden. After the first decade or so of the nineteenth century, we find that the polite school of Cruikshank in his later incarnation and of his followers coming after the fiercely masculine but sometimes brutal period of the Napoleonic wars, killed carica- ture and replaced it by Comic Art, into which was infused a little humane satire and a great deal of inanity. True caricature became very scarce and has so remained. John Doyle is referred to as “innocent and amusing”? when compared to the previous masters of “ savage vulgarity’’. In comic art of his sort there is little exaggeration, and as we have seen, caricature depends for its existence on that quality. Current humour lay more and more in the situation described. Richard Doyle and Robert Seymour, the illustrator of Pickwick practically never made caricatures. John Leech, in the early days of Punch, came occasionally within measurable distance, such as in his drawing of the Duke of Wellington and Prince de Joinville in 1845; and that of Earl Russell six years later. It is beside the strict point of the present purpose, but as du Maurier has been so often called a carica- 68 - ie 7 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND turist it is worth while observing that his exaggeration of types— a very real and marked exaggeration—was due to no intention of his. He was an ardent and capable apostle of that sentimental creed which believes in the slight, agreeable falsehood; which has endeared him, not unnaturally, to a generation which could look almost anything bravely in the face except a fact. \ Rovetiy 2A. M. Maurice Barrés By André Rouveyre Chapter VII SRV AN EDY re Ae N Y HILE, as various writers have copiously pointed out, comic art in general became, after the first quarter of the nineteenth century, “refined” and only gently satirical, true caricature almost ceased to exist until Vanity Fair was founded by Thomas Gibson Bowles in 1868; and Vanity Fair, so long as the paper is remembered, will always be associated with the name of its most considerable regular contri- butor, the outstanding caricaturist of the Victorian era, Carlo Pellegrini. This brilliant but kindly satirist was born at Capua in 1839, being on the distaff side descended from the Medici family. As a young man he was much seen in Neapolitan society and his happy knack of making caricatures was much admired. He volunteered and fought with Garibaldi at Capua and Volturno. But, the path of true love being too rough for him, he left Italy for England in November 1864. Five years later he became a regular caricaturist employed constantly by Vanity Fair. He had done a certain amount of work over the signature Singe, but from his first connexion with Vanity Fair used the equivalent, now so familiar to us, Ape. In Forty Years of “ Spy’’, the late Sir Leslie Ward, the other caricaturist for so long attached to Vanity Fair, tells us how when he joined that paper he and Pellegrini for some time shared the task of making caricatures between them. The Italian was a small stout fastidious man, something of a dandy, who invariably wore white spats and immensely long finger-nails, like a Chinese mandarin. He and Spy became friends and the younger man tells us how his rival, never very strong, 7° OVA PEIN A adetigh sig Ales gp probably debilitated himself by steadfastly refusing to walk any- where when he could take a cab. Amongst his odder accomplish- ments Pellegrini could lie in an armchair and hold a cigar in his mouth while he not only slept, but snored. As to method, Pellegrini, like others of his craft, would make as many preliminary sketches as might be required before he was satisfied. He would then make a tracing from the study which pleased him best. In this way he insured a firm and steady line such as could be well and clearly reproduced on a stone; but this must have mitigated very severely the spontaneity of the drawing. Ape’s first caricature in Vanity Fair was of Disraeli, whom he makes to look like a theatrical impresario. The following week he made one of Mr. Gladstone, who is unconscionably dour. During the next twenty years the caricatures in Vanity Fair were labelled for the most part Statesmen and Men of the Day. Ape drew almost entirely from memory, as does his great successor Max. He personally regarded as his most successful caricatures those of Baron Brunnow and of Lord Stanley, afterwards Earl of Derby. “ Brunnow” is indeed a magnificent design—a stoutish elderly gentleman, bald, with an enormous ear, and a huge slit of good-humoured mouth: the eyes are cunning, and the drawing as such, regarded just as a pattern upon papct, instantly catches the eye, and compels the attention. Of the Lord Stanley you say, as good caricatures so often call upon you to say, when you have no knowledge of the originals—* ‘That must be good ”—which simply means that the artist has put character into his drawing. In this case the stalwart shoulders are set back, lifting the coat right away from the shirt-collar. Exaggeration is manifest, but you know that an exaggeration of this sort is bound to be founded upon fact. The famous carica- ture of the Earl of Dudley with the long curled hair hiding his ears looks something between Beau Brummel and a spaniel. It is extremely interesting to perceive in a caricature also made in 1869 of the then Lord Chelmsford a likeness to his living kins- man the artist-actor Mr. Ernest Thesiger. Dr. Frederick Quin, 7p! A HISTORY OF CARICATURE the famous homeeopathist, who on account of his conversion to that form of medical procedure, was most vigorously black- balled by the Atheneum Club, must have been, as we say, a caricature to start with. A man much liked, a favourite in society, Dr. Quin looks out of the caricature with minute widely set eyes, twinkling with good humour, a grotesquely upturned nose, and a mouth which stretches from ear to ear. It is one of those out- rageously ugly faces which positively attract you. Pellegrini may have made the man uglier than did nature, but he served him well. It would be impossible to think otherwise than with affection and trust of anyone who in such reliable hands could inspire such a portrait. In 1874 Vanity Fair published a singularly fine caricature of Algernon Charles Swinburne, with his aureole of red hair, his small queer beard, his prosaic clothes, his hands behind him and one foot kicking against the other. “ Before Sunrise ” is printed beneath the lithograph. For this drawing he made a study upon blotting- paper which had already been used for its ordinary purpose. A reproduction of this study, which is of considerable interest, appears among the illustrations here. The original piece of blotting-paper is the property of Mr. William Nicholson, who reproduced it in The Winter Owl* of 1923, and who has given me leave to use it again here. One of his most searching cari- catures was of General Gordon. This almost exactly complements Mr. Strachey’s account of that officer in Eminent Victorians. Ape hardly ever descended as did Spy to mere portraiture. Through the medium of exaggeration of one sort or another he always made his comment, was amusing, occasionally a little acid. He is said to have been invariably fair. Pellegrini was only fifty-three when he died in January of 1889. The last drawing that he made was a caricature of Edison, the inventor. This was not published. In April of the same year a drawing of him signed by a hieroglyphic consisting of the letters A. J. M. and standing for * The Winter Owl. Edited by Robert Graves and William Nicholson. (Cecil Palmer.) 1923. 72 SIAN ITY FATRY Arthur J. Marks, appeared in Vanity Fair as the weekly carica- ture: and we see a good-humoured, fat little man with a bifurcated reddish-grey beard, a slight cast in his eye, the inevitable cigar, and the finger-nails. An admirable rough impression of Pelle- grini, emphasizing his gait, was made once by Degas. If he did not inspire Sir Leslie Ward, who in his reminis- cences rather heatedly denies that extremely soft impeachment, he has undoubtedly pointed the way to others. Max’s first book of caricatures was dedicated to his shade. Max himself contributed very little to Vanity Fair, his best- remembered drawing for that paper being one of George Mere- dith, with huge eyes and uplifted finger, seeming perhaps to listen to skylarks. Contemporaneous with Pellegrini, but surviving him for many years was Mr. (later Sir Leslie) Ward, who over the signa- ture of Spy, contributed to Vanity Fair from 1873 until just before the Great War, when the paper in its old form ceased to exist. In an article in an early number of Vanity Fair Spy was himself caricatured and Jehu Junior, who wrote the accompany- ing letterpress to all the plates, suggested that in years to come a wonderful book of reminiscences should await the public, when Ward looked back at the long career upon which he had just set out. In 1915 this book* was published not long before the author’s death. The pseudonym, he tells us, came when dis- cussing that quite important detail with Gibson Bowles. The editor handed him a dictionary and suggested that he should hunt up a name then and there. The dictionary opened at the s’s, and the matter was speedily settled. Of Spy’s work for Vanity Fair almost only the earliest can be called caricature at all. His first contribution in 1873 was “ Old Bones”’, which was the nickname given to Professor Owen. You see a huge hat, a rugged stick, untidy clothes. It is very like photographs of the old gentleman, but it suggests only good humour, and does not begin to hint at intellect. His Anthony Trollope of the same year was a good caricature as was the “‘ Abbé Liszt’ of 1886. But * Forty Years of ‘‘ Spy’’. By Leslie Ward. (Chatto and Windus.) 1915. 75 a) A HISTORY OF CARICATURE gradually and, presumably owing to the portrait painting to which the artist gave more and more time as he grew older, the carica- turish element almost entirely departed from his work for Vanity Fair, until we get, in 1907, a perfectly plain, straight- forward, and quite uninspired likeness of (then Mr.) Chartres Biron, the magistrate. Referring to the caricature of Liszt, Sir Leslie Ward tells us in his book that Boehm made a bust of that great composer, and actually left out the warts which adorned his face. Spy is here discussing the propriety of dealing faith- fully with physical blemishes of that kind, which, as he rightly points out, are as essential to a man’s appearance, or at all events were in that instance, as his eyes and mouth. But that is one of the points which the public, not greatly caring for the art, is unable to understand. And there is an instance of the wife of a celebrity who begged a caricaturist to omit her husband’s smoked glasses without which, however, he was never seen. One of the most distinguished caricaturists of the years round about 1900 was an amateur, who, over the signature A—o, abbreviated from Armadillo, made a few contributions of outstanding excellence to Vanity Fair. One of them is to be found among the illustrations to this book. It is always a matter of deep regret to the enthusiastic student of the subject that so much brilliant work of this kind exists only in private collections. A—o was in private life the late Roland le Strange, the head, though only for the last few months of his life, of the ancient Norfolk family. He might very easily have made a great name for himself, for he had the technical ability to set down exactly what his perceiving eye took in. There was no trickery about his work, no wild exaggeration; but always he threw that little extra emphasis upon the outward physical signs of the inward and spiritual character, which is the subtlest form of caricature. He only made drawings when he wanted to and of people who — interested him—a personal friend or two, some jockeys, and so forth. The professional caricaturist, if he be regularly working for a paper, is handicapped in this regard: he is constantly being required to caricature notabilities of the moment for whom he 14 PN ARV Ok AL Ree can induce in himself no sort of interest; and his work suffers accordingly. The caricature reproduced here is of Admiral Sir Harry Keppel. It is called, simply, “ 94’; that being the age of the subject in October, 1903, when the drawing appeared in Vanity Fair. The original, from which the lithograph for that periodical was made, was given by the artist to Queen Alexandra. People who dislike caricature, who are squeamish in their acceptance of simple, unavoidable facts, find offence in an artist who draws attention to the signs and infirmities of a great old age, as A—o certainly has done here. This point of view is easy to understand only if the impartial observer to-day fully realizes the amazing hatred of truth, which happens to be in the least degree regrettable or sad, burning in the hearts of ~ sentimentalists. And yet how otherwise could this and analogous caricature have been made, even by (though that is not to the point) a personal friend? The subject was a very old man: he looked just as he looks in this caricature, less the small margin of subtle over-statement which differentiates it from an “ aca- demic ” portrait. The sentimentalists, we suppose, would have his head erect, his arms akimbo, his blue eyes sparkling with youthful ardour. But that is the difficulty with people of this kind of artistic creed. The only quality to which they allow over-emphasis is sweetness. Its antithesis whether infirmity or deformity must be left out. The retreating forehead must be ennobled; eyes that Nature has set much too near together, must be widely separated to look out with wholesome and generous sincerity. And the “ point ” of a face, unless it be of a Greek God or an expensive doll, must be missed. The process of thought involved (if it can be called such) is precisely the same as that which urges a mother to arrange in love-locks the untidy hair, to set a clean, uncomfortable and unaccustomed collar about a rebellious neck, of the street urchin who is to have his picture took. 75 Chapter VIII CONTINENTAL CARICATURE 1813, that no other country than England has encouraged the art of caricature because “no other portion of the globe enjoys equal freedom”, people enthusiastically interested in caricature invariably turn sooner or later to the Continental Press, old as well as modern; and to pamphlets and books, in which that art has been encouraged to satisfy the pleasure in satire which in England can only be obtained on rare occasions, and at some inconvenience by visiting an exhibition in London, or by buying expensive books. Since Malcolm’s day more colour has been lent to his asser- tion regarding the freedom of the Press: that we shall come to in its turn. But provided that the English observer can submit his insular prejudices to the discipline of humour and can enjoy a little satire, be it subtle or savage, directed against himself, as he may have to do from time to time, he will find an enormous mine for research where skill, elegance, wit, humour, deep feeling, and laughter pure and simple, have been diligently ex- ploited by a number of artists who, to the lover of caricature, have, especially during the nineteenth century, excelled our artists at every point. ‘The way in which one nation is perceived by another through the medium of caricature tells more to the victim than it does, to the compatriots of the artist. English, Italians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Germans have their national conventions for foreigners. These have been built up out of an old and very slowly changing tradition. The Germans usually see us as tall, thin, with heavy moustaches, with somewhat protruding teeth. We see Italians only in terms of the Neapolitan organ-grinder 76 [: despite of James Peller Malcolm’s declaration, made in GONTINENTAL CARICATURE who is no more representative of Italy than a cretinous Welshman is of England, and so on. In the essay already quoted, Thackeray, in praise of George Cruikshank, expatiates on that artist’s attitude towards the French. “ , . . It must be confessed that for that great nation Mr. Cruikshank entertains a considerable contempt. Let the reader examine the ‘ Life in Paris’, or the five hundred designs in which Frenchmen are introduced, and he will find them almost invariably thin, with ludicrous spindle-shanks, pigtails, out- stretched hands, shrugging shoulders, and queer hair and moustachios. He has the British idea of a Frenchman: and if he does not believe that the inhabitants of France are for the most part dancing-masters and barbers, yet takes care to depict such in preference, and would not speak too well of them. It is curious how these traditions endure. In France, at the present moment (1840), the Englishman on the stage is the caricatured ‘Englishman at the time of the war, with a shock red head, a long white coat, and invariable gaiters. Those who wish to study this subject, should peruse Monsieur Paul de Kock’s histories of ‘Lord Boulingrog’ and ‘ Lady Crockmilove’ . . . We doubt if a good British gallery would believe that such and such a character was a Frenchman unless he appeared in the ancient traditional costume.” And, nearly a century later, we find that the “ stage-French- man”’, as often as not, and nearly always the Frenchman of the comic illustrated paper, is attired in a top-hat that in France would be regarded as an interesting antique; and the floppy bow chiefly worn nowadays by American art students who have heard of Murger at third hand. But how, if the reader of Punch were to see a drawing of an ordinary foreigner as he is, without a moustache like Napoleon III and all the rest of the stock properties, how would he know that a foreigner was intended? So both sides have to put up with all kinds of little injustices and misrepresentations which do no harm at all. fal A CHISTORY OF (GARIC ALG Re Continental caricature followed, with the necessary differ- ences of outlook, the same broad lines as the English during the eighteenth century. But whereas with the death of Dighton and the others and with the translation of Cruikshank from carica- ture to book illustration, the art in England passed for a time into complete abeyance, the same period in France became extra- ordinarily rich in brilliant satire. Before this, however, the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth pro- duced little caricature of extreme distinction. Previous to 1830, the majority of satires were impersonal and with certain excep- tions to be mentioned were childish, vulgar, and incompetent. Unfortunately much of the best caricature of the end of the century not only in France, but in Germany, was anonymous. Some of it had need to be. The French Revolution produced caricatures both native and foreign of extreme bitterness on both sides. That was natural. But at the same time, or at all events, just before the Revolution and just after, all the usual crazes and follies of the moment were extensively dealt with. In 1785 we see the coiffure of ladies of fashion so enormously exaggerated that a carpenter must needs build a species of scaffolding within the wig, in order to hold it in position. In another a lady is found to be storing all her household goods, including a dog or two, in the colossal contraption which arises from her brow. In 1776 Hubert made a plate of thirteen heads of Voltaire, in various wigs, caps, and guises; but mostly with the same expression. This is strongly reminiscent of the plate of Characters and Caricatures made by Hogarth, somewhat earlier. ‘There are companion engravings of the Revolution showing L’ Aristocrate and La Democrate, two women suitably clothed to typify the opposing orders, though it is, oddly enough, extremely difficult to say on which side the artist had ranged himself: for the old aristocratic woman bitterly sneering and bedizened, looks to- wards the complementary engraving, in which a simply attired girl is given the face of a fiend incarnate. German caricaturists at this time, such as G6z, made delight- 78 ee ee ey ee ee eS iT a eee —s CONTINENTAL CARICATURE fully amusing satires upon the fashions—exquisite old gentle- men with beribboned walking-sticks, smiling girls in enormous hats. While, a little earlier, Pier Leone Ghezzi in Italy had made a maliciously clever caricature of the secretary of the Elector of Saxony. The best fashion caricatures were drawn by Frenchmen, such as Carle Vernet, Chataigner, and especially Isabey the elder, who made the companion pictures illustrating contrasts, which show a deformed but beautifully attired dwarf, taking the arm of a fine and buxom young woman. Au contraire, a big strapping man leads by the hand a gorgeously dressed female with the figure of a prize pig. The best of Isabey’s caricatures is a satire of fashion made in 1798 and called ‘ Petit-Coblentz”’. This is a most exquisitely coloured drawing and a supremely fine combined caricature of various notabilities. There is Napoleon, as we never see him drawn in England, with a prodigious jutting chin; 'Talleyrand in a stock which nearly hides his mouth, beautifully attired in a striped purple coat and yellow waistcoat ; Madame Reécamier, her face entirely hidden by her bonnet, is given a figure like a lamp- post, draped from the cross-bar downwards in a Directoire gown; she takes the arm of Garat, who dances a-tiptoe, his ugly super- cilious face looking, with the arrangement of his wig, precisely like a sheep, as does Bestris too, looking across at them through folding glasses; Murat lounges in the background; and the artist represents himself as a pale and miserable Hebrew on the ex- treme left of the picture. The colours of the various costumes are most delicately washed in, and in the background tall houses are deftly simplified. The caricature is meant to satirize the rise of the parvenu after the Revolution. It is not too much to say that its cruelty combined with elegance has never been excelled. It is a superb example of true personal caricature. The English in Paris in 1802 are caricatured by Carle Vernet, who contented himself with fashions and aspects of Society, and who was quite uninterested in politics. He gives the visitors in this caricature the most ungainly and untidy clothes: the men 79 A‘HISTORY OF CARICATURE have coats which do not fit, the women are either overdressed or mere bundles of wraps: their faces are hideous. It was not to be expected that tourists from this side of the Channel would, during that brief peace, be exactly welcome. At this period we have a number of French caricaturists illustrating Les Merveilleuses and Les Incroyables, corresponding to the Dandizettes and Dandies in England. Their fashions were delightfully preposterous, and are suitably dealt with. After the Restoration in Paris, satirists formed the habit of placing weathercocks after the names of various turn-coats. Talleyrand, the Yellow Dwarf, had six weathercocks. He was also, in 1817, caricatured as ‘The Man with Six Heads, depicted variously as Republican, Napoleonic Minister, a Bishop, and so forth. The head facing the observer shouts ‘“‘ Vive le Roi”, the Bishop calls out “ Vive les Notables’’, another ‘‘ Vive le 1 Consul”. Gaudissart made capital out of Cambacérés, and in several drawings he greatly exaggerates his shortness of stature and girth. In one drawing he is accompanied by the Marquis d’Aigre- feuille, and by de la Villevielle. d’Aigrefeuille also was fat, and he and Cambacerés are represented by complete circles: they entirely hide the thin form of Villevielle, whose mean, severe face just shows on the left of the composition. But with the exception of Isabey there was no great caricaturist until the thirties. In 1830 Charles Philipon, himself a young man, gathered around him an array of talent which, in that especial respect, was the greatest, although at the time fortuitous, journalistic triumph that has ever been known. His contributors numbered amongst them Decamps, Grandville (whose real name was Gérard), Monnier, Travies (Charles Joseph Traviés de Villers), Gavarni (Sulpice Paul Chevalier), and Honoré Daumier; the last of whom would have given imperishable fame to any editor who had the insight to employ him. On November 4th of that year Philipon brought out the first number of La Caricature, and Daumier used that paper in order to express opinions which were Republican without being 80 CONTINENTAL CARICATURE vulgar. He began work for that journal in 1832, a Provencal by birth, a lithographer by trade, and, but twenty-four years of age, he sprang into some sort of notoriety at once. It cannot be called fame, for his work was not immediately appreciated, and there was no very evident reason why it should be. He was not amaz- ingly precocious and he began with a modest effort, which did not seem to make any extravagant promises for his future. The caricature in question was called “ Gargantua ’’, and represented Louis Philippe seated on his throne and swallowing bags of money, extracted from the people by attendant ministers. These bags were carried from the ground up an inclined board to his open mouth. On the ground below a crowd of miserables are handing over their cash. For this satire Daumier was imprisoned from September of that year until the following February. A writer in La Caricature of August 30th, 1832, tearfully de- scribes him as having been arrested under the eyes of a father and mother whose only support he was. And M. Champfleury refers to his imprisonment for the love of art. This is, perhaps, a slightly picturesque rendering of the case. Casimir Perier, President of the Chamber of Deputies, had given orders to the law officers to keep up incessant prosecutions against the Republican journals. Philipon knew perfectly well what he was about. He was a man of great pluck and inex- haustible energy. A caricature of him by Benjamin gives no idea of the extremely good-looking man, whom, M. Champfleury tells us, people stopped to look at in the street. ‘The caricature emphasizes all the elements in a keen and humorous face which suggest intellect, mingled with a certain self-satisfied amusement. It is just the face you would, judging him from his record, expect that great editor to have. In one year only La Caricature was the object of fifty-four actions, so Perier’s instructions were evidently carried out. La Caricature died, and its place was taken by Le Charivari. Philipon, it was, who invented the famous pear which Louis Philippe’s head was supposed to resemble. Upon a page of La Caricature appears first a somewhat exag- gerated portrait of the bourgeois monarch. He had heavy cheeks 81 G A HISTORY OF CARICATURE and a multiplicity of chins: his head was somewhat narrowed to a point. A second head loses a little detail, and his hair is made to grow into a sharper apex above his forehead: in the third the hair is beginning to look like a leaf and still more detail disappears from the face. In the fourth hair and whiskers have become leaves and the pear is complete. Travies and Wattier had led off by drawing attention to this resemblance, and Daumier made a somewhat gross caricature of Lafayette asleep on a sofa with a colossal pear weighing on his chest. Prosecution followed automatically, whereupon Philipon in Le Charivari (February 27th, 1834) wrote an account on the title-page of that journal of the various judgments under which he had suffered; and he had the article set up by the printer in the shape of the now inevitable pear. Philipon was continually being put into gaol; issues of his paper constantly being seized; and a less obstinate man or a less courageous one would have long ago given in: but he never did. He fought for his principles throughout his life. In order to point their opinions, Philipon and his staff in- vented a number of characters which were to be the butts, the Aunt-Sallys to be set up for public ridicule. Thus Daumier made a puppet of Robert Macaire, who had been the chief character in a play of that name, which was suppressed as being political burlesque. Macaire has a foil in Bertrand who played a despic- able Dr. Watson to his Sherlock Holmes. There was the Foseph Prudhomme of Monnier; Mayeux, an evil dwarf of Traviés (though Daumier occasionally lent a hand with him); the Thomas Vireloque of Gavarni. This last was a kind of tramp-Diogenes: the dwarf Mayeux was symbolical of all the vices: Macaire was an impudent adventurer, the swindler of the stupid: Prudhomme the typical burgess. These last two have so passed into the French language that they are not infrequently referred to as actual, historical characters. | Honoré Daumier had that temper of mind, kindly but ferocious when needs be; he loved to lash social evils, he hated sham of all kinds, and he ruthlessly eliminated every 82 a ee ee a ee ee CONTINENTAL CARICATURE taint of the sentimental from his work. He stuck to the truth, as he saw it, even when he chose to depict a child dead by the roadside. There is a certain tincture of caricature in almost all that he did, though besides general social satires, he made from time to time definitely personal caricature-portraits of individual people. He was a beautiful draughtsman, with a style so original and distinct that his work may be said to shout his name down the length of any long gallery where it is hung. His high lights, his bony faces, his delicious sweeping curves, his treatment of hair, the joy he took in the folds of a stock, or the lines of a well-cut coat are entirely unmistakable. His early and unfortunate ~ experience of the courts of law helped him, no doubt, to specialize in the legal scenes for which he is probably most famous. In his history of Modern France, Monsieur Emile Bourgeois tells us that “in the comic papers, especially in the Charivari, Daumier, with fecundity and a vigour which spared no one, and a talent to which the greatest had to do homage, branded and exposed the middle-class, its types, its oddities, its preju- dices of all sorts. A Republican from the first, the advocate of every kind of liberty, in art as in politics, the foe of every re- striction behind which private interest and satisfied selfishness could shelter themselves. . . .”’ And, says M. Bourgeois, ‘‘ war was declared between the ‘ Joseph Prudhommes’ (of Monnier), worthies, whom nothing would have induced to give their daughters to “ scribblers ’, and the men of culture who were more interested in the common folk with all their roughness and ignorance.” In short, the point of view of Monnier and Daumier was, in despite of their republicanism, the aristocratic point of view. Louis Philippe was widely known as the Bourgeois King. His ideals were somewhat smug, he was eminently respectable. Looking back at that time both in France and in England it has long been customary to mock the renaissance of Puritanism which we call “ Victorian morality”, without honest inquiry as _ to what in it was of permanent value: and the mockers can no longer be dismissed by their elders on the score of youth. 83 AYHIS TORY OF CARIGADU Re The Sovereign and her court set the fashion in England for the majority of the people, or at all events the majority of moderately prosperous people, and the temper of the age was willing to accept the ideal set before them, without too close a scrutiny, as a convenient form of Christian life, perhaps rather prosaically adapted to our modern national disposition. But in France as well as England it was the age which saw also the authentication of the middle-class, who found in this fashion or example, whether exerted by the young Queen, or old Louis Philippe, a safeguard against relapse into the masses from which they had recently sprung, and which they now regarded with hatred and with fear: and who perceived in this example an antidote to the aristocratic cynicism which they mistrusted, and, at a distance, adored. To be sure that honesty was the best policy, to rank safety as a condition of virtue, to find something intrinsically admirable in the possession of wealth—these were among the cardinal persuasions of that great class, French and English, who looked to their respective monarchs so positively as of themselves. To be perfectly fair it should be added that the mockers usually make hypocrisy the chief count in their indictment of Victorian morality, just as though the cant of that and every other age were invariably deliberate, and as though it were not better, being human, to fall short of an ideal than to have no ideal at all. Of actually fraudulent piety that era was not greatly more prolific than the present or the remoter past. It was only a great deal more squeamish in the expression of its opinions; anyhow in England. On the other hand, people were too prone to believe that everything done within the law was right and they were able to take the fullest advantage of it. They were quite “‘ moral ”’, and perhaps herein lies the difference between morality and virtue, for the bare bones of the rule are insufficient to the virtuous. In France, then, Philipon and his lieutenants acted as a wholesome scourge to this self-complacency. They whipped the 84 GONTINENTAL CARICATURE burgess from the suburb to the office (in a manner of speaking and as it would be in England) and home again. They were genuinely humane. In England we were not so fortunate. Not that Daumier by any means confined himself to lashing the respectable citizen: humbug of every description was his prey. He was a genial, large-hearted artist, with a righteous but never self-righteous scorn. Occasionally he modelled figures which were cast in bronze, and his Ratapoil—a kind of raggamuffin Buonapartisan—is an extreme rarity, much longed for by eminent collectors. There were once, also, according to M. Geoffroy, who described them in L’Art et les Artistes in 1905, thirty-eight clay models in existence. The Robert Macaire series continued between 1835 and 1839; but Le Charivari printed most of Daumier’s lithographs for forty years. The point of most of the Macaire jests has now passed into oblivion. The Anglo-Saxon attitude towards the incomparable art of that period is typified by Mr. Thackeray, who, putting his hand, as it were, upon Daumier’s head, observed that if he would think more and exaggerate less he would add not a little to his reputation. From 1860 onwards to his death in 1879, Daumier gave a great deal of his time to painting. Traviés was a contemporary of the greater man, but died practically of starvation twenty years before him. His life was an unhappy one: he was tormented by physical infirmities, and his political caricatures reflected the temper of his mind, and there was generally a little poison at the end of his pen. Charles Baudelaire in his Curiosités d’Esthetiques gives an account of Mayeux, that evil dwarf, who struts and postures with savage grin, who puts on a cocked hat and staring at an effigy of Napo- leon, says to himself how like he is. Travies illustrated Balzac and in the Salon exhibited portraits of no great distinction. Another brilliant disciple of Philipon was Gavarni, who began life as a mechanic. Théophile Gauthier, who was his friend, 85 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE describes him as good-looking and a dandy, a highly civilized person. As a young man he made a series of bitter caricatures of Charles X, but later realized with great regret that this was a somewhat spiteful proceeding against a helpless old gentleman in exile. A storm of abuse, especially on this side of the Channel, and the other side of the Atlantic, greeted Gavarni’s treatment of women. His jests about them, however, were not for the most part caricatures at all. “ It were as unjust,” says Mr. Parton, “ .. . to judge the frugal people of France by the comic annuals as the good- natured people of England by the Saturday Review.”* And in another place he says of Gavarni: “ Loose women, who are, as a class, very stupid, very vulgar, most greedy of gain and pleasure, and totally devoid of every kind of interesting quality, he endowed with a grace and wit, a fertility of resource, an airy elegance of demeanour, never found except in honourable women reared in honourable homes.” These are unexceptionable sentiments, but Mr. Parton had forgotten Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, Madame de Pompadour, and Rahab. And Mr. Everitt, writing of Gustave Doré’s “ ghastly illustrations to the licentious Contes Drolatiques of Balzac” being “ cited in proof of his claims to be considered a carica- turist *, continues “I will not deny that Doré did try his hand once upon a time at caricature, and if we are to judge him by these attempts, we should pronounce him the worst French’ caricaturist the world ever saw, which would be saying a good » deal; for a worse school than that of the modern French carica- turists (and I do not except even Gavarni, Cham, or Daumier), does not anywhere exist.” Comment is paralysed. Referring to caricature of the unfortunate Charles X whilst in exile, one by Philipon himself is harmless enough—a mask * Without prejudice. B. L. 86 GONTINENTAL CARICATURE with the exaggerated show of teeth, and loose drooping underlip. But one by Alexandre Decamps, though extremely clever, is revoltingly cruel. The exiled King at Holyrood is seated in a cushioned armchair in dressing-gown and night-cap blazing away with a miniature gun at a toy rabbit which is being drawn across the floor on wheels by a lackey. The face, a good physical caricature, is yet made to suggest extreme imbecility. Fairer is an anonymous drawing of 1830 of Charles as a lobster in ermine, with the crown tumbled off his head and lying on the floor. And without offence too is one by Travies labelled ‘‘ Patisserie Royale”, in which the King, dressed as a baker, holds some minute loaves upon a board. Even Mr. Parton, after a long disquisition, part of which has already been quoted on the cynically improper predilections of Gavarni cannot resist quoting one of his jokes, published in the ’seventies in a Parisian paper. A vivacious young woman, viciously smoking a cigarette, asks a page-boy who wishes to be engaged by her how old he is? “‘ Eleven, Madame.” ‘“‘ And your name?” “ Joseph.” “ So young, and already he calls himself Joseph! ” This dialogue was adapted twenty years later by the famous “ Pitcher ” of the Pink ’un. Gustave Doré, who was born in 1832, began life as a carica- turist in the ournal pour Rire. He satirized types rather than individuals, and his fame in this respect has been obscured by the deplorable paintings of his later life. When he was content to point the contrasts between the audience at a theatre full of excited enthusiasm and one that is asleep with boredom he 1s quite amusing. In 1868 he drew a series of Historical Cartoons, the descriptive text of which was supplied by ‘Thomas Wright. The sub-title is “‘ Rough pencillings of the World’s History from the First to the Nineteenth Century”. In this book he too dealt with ‘“‘ Les Incroyables” of 1798, giving the men a greatly exaggerated height, as he usually did, twisted sticks, and pre- posterously long crescent hats. He compared the fashions of 1830 with those of 1840, describing exquisitely turned-out 87 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE dandies with dainty women rowing about on a lake, serene and dignified, with a crowd of ragamuffins capering on the floor of a studio dressed as students with mushroom caps and enor- mous flopping bows. The essence of this sort of comparison has recurred at intervals since then and is a stock form of entertain- ment in the pages of modern Punch. Italy during the nineteenth century contributed extremely little to the history of caricature. In 1848 a weekly satirical paper Il Don Pirlone was soon suppressed. Pirlone was a familiar character in Italian farce, occupying an analogous position to Robert Macaire in France. The paper was directed against the Pope, who in one drawing is seen riding a monstrous bird, in the fork of whose dragon’s tail is held the papal crown. The bird has four heads intended to represent respectively France, Austria, Spain, and the infamous Bomba. In that year the French, under General Oudinot, occupied Rome and the paper ceased to exist. Another political caricaturist was Ratalanga who at the end of the century made personal caricatures, in black and white, of a number of statesmen such as Crispi and Giolitti. They are not without a suggestion of the contemporary work of Caran D’Ache. Returning to France, Cham (whose real name was Amédée de Noé, son of the Comte of that name, and hence the pseu- donym Cham, or Shem son of Noah), was another spasmodic caricaturist who devoted most of his energy, however, to general comic art. q Dantan made very clever caricatures of Paganini, Victor _ Hugo, Dumas the elder, and Liszt. The first and last of these _ being drawn in silhouette, with white lines giving the necessary _ detail, just as though they were rubbings from church brasses. Coming to times of recent memory one of the most brilliant of the crueller French caricaturists was Charles Léandre. His is the true art, searching the very soul by means of exaggera- tion, which varies in intensity according to the qualities that he wishes to exhibit. The humour and quiet content which — he managed to suggest in Monsieur Coquelin ainé is wholly © contained in the long upper lip. The raised eyebrows of Monsieur 88 CONTINENTAL CARICATURE Clemenceau as caricatured by him in 1898 hint at calm reflection, an outlook undimmed by any illusions, while the mouth demon- strates the Tiger. Zola, his bearded chin resting on a pile of books, his left eye greatly magnified by his pince-nez, gazing into the infinite, his moustache drawn up on one side to indicate a snarl, smashes down his quill pen with a vigorous right hand into a little pool of ink. The caricatures by which Léandre is best remembered, not with affection, in this country, were of Queen Victoria. Regarded as drawings, as suggested likenesses, they are incomparable. They appeared in Le Rire at the time of the South African War. André Gill (Gosset de Guine) who lived from 1840 to 1885 made a number of interesting caricatures. There is Richard Wagner in 186g splitting a huge ear with a hammer and a chisel which is composed of a crotchet. Gambetta is spitefully and Thiers amusingly dealt with by him. In one drawing of the latter, a tiny, bespectacled, benevolent, elderly gentleman stands hand on hip right down in the corner of the page, casting behind him an enormous shadow in which his features are repeated in profile. At the end of the nineteenth century, the most brilliant French caricature of a political nature was made by Caran D’Ache (which is the Russian for pencil: his real name being Emmanuel Poirée), and Forain. Both of these artists dealt more in general satire than in personalities, but their work in both kinds was of great brilliance: and together they illustrated a short-lived periodical during 1898 and 1899, dealing mainly with the Dreyfus scandal, and known by the engaging name of Psst! The work of these two men was extraordinarily diverse. Forain had an untidy, scratchy technique, spontaneous, full of vitality. Caran D’Ache was finished, neat, precise. In his general satires he exaggerated wildly. When the lieutenant, showing his corporal how to utter the word of command, opens his mouth, the ranks fall prostrate back, the houses in the square are shattered. Of social caricature, the chief practitioner was and still is Monsieur Georges Goursat, who, under the name of 5em, has long achieved a wide fame. For the last few years he has made 39 AVHITS TORY VOR CART CAT) a speciality of the visitors to Deauville, and hanging in Ciro’s Club in London there is a very fine collection of his work. Sem can, when he chooses, be almost viciously cruel: and Argentine merchants and other people who display inordinate wealth in France are appropriately dealt with. In one caricature we have a visitor to the Ritz in Paris, exclaiming of another: “ It is the Comte de Chester!” “No,” says the waiter, ‘‘ That is the Prince de Galles! ”’ And the shade of Napoleon I toasts H.R.H. in Dry Monopole. We see the Agha Khan as himself, we see him as a stout fish; and here is the King of Spain, set in a favourable light ; there Ferdinand, late of Bulgaria, with the obvious emphasis laid upon his nose. On one occasion many years ago Sem paid a visit to New- market and made a series of caricatures of all sorts of people whom he saw beside the course, without any knowledge as to who or what they were. He cannot speak a word of English, and he merely made drawings of faces and figures that attracted him. It is interesting to know that at the end of the day, when he showed the drawings to an English friend, there was not one to which the latter could not put a name. His gift for reading and recording character is so acute as to be positively dangerous. Monsieur André Rouveyre made a series of caricatures, originally published in the Mercure de France between 1908 and 1913, which were called Visages des Contemporains.* "These drawings, says M. de Gourmont, vary from photography to caricature. But it is evident that most of them belong to the latter category. M. Rouveyre is one of the most intellectual French caricaturists, his manner consisting in what appears at the first glance to be a roughly scribbled impression. He is “ modern ” in his contempt for natural form, where facts have — no special message to give. But a second and a third glance—and these are compelled—at these extraordinarily brilliant drawings (some of which he has been so kind as to allow me to reproduce * Visages des Contemporains: Portraits dessinés d’aprés le vif: Par André Rouveyre. Préface de Remy de Gourmont. Paris, Mercure de France. 1913. go PONT INEN TAL CARICATURE here) convinces us that nothing of importance to the caricature, as such, has been left out or slurred over. ‘Though his physical likenesses are never to be despised, it is the character of the individual all the time that he is hunting down into the last hiding place of its ultimate essence. M. de Gourmont admits that Rouveyre is cruel and of his caricatures of women, which, to our way of thinking, are positively diabolical, he adds: “ They ought not to make us laugh, but only to think.” That is true. Once again we have, in regarding this artist’s work, as we must always, when we encounter a vital and original mind,—we have to lay aside or try to lay aside preconceived ideas, and accepting for the moment the result of his vision as a workable hypothesis, to inquire whether it is to be relied upon: and having made that inquiry honestly and without prejudice (if that is possible: it is not easy) we shall be forced to the conclusion—which on one or two occasions we have reached before—that the truth, seen to the best of an alert human capability, is not very cheering. Some of the best caricatures, so far, at least, as physical resemblance is concerned, have been made during the last thirty years or so in German papers, such as Simplicissimus,* fugend (before the war), and Kladderadatsch. fugend has now given up caricature, but Simplicissimus still continues with the aid of old contributors to chastise what seems to the conductors the follies and injustices of the moment. We were fond, during the war, of assuming that no word in Germany was permitted to be uttered against the family of Hohenzollern: but a glance at this paper once a month or so, before the war, would have dispelled this illusion. Neither the then All-Highest nor any of his family escaped. And during the war, though Szmplicissimus excelled its customary violence and humourless brutality, its satire was occasionally tempered by a sort of grim respect for us. * Sir Edmund Gosse, writing in The Gypsy (May 1915), traces the origin of the name from Der Abentheurliche Simplicissimus Teutsch, an autobiographical novel by Hans Jacob Christoph von Grimmelshausen, published in 1669, which describes certain phases of the Thirty Years’ War. gi A-HISTORY\OF GARICATUOURS The principal artist on the staff of this paper is, and has been for many years, a man of Danish birth, Olaf Gulbransson. His usual method is to make caricatures, personal or general, with a very fine pen line. His work is brimming with invention, in which he is constantly surprising and charming the observer with all manner of technical conceits. His perceptions, at all events of foreigners, seldom go very far beneath the surface. The merit of his caricatures are usually to be found in the situa- tion together with his ingenious tricks for producing likenesses. His coadjutors, Heine, Thény, and Blix, are not so fond of personal caricature; but all three of them have made skilful contributions to that art at one time or another. In Spain excellent caricatures are made in El Sol, and other papers, by Sancha and Bagarya. The most distinguished Italian caricaturist during the last half-century has been Enrico Sachetti, who once made a superb drawing of Tomaso Salvini. His perception of Novelli and Ruggeri are full of vital criticism. Filiberto Scarpelli made a series of caricatures early in the twentieth century of which that of the late Madame Duse and Gabriele D’Annunzio were absurd without being ridiculous. Mr. W. Somerset Maugham By Miguel Covarrubias — Ee ee ee a ee a er eee ie Chapter IX THE RECENT PAST \ S we have already seen caricature has very often been the recreation of serious artists, several of whom, however, would have bettered themselves and _ their reputations by reversing the procedure. It is a pathetic fact that Nature, who knows what is best for us, often tricks us into believing that what we do badly is our appointed task, that what Wwe most enjoy is but a game. And it is, perhaps, not Nature who tricks us after all: perhaps it is that damnable tradition which lingers yet, flogging our minds to accept all that is unpleasant as dutiful, all that is joyous as of dubious moral worth. A few years ago, before the war, there died at the age of thirty-one, at the outset of his career, an artist of great promise, a caricaturist of small but brilliant achievement. Henry Ospovat was like other caricaturists before him, a lithographer by trade, who designed book-plates in his youth, of little interest, in what Mr. Oliver Onions* calls the “ Birmingham tradition ”’. He had, at the age of twenty, a scholarship at South Kensing- ton; and his work, especially as a black and white artist developed rapidly. Two years later, in 1899, he was illustrating the poems of Matthew Arnold for an edition to be published by Mr. John Lane. Some of his book illustrations are very fine indeed. The age-old sorrows of Israel (at all events of Israel in Russia) were in his blood, and are evident in the more original of his works. In pen and ink drawing, Mr. Onions says that he “ over-fulfilled the requirements’”’, and “ to other men, their work was something that they did; Henry Ospovat’s work was something that he was”’. * The Work of Henry Ospovat. With an appreciation by Oliver Onions. (The St. Catherine Press.) 1911. 93 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE Not very long before his premature death he began painting, his first picture being “ The Portrait of a Musician ’’. This be- ginning was quite sudden and without practice: he felt, it seems, abruptly inspired to express himself in paint; and the technical difficulties which most painters learn only to overcome during a long drudgery of apprenticeship, for him resolved themselves by instinct. Whether he would have ever become a very great portrait painter, as his friends believed, there is insufficient evidence to tell us. But, with an equal suddenness, he began to make caricatures, and these are unquestionably of extreme brilliance. Judging by the little that he left behind him, he was a far better caricaturist than he was painter. We are to conclude from Mr. Onion’s essay that for Ospovat caricature was just eye-practice in essentials, with the end of portrait-painting in view: and he had projected a book—Stars of the Music-Hall Stage —which, however, was never published. The considerable time at the end of his life given by this artist to caricature was regretted by many of his friends, who believed, with the unmitigated seriousness of young artists, that he was wasting that time: and, possibly, if caricature is to be regarded as a wholly frivolous occupation, they were right. If we are, however, to judge by what he accomplished and if, looking fore and aft of us, we find that we can allow the inclusion of this art in a serious category (and many of us do so) we shall find that our regrets cling to the unmade caricatures of Ospovat and not to his unmade paintings. His best caricatures were, then, of people who are widely known to the public; and they can therefore be submitted to no mere narrow tribunal. Arthur Roberts, Marie Lloyd—here they were in life upon the stage, over-stating themselves, as it were, in expressing that incomparable way-with-them to a delighted audience: and here they are in the caricatures, doubly over- stated, since the pictorial artist must in this sort of case go one better than the actor. Mr. George Grossmith, the caricature of whom is amongst the illustrations of this book, is the victim here of extraordinarily discerning comment. His laughter is not only 94 Te a I i oe ee Por’, Br So LL eT ee : | THE RECENT PAST his own, it is the insensate laughter of the crowd who shout with merriment immediately a comedian, in whatever innocence, comes upon the stage. Signor Caruso (himself a crafty carica- turist of few lines and entertaining invention) stands forth in Ospovat’s interpretation with a naked soul. We see, as it were, the personification of that exquisite voice and beyond that almost nullity. The fat, contented personality, excessively pleased with himself, prosperous and pampered is there: but he is only a voice. Claude Lovat Fraser, on the other hand, who no doubt found a recreation in caricature, was not nearly so successful in the art as in the main body of his work. He displayed considerable ingenuity in “ catching ”’ a likeness in a few lines, but it was scarcely more than a clever trick. There was no penetration be- neath surface appearances, no comment to speak of, and no attempt, probably, at any such thing. For him caricature was a game: that was all. It must have come with a great surprise to admirers of the late Derwent Wood, R.A., for all his versatility, to find in the memorial exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, held in the Spring of 1926, that in odd moments he had made a large number of shrewd caricatures. There, amongst signs of mani- fold activities, sculptures, landscapes, studies from the nude, architectural designs, are a few framed and a large number of merely mounted drawings of various friends and notabilities. They are made upon odd scraps of paper, upon envelopes and so forth. Most of them were drawn at dinner-parties and consist of pencil sketches, tinted here and there, with a drop of port wine smudged on with a finger. In one case, a victim is given an actual buttonhole of a leaf of smilax from the table decora- tions, and thrust through a little slit in the paper. They are eminently the caricatures of an accomplished and academic artist. "hat is to say, that while the likeness to the individual is sometimes grievously at fault the actual line, hastily scribbled, has that deft assurance, that spontaneity, that meaning, which can only come of long practice and great accomplishment in a 95 A HISTORY OF CARICA Vk more deliberate manner. There is Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, and Mr. Edmund J. Sullivan, that genius of black and white drawing, looking dour and discontented; Mr. Charles Ricketts, seriously 4 serene; Sir Frederick Ponsonby and Mr. Fiddes Watt. They are ° only jokes, eked out with a felicitous dexterity by such pigments and accessories as the dinner table afforded. But they must have been great fun to do, just as they provide great fun to look at. Phil May and Harry Furniss were neither of them true caricaturists, as it were, by profession, though both of them made caricatures from time to time. But the use that Furniss made of Mr. Gladstone’s famous collars will be remembered long after the work of some more accomplished caricaturists has passed into oblivion. In his drawings of that same subject he also gave very skilled emphasis to the expression of fiery anger on the face of the G.O.M. Phil May often introduced caricatures of himself into groups of individuals who are scarcely exaggerated at all. Probably his most successful caricature is a swift and masterly impression in red and black chalk of Sir Henry Irving as Mephis- topheles, which hangs in the Savage Club. (Fry | =~ SR a & / Ss SS & ° 4 Mr. H. L. Mencken By Miguel Covarrubias Z zi ; j ; —- | Seae 2.. eee ee SS es Chapter X MAX BEERBOHM of one of Mr. Beerbohm’s exhibitions, or on a visit to any considerable collection of his work is the inherent gaiety and the pleasure which he has taken in executing it, a pleasure which communicates itself to the spectator long before he has time to admire the individual drawings for their peculiar merits. At the time of writing Mr. Beerbohm has given about eight exhibitions, between 1901 and 1925, at the Carfax and the Leicester Galleries, and these have been followed by the pub- lication in book form of some, but not of all, the caricatures hung there. A great deal of his work, moreover, has never been exhibited or reproduced at all: for he has that rare fastidious temper of mind which finds satisfaction in giving pleasure to private individuals, a greater satisfaction, maybe, and for that sort of mind than is derived from an exhibition or a book in which mercantile interests are involved. Max Beerbohm’s ironic tastes are manifested in two ways, by writing and by drawing: each complement the other. But while the writing explains itself and stands alone, much of his work as a caricaturist is eked out by legends. Critics have complained about this: they have pointed out that a drawing should explain itself; although why it should do so, and why the two branches of a similar art should not be compounded, it is difficult to say. Writing, though it comes from interior necessity, has ever been an irksome task to Mr. Beerbohm: he finds it extraordinarily difficult to conciliate his own conscience in the laying out and setting down of any story or essay, however hot within him may have been the original impulse to begin it. 2M ia 6 ix fact which strikes the beholder at the first glance ASHISTORY OP CARI C AT Cie Drawing, on the other hand, is a recreation, a delight, a joke, an absorbing occupation. What is writing? Hours of that exercise may produce an inch or so of laboured scrawl. Literally and in dismal fact you sit at a table; you have pen, ink, blotter, and paper. With those dull tools alone to beguile the tedium of your work, you must cudgel your brains and put down what they all too slowly and reluctantly vouchsafe. From time to time the job is lightened by the need to refer to a dictionary or an encyclo- pedia. But neither dictionaries nor encyclopedias are really things to play with: they are heavy and difficult to put back into their shelves, their backs are liable to break. The irrelevant information scattered on their thousand pages is not unlikely to distract the writer from the matter in hand. In the course of discovering how many l’s there are in callipers, my eye is struck by calorimeter and calumet, which must forthwith be explored; and one thing leads to another. Writing is not a game. But drawing, now: and especially the drawing of caricatures. Let the artist count his blessings, one by one. On the sheet, neatly pinned upon the board, so soon to the practised on by the lucky hand, comes out some result, something satisfying, some- thing done. The caricaturist sits or stands in a good light—he must. He has (as least this caricaturist of whom we are talking has) all manner of delightful playthings—pencils, indiarubber, saucers into which bright tubes of tinfoil have disgorged en- chanting pigments. There is hard labour in the job, but it does not need a moralist to tell you that jobs performed without effort are seldom very flattering to self-complacency. There may be good days and bad. The caricaturist may “ get ” his victim at the first shot, or he may be, as Mr. Ralph Barton, the American caricaturist, has informed me, permitted by God only to draw a really good caricature after the first hundred attempts. But the tools of his trade are objects of affection and interest in themselves. Without any substantial result in view there is the most delicate pleasure to be got by messing about with a paint- box and a pot of water and brushes of various sizes, in sharpen- ing a good pencil with a well-tempered knife. There is indeed a 98 MAX BEERBOHM very primitive joy in all these performances, as we know from the extreme and proved antiquity of the pastime. And ancient pastimes are, we are sure, the best: “‘ things”, as Mr. Beerbohm once said, “‘ that always have been and never will not be ”’. And then, what a mixture of delights, what an answering chord to every human mood, caricature provides. The artist seldom, I hope, feels responsible and heavy. Full of public spirit, he champions an obvious cause with impressiveness, but never, if he happens to be Max Beerbohm, with pomposity. He feels merry; the light airs of spring fan him through the open window, the sea and the sky are one incredible blue, the red sealing-wax is reflected in the dark tones of the glass ink-pot, everything is very well. Some happy fancy arises, some new invention, some odd revealing flash comes to the joyous mind, which shall expose some facet of a great man’s character. Not less joyous the morning, not less serene the equanimity of the caricaturist, when there suddenly crosses his mind, and is remembered in crossing, some little fault, some damned in- elegance which will repay pictorial attention. The work is full of variety, it is variety in essence. No wonder that the craftsman finds pleasure in it; and that it is not spoiled for him by necessary commercial implications is a fortunate accident. And perhaps more fortunate than most, Mr. Beerbohm requires no collaborator. During the period of his task he seldom draws from life: seldom are the results satisfactory when he does. His caricatures, like Pellegrini’s were, are made from memory. His best drawings are, though not without exception, of people with whose faces he is not intimately familiar. The reason for this is simple. What remains in his memory, which is a good one, is the salient residuum of a face and figure: salient for him, that is. A big nose, instantly to be seized on and grossly to be exag- gerated by the commonplace artist, may leave Max Beerbohm quite uninterested and forgetful. He may perceive that the nose, though big, has no significance in regard to the individual’s character. Some other feature, not immediately remarkable, may have it. He remembers, then, that feature which does seem 99 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE to him important and draws attention to it, and leaves the nose severely alone. That is, he treats it with the contempt of plain reality or understatement. Clothes, likewise, not necessarily the exact clothes that the subject habitually wears, but clothes in keeping with his character are what he chooses to delineate. He delights in drawing pictures of dandies and this delight of his has, in these days, but little opportunity. He finds, however, dandiacal tendencies in one man who in life is ordinarily clothed: he emphatically finds slovenly tendencies in persons who are neat and tidy. His treatment of feet especially demonstrate this trick. With few exceptions he has two formulz or conventions for feet: an enormous, round-toed shapeless monstrosity and a mere tapering off of the legs into nothing at all. It may be dodging a limitation, but it serves a positive purpose as well. Another convention, this time for dandies, is the beautifully curved arm, which has no elbow: a third, and this a personal one, is the enormous hand which he invariably gives to Professor Rothenstein to indicate that artist’s abounding energy. Other instances occur to the close observer. In another book,* now out of print, an attempt was made to observe Max Beerbohm’s work in perspective. The instrument used for this purpose was intended to be a magnifying glass, but was in fact a curry-comb. In it the curious might have found an extremely detailed and even laborious account of all the various stages of Mr. Beer- bohm’s career, together with an explanation of the many types of his caricatures. No such detail shall be repeated here: but it is interesting to remind oneself of a few facts. Caricaturing was Max Beerbohm’s first love, and preceded, though not by long, any attempts by him at writing. His juventla though promising were not precocious. He was twenty when, in 1892, he contributed some caricatures of Club Types to the Strand Magazine. 'There were thirty-six of these types: they admirably exemplified the clubs named. Here and there in them is to be observed a hint, no more, of influence by Ape and Spy. But looked at without such impertinent curiosity as that implies, * Max Beerbohm in Perspective. (Heinemann.) 1921. 100 MAX BEERBOHM they interpret principally the influence and inspiration of an original mind. They were not like other people’s drawings. They are dimly, persistingly and as though seen from a great distance like the Max caricatures that we know to-day. In 1894 and 1895 Max became a regular contributor to the long defunct Pick-me-up. His drawings in that periodical were done with a fine pen which is not the medium which suits his talent best. A pencil drawing of King George IV in the third number of the Yellow Book demonstrated his interest in clothes and the exquisite curves for which they give opportunities. The Savoy, edited by Mr. Arthur Symons, with Aubrey Beardsley as art editor, provided the next opening, in which Max's drawings were for the most part of a similar kind to those in Pick-me-up. There was, for instance, a diagram of Beardsley himself. This is a good physical likeness and a good caricature, full of comment: in it actual peculiarities are not merely exaggerated, they be- come anatomical absurdities. If one must look about for a comparison, the cunning of Gulbransson of Simplicissimus suggests itself. But these drawings belonged only to a probationary period, as did also the drawings collected in The Poets’ Corner, and in Cartoons : the Second Childhood of fohn Bull. These were pub- lished in 1904 and 1911 respectively, but the John Bull series 1s apt to give a misleading idea of the artist's progress, because the drawings for it had been made ten years before. Between the two, and published in 1907, came A Book of Caricatures. These mark a very substantial advance upon any work previously ex- hibited. The original drawings are widely scattered now; but, the plates being collotypes are the best reproductions that have ever been made of Max’s work. Here for the first time we find him using, seldom but happily, a quill pen. Sem, the French caricaturist, Lord Tweedmouth, and Mr. Reginald ‘Turner are done in this way: and in private collections there are Sir Squire Bancroft and James Welch, besides the Swinburne reproduced in this book, which speaks very eloquently for itself. It may have been an arduous task, the making of that carica- IOI A HISTORY OF CARICATURE ture; it may have been the hundredth shot, but it does not look like that. It looks like the work of a very happy moment. This caricature of Swinburne was made in 1899, probably just after that visit paid by Max Beerbohm to No. 2, the Pines, so felicitously described by him in the essay under that title. It is interesting to compare it with Pellegrini’s study of the poet reproduced here, though a good many years separated the two caricaturists’ respective observation of the subject. Max Beerbohm does not “ draw well for reproduction”’, though his cleaner line and craftier use of water colour are better in this connexion now than they used to be. But he needs for reproduction and deserves the best mechanical processes in use to-day. His personal and individual caricatures have generally been better than his groups, at all events groups of more than two people. But here again his proficiency has so far advanced that the technical pitfalls inherent in a subject containing a number of people have been safely filled in. The individual caricatures re- main the more interesting because the artist’s interest in an individual is informed with a personal feeling, which the true caricaturist can seldom summon up for a crowd. T'wo points of importance are to be observed in Max Beer- bohm’s succeeding exhibitions. First, the permanence of his inspiration: that is, what pleased him as a young man pleases him still: what amused him in 1913 tickles some complementary corner of his mind to-day. In the poet’s corner there is a carica- ture of Matthew Arnold leaning, grinning, against a mantel- piece. Looking up at him, darkly dressed in red, her hands demurely clasped behind her, is a little girl, his niece, subse- quently Mrs. Humphrey Ward. “Why, Uncle Matthew,” she says, ‘‘ Oh, why, will not you be always wholly serious? ” In the exhibition of 1923 there was a caricature of Mr. Lytton Strachey, leaning also on the mantelpiece, not smiling, however, but seriously regarding a little girl. ‘This is called “‘ An Echo”’—merely. You are expected to remember: if you have once 102 Al A i aS a | wo 2) oe Sea ae > «a — 7 Ee en | 4. A are ee Ol ose a I SN a OR ec MAX BEERBOHM seen the Matthew Arnold you will. And you will appreciate the extremely subtle and very splendid compliment to Mr. Strachey. In 1913 also we saw The Grave Misgivings of the Nine- teenth Century and the Wicked Amusement of the Eighteenth in Watching the Progress (or whatever it is) of the Twentieth. The Nineteenth Century is exemplified by a comfortable, mild, stout, elderly gentleman with whiskers: the Eighteenth by a sardonically smiling, elegant, and thin dandy. ‘The Twentieth wears the dress of an airman, and rushes sweating and desperate across the picture. In 1921 a similar idea is illustrated by three drawings: 'he Future, as beheld respectively by the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Centuries. The Eighteenth Century sees but a copy of his contented and exquisite self: the Nineteenth, a stouter, richer, more important self. But the Twentieth is a young man who has lost an arm in the war, who is pale and careworn; and he looks into the Future and sees only a vague mark of interrogation. The second point especially to be observed about Max’s succeeding exhibitions is that, apart from the necessary stock- in-trade of even the exceptional caricaturists, he has some surprise for the spectator on each occasion, some trick or whim, some new excuse as it were, for fresh invention. In 1921, he exhibited a series of “ doubles ” or smudges, made by folding a sheet of paper in half, making as he himself put it, “ some random blotch on it”, folding again, unfolding, and seeing what possibility was suggested and proceeding “ to make blotches of 4 more calculated kind. A little cheating—a very little of it—is within the rules of the game.” The results of some of these ‘‘ doubles” were very happy, but the drawing which Max Beerbohm has ‘ calculated ”’ from outset to fulfilment is far better. The new accomplishment of the following exhibition, that of 1923, was a series of portraits of the ’seventies, drawn in the attist’s most mature manner and signed and dated as though made in those ’seventies. They were in fact caricatures of indi- 103 A HISTORY OF CARIGATURE viduals typical of their time who never existed, but they were made just exactly as Max makes his caricatures of individuals to-day. (It need hardly be said that numbers of spectators believed in their identities, and some even claimed to have known them, and wondered indeed at the dates written on the drawings, supposing Mr. Beerbohm to be a much younger man. And, to be sure, looking at General Sir George Rawlinson, at Admiral Sir Japhet Kenway, and at Mr. Vansittart, it is hard to believe that these and the rest were not personally known to one’s parents, for their names, their attitudes, their clothes, their faces, are entirely authentic—so authentic, so natural that another section of spectators were quite unable to see the point of their inclusion in the exhibition.) The analogous contribution to the show in 1925 was a series entitled The Old and the Young Self, where twenty persons, now of mature years, converse with themselves when young. The only demerit of this series as compared with the others men- tioned, is that, while the former deal with matters or persons of a more or less permanent interest, the Old and Young Selves have reputations not all of which will assuredly survive living memory. These conversations and situations (in two instances the drawings are not accompanied by any text, and explain themselves), are variously successful: one of them will call for mention a little later. The most important work that Mr. Beerbohm has given us is the series of nine drawings entitled “ Tales of Three Nations ¥; symbolising the relative positions of England, France, and Germany from the time of the N apoleonic wars to the present day. John Bull, in turn, is apprehensive, prosperous, more prosperous, youthfully courageous in 1914, and haggard under a load of debt in the period after the war. Germany grows and grows in truculence and robustness, only to end as a suppliant beggar, out at knees and elbows; and France who began with eagle nose and the huge sabre of the first Napoleon, passes through varying stages of fortune and misfortune until she is seen thin, rapacious but very dominant, with the false beak imitating 104 MAX -BEERBOHM the real one of the first Napoleon, emaciated, huge. That is a solid contribution to history. The tendencies of his day no less than individuals earn Max Beerbohm’s close attention. The worst of the caricaturist’s art is that, apart from its qualities of colour and design, it so seldom has a high permanent value. (A high price, on the other hand, it may easily demand: for price is dependent upon other con- siderations, such, for example, as fashion. The collector of prints no longer buys plates etched by Gillray or by Rowlandson for mere pence: though he may be, now and again, more fortu- nate in the matter of other men such as Dighton. Original draw- ings, on the other hand [and no good etchings or engravings have been made of Max Beerbohm’s work], naturally demand a greater price.) But where the caricaturist has sufficient skill and taste to give his work intrinsic interest we need not complain. The drawing of Mr. Frank Brangwyn “ taking a five minutes’ well-earned rest ”’ will not be “ topical ” for much longer than Mr. Brangwyn’s lifetime. This was exhibited in 1925. Sorry the succeeding generation for which this caricature, having no point, fails to earn appreciation for its design and colour. The wretch who is being beaten by devils carved in stone at the head of some cathedral column would certainly give us keener delight if we knew him to be a priest whom we disliked and whom we could recognize; but neither he nor Isaac of Norwich, nor Luther Seven-Heads, completely elude our curiosity and interest. he minor troubles of administration at the end of the eighteenth century cannot really be said to make our hearts beat faster, but Newton’s caricature of Pitt and Fox need not depend for its appeal to us upon anything but the way in which it is drawn. Mr. Beerbohm’s approach to caricature may be described (like Luther) under seven heads. 1. Gross exaggeration he has now almost abandoned for many years. One of the best examples in this kind was a “ King of Spain”’ made in 1914, in which that agile monarch is dressed in assertively English country clothes, while the Hapsburg lip and 105 A HISTORY: OF CARICATURE the position of the eyes is developed to the furthest legitimate limit. 2. Elegance has ever been a magnet to him. Lord Chester- field of long ago cuts dead the elder Earl of later days because he is wearing a billycock hat: but each self, young and old, suggests a dandy as seen by another. The same may be said of a caricature of “‘ Sir Philip Sassoon”, drawn in 1913, or a “ Sir Claude Phillips ‘ going on’ ”’ (1914). 3. Serious satire, not always quite seriously expressed has already been touched upon. 4. General satire, combined with and much strengthened by honest hate, is admirably shown by that Captain of Industry (1921) who declares to a pallid curate that “ the desire of the manual workers to be paid exorbitant wages for doing the least possible amount of work is a sure sign that they have lost their faith in a future life’. Whatever our political sympathies (if any) nothing could be more repulsive than this captain of in- dustry, and he is the more repulsive for his evident prosperity. But in “ Civilization and the Industrial System ” (1925) the figure which typifies that system is more than merely repulsive: it is disgusting, and rightly so. Half-naked, hairy, wearing diamonds in his belt and spats, an enormity of coarse breeding, square-fingered and long-lipped, he blows the smoke of his cigar into the face of the lady, as he says: “ No, my dear, you may ’ve ceased to love me; but you took me for better or wuss in younger and ’appier days and there’ll be no getting away for you from me, ever.” Let us pray that Mr. Beerbohm’s per- spicacity has here, for once, failed him. 5. Malice, of a personal kind, so opposed to the almost- brutality of the subject of the last paragraph, is a quality common to almost all men: though many critics almost passionately (but somewhat mysteriously) deny that our most distinguished cari- caturist is ever malicious. Max Beerbohm never takes a mean advantage, but he certainly lunges with his rapier under his man’s guard. Why not? Was it admiration for the qualities implied which made him put into the mouth of Mr. Lloyd George as he nudges M. 106 a *] ote) . ss " 4 ne en a gy MAX BEERBOHM Clemenceau and regards that weary invalid, President Wilson,the words “ Thought he was going to get the better of you and I”. 6. Laughter, not loud, but happy and chuckling is scarcely ever absent when contemplating his work. Typical of his wit is that drawing of Mr. H. G. Wells urging Mr. Arnold Bennett to stand for Parliament. “ Parliament, eh? ” he replies, ‘“ well, get ‘em to raise the screw to forty thou’, and perhaps I’ll think of it.” But these words enclosed in the usual label proceeding from the victim’s mouth are not written in Max’s handwriting, but typed. This is the keenest and subtlest comment that Max has ever made. It is of the purest spirit of caricature. Laughter which is, perhaps, a little savage arises from the contemplation of that ~ Miniature design for colossal fresco commemorating the International Advertising Convention (Wembley, July 1924) and the truly wondrous torrents of cant and bunkum that were out- poured from it”’. Each magnate of commerce wears his halo and turns up his eyes and folds his hands. We remember as we look upon this drawing that men have talked of the poetry of Business. 7. Beauty is the last quality that you expect from a carica- turist, though many instances in the past have outrun expecta- tion. So much depends upon what you call beauty. That gaiety, already referred to, grows at the second glance, which takes a whole wall of framed drawings in one sweep, into a delightful appreciation of delicate tints and patterns, arranged with taste and knowledge and a very virtuous gift for design. Max’s use of water-colour upon paper which is not quite white, paper to which he has been faithful for many years, is deft and individual: and in his choice of tints and shades his fastidiousness, his enjoy- ment of the work, and his understanding of each individual _ subject is explicit. And the basic likeness of one drawing to another gives a harmony to a whole room filled with them, which is seldom to be perceived in other men’s collected work. There is also that beauty of line, true, clean, and unfaltering, which is to be seen in nearly all his work; but which is seen perhaps at its cleanest and truest in the caricature of Swinburne amongst the illustrations here. The sweeping curves each have 107 A HISTORY‘ OF CARICATURE their meaning, either in relation to the subject, or more generally to the whole design. Almost as much time as Max Beerbohm has given to exhibited and published work he has devoted to caricatures which adorn private collections; and the American edition* of Seven Men is supplemented by drawings of six of them (the seventh man was the author himself). There is Enoch Soames, characteristically “dim ”’, snub-nosed, with a thin, vague beard “ or rather he had a chin on which a large number of hairs weakly curled and clustered to cover its retreat’: he wears a “ soft black hat of clerical kind but of Bohemian intention ’’. There is Savonarola Brown, big-headed and innocent-eyed; James Pethel inexpug- nably usual: there is grim, dark Braxton with wide mouth and savage frown; there is “ pleasant little Maltby”’, with his tiny moustache and dapper clothes: lastly there is A. V. Laider, a rather precise, pleasant-faced fellow, not in his first youth, dressed in an overcoat and tweed cap; and he is drawn upon the hotel note-paper, bearing the proprietor’s name: “ ‘The Beach Hotel, Linmouth, Sussex. Propr. R. Garrow”’, where the author is supposed to have met him. The authenticity of this address and of its proprietor’s name seems assured. The note-paper was, in fact, specially printed for that one drawing. Mr. Beerbohm lives in Italy, completely out of touch, his critics often complain, with current events and personalities in England. His visits to this country are brief and infrequent. But in that blue and sunlit distance he thinks the more. * Seven Men. (Alfred A. Knopf, New York.) 1919. M. Claude Debussy. By André Rouveyre 5 telat sera incl Chapter XI ENGLAND AND AMERICA TO-DAY [oe caricature in England to-day is accepted with appreciation by a few. It is not a popular art, nor is it in the derogatory sense “ high-brow’”’. It is liked rather by observant people, and by those who are willing to learn how to observe. Before the best of caricature can be finally judged, some knowledge of the victim is often required by the spectator, apart from a common knowledge of his actions, motives, and his general appearance. The less responsible critics often demand that caricature should be understandable by everyone and fool- proof, and they have complained (especially with regard to Mr. Beerbohm) because the subjects of some caricatures are unknown to the public at large, or because a known subject has been treated in a recondite manner. This attitude is too absurd to need further comment. It illustrates merely an old truth: art is constantly struggling for recognition against ignorance, prejudice, and in- tolerance; in short, against stupidity. Though English caricature, then, does not flourish as general and popular comic art flourishes, it does exist: and the tradition of Pellegrini is carried on, apart from the work of Max Beerbohm, and in the heydey of his fame, by Kapp and others. Edmond Xavier Kapp first made a local name for himself when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge, and his work appeared in the Cambridge Magazine. 'The now defunct Onlooker reproduced a caricature of Sir Henry Wood in 1912, and other drawings appeared in the Daily News, and The New Weekly. Another caricature of Sir Henry Wood, which later became well- known, much admired, and often reproduced in the periodical press, was printed in the first number of Colour in the summer of 1914. 10g A HISTORY OF CARICATURE After the war Kapp held his first exhibition at the Little Art Rooms in the Adelphi, and won immediate recognition as a brilliant craftsman who made caricature a “‘ serious branch of art’’. Mr. Beerbohm, whose generosity never fails either his fellows or younger men, and is trebly valuable in its sincerity, wrote in a letter printed at the beginning of Kapp’s catalogue: “If people in general rate your sense of design and your grasp of form, and your humour and fantasy, half as high as I in particular rate them, then, depend on it, your exhibition will be a very great success indeed.” Apart from the usual exclamations about malice, reasoned criticism was benedictory. Mr. Jan Gordon wrote of the “‘ music- hall bestiality which seems to be the mainspring of so much of our satiric art’ as being absent from Kapp’s work, though he too, could not resist saying, and with truth, that the caricatures in question were “ malin without being malicious”. Sir Claude Phillips found in Kapp’s drawings a threefold style—the in- fluence of Max, of Japan, and of his own impulses in which a cubistic inclination was evident. The fact is that cubism and other modern developments towards abstraction are of great use to the caricaturist: in work such as Kapp’s lies one of its most valuable and least impertinent functions. This exhibition was followed by others at the Leicester Galleries and elsewhere, and many of Kapp’s drawings have been reproduced in book form. He has a great variety of method, is more of an artist in the “ serious’, profound, portentous sense than Max, though much less of a wit. In his caricatures of in- dividuals he is more comprehensive than the best of caricaturists who are nothing else: he tries to say more at one and the same time, and often succeeds. He mentions, as it were, even if he does not comment on, more sides of a man’s character than Max does: but he is inclined to make guesses where Max knows. Of his methods, the favourite is by the use of chalk, though he has also been very successful with a clean, very fine pen line: IIo is ENGLAND AND AMERICA TO-DAY and in one brilliant instance he built up the curves of a face with minute straight pencil lines. He is not conventional; he adapts his methods to his subject; and if he lacks experience of human nature and ripe judgment, which is to be gained only from that experience, time will surely provide it. He makes no use at all of written descriptions, and, like Max Beerbohm, he is a more eager student of potentialities than of accomplished facts. Kapp may have “ derived ”’ a little from Max in his earliest days, but he has long ago cut those apron-strings, and stands alone. The caricature reproduced in this book of Mr. George Graves is an excellent example of Kapp’s personal and charac- teristic use of chalk, the interpenetrating lines and planes are effective without being affected. Apart from its obvious merits as a drawing, “ The Buffoon ”’ is an instance of a good caricature which is not a first-rate physical likeness. ‘‘ North American High-brow ”’, reprinted in Personalities after being exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in 1923, is the drawing, already referred to, made up of innumerable minute lines. If it is not a personal caricature it is a very fine typification. The contours of the face, the innocent seriousness are represented, and, even without the use of colour, the sallow complexion is somehow suggested : or rather the observer supplies the tint involuntarily, because the face is so perfectly characteristic. The “ Yoné Noguchi”’, the Japanese poet, manifests just as much of the Japanese manner as is appropriate. Sir Henry Wood has been caricatured very often by Kapp, but the drawing of him reproduced in Reflections is the most successful from the point of view of design: the hair, the fine tapering fingers are beautifully rendered. A later drawing, not nearly so pleasing as a design and contradicting certain details of the previous one, is far better as a portrait-caricature. In “ Sir Landon Ronald” (Kapp’s interest in musicians has been explicit from the outset of his career) the figure, the clothes, and the most prominent feature are strongly exaggerated. But exaggeration in this case is neither wilfulness nor satire: it justly illustrates both a characteristic attitude and a peculiar and emotional force of personality. IIlI A HISTORY OF CARICATURE Of the politicians, the knuckles of an enormous hand obtrude beyond the coat of Mr. C. F. G. Masterman, whose face in this drawing is a mine of curious information: for one thing, you see the sophisticated politician jesting with the simple person. Will the simple person recognize that fact, here or elsewhere? Not he. To the Law Journal of 1924, Kapp contributed a series in coloured chalk of legal notabilities. The best of these is “ Mr. Justice Avory’’. The caricature is a triumph of characterization, it is redolent of learning, precision, and the acidity of high human justice. “‘ Sir Edward Marshall Hall, K.C.” is not so suc- cessful: the drawing shows that learned counsel in a reflective mood which may be characteristic, but is hardly typical. It_ seems as though Kapp had wilfully determined to show his subject in an unexpected way. ‘That is well enough, but in his effort to avoid the obvious or expected, the artist has missed some essential quality. The outlines of this drawing are made with a fine pen line. “ Sir Thomas Willes Chitty, Bt.” is a really beautiful drawing in which the facial exaggeration is slight, and in which the use of chalk both for fine black lines and for broad effects is extremely cunning. It is a curious fact, which finds its parallel in other cases, that Kapp is quite unable to make a satisfactory caricature either physical or otherwise of Max Beerbohm. He has made several attempts: all of them are bad. The subject is a difficult one and has only once been attempted with real success. ‘That was the caricature in Vanity Fair made by Mr. Walter Sickert in 1897, and that, not unnaturally, bears but a mitigated resemblance to the subject as he is nearly thirty years later. The best caricatures of Max Beerbohm have been made by himself, and of these oddly enough by no means the least considerable in physical fidelity is that which is used as a frontispiece to this book. Here the caricaturist is seen drawing at a desk on the Italian shore, while Kapp, Quiz, and another ‘‘ wonder how long the veteran exile will go doddering on”’. He has added half a century or so to his age and has given himself a long white beard: but the actual likeness is a good one, the potential likeness a wonderful adumbration. 112 ENGLAND AND AMERICA TO-DAY Out of a comparatively small collection—for the normal working years of the artist’s life are fortunately before him— perhaps the most interesting drawing of all is that of Dr. Einstein. There is in it only a faint breath of caricature. Regarding this drawing Mr. Laurence Binyon said that its subject appeared to be “ intoxicated by the conception of incredible velocities, and tinged with innocent bewilderment at the world’s helpless in- capacity to follow him ”’. Apart from his work in caricature, his portraits in oil or in chalk, his various drawings of still-life, Kapp has also invented what is something rather more than an amusing game. This is a scribbling with pen and ink which he calls Minims and a selection of which he has published in a book of that name. These are, as it were, portraits of emotions and moods. If there is any point in trying to draw abstractions, he has put his finger on it. These scribbles are not the result of deliberation or conscious clever- ness: they result from the impulse of a moment. Quick—how do you draw toothache? Instantly it goes down on the paper, an odd little pattern which really does suggest that particular form of torture. ‘“‘ Indecision” is more obvious—intersecting lines forming a cross, the points of which are turned at right angles. Which way? We don’t know: we can’t think: we wobble. There are many people who regard Minims as a singular waste of time, as an arrant form of fatuity. They are people who would regard you as a harmless imbecile if you told them that Monday is white, Wednesday blue and Saturday a sort of old- gold (which they are), and who would like to kick you from here to Jericho for associating, with child-like sincerity and absolute lack of pose, as some people do associate, two ideas which in sober and commonplace fact are entirely independent and irrelative. Some men such as Max Beerbohm are caricaturists by nature; some, such as Kapp, by chance. With him indeed caricature seems to be a phase through which he and other artists must pass in the course of their long apprenticeship. He may for a long time and possibly always remain faithful to this art, but his deepest impulse seems to urge him towards normal por- 113 I A HISTORY \ORSCAR TOA die traiture. He is first and foremost a beautiful draughtsman, who loves drawing for its own sake. Picturesqueness and other forms of false sentiment, as such, he ruthlessly abjures. A fine draughts- man can make a common cistern and a couple of lead pipes interesting and this is, in fact, exactly what before now Kapp has done. But as a caricaturist he has shown us all sorts of new possibilities and new interests. He is the first caricaturist to employ abstractions appropriately and fertile with suggestions. He is a perfectly serious artist, whose drawings, quite apart from their merits as satiric portraits and commentaries on his con- temporaries, have a definite esthetic interest ; and can be judged therefore by quite different standards from thosein which satire, or humour, or devilry, or revelation alone are the dominant quality. Neatness, slickness, novelty in technique are always interest- ing, but the better they are the more they tend to obscure the artist’s essential demerits as a caricaturist. Mr. Powys Evans’ first exhibition (1922) was of a series of pen and ink caricatures of persons in the Beggar’s Opera as performed at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. His manner of drawing is peculiarly suited to caricature, a clean but not very spontaneous use of a pen line, with a certain ingenuous fondness for detail—the sort of detail that interests a child, and which is warmly regarded only by child-like vision. In the Beggar’s Opera drawings Mr. Evans suggested the character of a part mainly by drawing attention to costumes with which everyone who had seen the play or pictures of the performers was familiar. Some of his physical likenesses of the actors and actresses were extremely poor: he is indeed very variable in this respect. It was evident that, so far as this play was concerned, the costume was what mainly interested him rather than the individuals. Variable in success too have been the actual portraits he has made and published in the London Mercury. Not long after this exhibition, Mr. Evans, signing himself Quiz, became the regular caricaturist week by week in the Saturday Review. Here his success has again been variable, so far as physical likeness is concerned and, like the small boy in 114 ee iN ee PMaGlAND AND AMERIGA TO-DAY the rhyme, when he was good he was very, very good and when he was bad he was horrid. Like Kapp, like others he has failed to interpret Max Beerbohm: he has failed more dismally, for he has not perceived in this subject the importance of fidelity to certain facts in regard to costume. Mr. Beerbohm is a dandy and his dandyism without calling any undue attention to itself is of a personal and original kind: it is all-of-a-piece with his work both written and drawn, with himself. He is an artist in life and everything that life connotes: his individual preferences are observable. ‘To make a caricature then of this subject with the collar and tie of a respectable but inelegant clerk indicates a most deplorable lack of vision. This may be called a very small point, but in the case under review it has its peculiar importance and indicates possible lapses in other caricatures, of other individuals the reality of which it is impossible for any one person to gauge. But there is very little liberty that can be taken with impunity in using a pen and ink as Mr. Beerbohm pointed out on one occasion with regard to Quiz’s exhibited work. The failures, the incompetences, the faults in drawing, the mistakes in perception are not easily disguised: black and white is so devastatingly definite. Not by such a medium will the incompetent artist gloss over hard facts or successfully disguise his infirmities. What he does, whether good or bad, is there, patent and palpable; and Quiz’s successes have been sufficiently numerous to be re- membered with great satisfaction above and long after his failures. His caricature of Mr. Edmund Blunden, the poet, is repro- duced here. The likeness is life-like, with just that amount and quality of over-statement which reveals without ridicule. There is here nothing to ridicule, as the good caricaturist perceives. The second-rate comic artist, on the other hand, seizes a physical peculiarity and in order to be funny adds grossness without any point to his exaggeration; just as he misses the lurking vulgarity in a face which, judged by mere measurements, is classically beautiful. Apart from its other qualities the caricature of Mr. Blunden gives pleasure to the beholder as a design. sip ts A HISTORY OF CARICATURE Mr. Edmund Dulac, a Provengal by birth, though a natural- ized Englishman, is an illustrator who makes caricatures from time to time with exuberance and boldness. He has an admirable certainty of line, a fine faculty for composition and a keen sense of humour, which sometimes outruns his sense of proportion. In physical fact that is just what a sense of humour should do, but in that kind of proportion concerned with motives and character it should not. Mr. Dulac’s caricature reproduced here was one of a series which appeared in the Outlook in 1919 and 1920. It is called “‘ Monsieur Clemenceau as ‘ Le Grand Poilu’”’. France is stitching his first wound-stripe upon his sleeve, commemor- ating the attempt upon his life. It is to be observed that the artist has described with great simplicity the combined expres- sions of old age and sublime indifference. M. Georges Eugene Clemenceau had several hatreds, but only one love—France. Once the invader had been driven off French soil, and crippled, nothing else greatly mattered. That, at any rate, is what this caricature seems to say. With vigour and malevolence, Mr. Dulac made Lord Fisher tower over Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square: and in all his published work there is an appreciation of design which makes the lover of caricature ask for more than Mr. Dulac has hitherto thought fit to offer him. We have glanced at the work of ninety and nine just persons, or thereabouts; the apodosis, calling for respectful attention, is an Australian artist called David Low. Without undue prejudice it may be said that of all the terrible facetiousness of which the current and popular “ cartoonist” in the press is guilty Mr. Low’s work was symptomatic. In all matters of political and social comment, his drawings had but one redeeming feature, their technical skill. Their content was feeble, their banalities abysmal. But it was evident that he could draw, that he could, moreover, very skilfully ‘‘ catch ” a likeness. There was, however, no smallest hint in the work daily exhibited to the public of the great possibilities which he has since made manifest in his series of caricatures in the New Statesman. Of these the drawing of 116 PEE et ‘ a « » ENGLAND AND AMERICA TO-DAY Mr. Hilaire Belloc, hands on knees, would alone be sufficient to make a reputation in a really civilized community. The likeness is a “ speaking ” one, the frown of intolerance, the exuberance, the vitality, the generosity, the humour, all are there. His ‘* Lord Beaverbrook ” too—a little man lost in the depths of a big arm- chair is treated in a most perceiving way. At the time of writing Mr. Low holds a distinguished though recent place in the ranks of true caricaturists. Much is to be expected of him. Of other living caricaturists, Mr. W. K. Haselden best known as a humorous artist engaged in the most lamb-like form of satire, illustrates week by week Mr. Punch’s dramatic criticism with little, revealing drawings of actors and actresses, in which a likeness is deftly captured and some comment on the manner of performance and the character of the part are adroitly con- veyed. His exaggerations of faces and figures is of the slightest; the result in the most unassuming guise is very admirable indeed. Mr. H. M. Bateman is the most widely known and deservedly popular comic artist of the day, who generally provokes loud laughter, but who knows also how to initiate a sly, malicious grin. He seldom caricatures individuals in the true sense, but on the rare occasions that he does so, we are duly grateful. His early work was very obviously influenced by that of Caran D’Ache, but he has since become quite independent, and as a black and white humorist in a general way he has indeed outstripped that master. His caricatures of types, such as his “ Colonels ”’ carry exag- geration of expression and action to the limit of imagination and are uproariously funny: his little book Suburbia (by which is intended a figurative rather than a topographical location) pins all manner of petty snobberies and facetiousnesses to the pillory by the ear. In the realm of personal satire his drawing of Jack Johnson, the pugilist, is wholly malign and wholly admirable. Other artists in England play with caricature, spasmodically, and success treats them capriciously. Mr. Aubrey Hammond primarily a theatrical designer of original and amusing talent, does from time to time record a physical likeness with a great 117 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE simplicity, but without going any deeper. He is inclined to subordinate the necessities of caricature to the personal manner- ism by which he expresses it. In the United States of America the most prolific carica- turist, who has done much to revive the art, is Mr. Ralph Barton. His group of a number of English novelists given to lecturing in the United States some years ago was very success- ful, and was the cause of his abandoning comic draughtsman- ship of a more general kind and of his transforming into regular work what he had until then regarded merely as a recreation and amusement. He once said that he had drawn so many caricatures that he must now wait for new subjects to be born. He had “ gone through ” the American theatre and figures in ‘‘ La Vie New- Yorkaise’’. He admits falling before now into the bad habit, when haste called him, of drawing from photographs; once even from the description of an eye-witness! Mr. Barton does not, then, pretend to be a virtuoso, and he believes in drawing from life rather than from memory. A new use for caricature was found by him when he made a curtain for the Chauve-Souris, which showed M. Balieff dominating a hundred and fifty actual as well as typical first- nighters. Surely no caricaturist ever enjoyed before so generous an exhibition! This curtain was received both in New York and in the provinces with great enthusiasm. Mr. Barton’s self-caricature, which, with great kindness, he made specially for this book, is accompanied by an ominous figure, who is the Celebrity-at-large, who in life always comes sooner or later to Mr. Barton to inform him that while everyone else in a group of caricatures has been well perceived, he has been missed. ‘The mingled resignation and innocence in the artist’s own face during the interview is delightfully caught. Mr. Barton’s wide popularity in America has demanded from him far more work for publication than is salutary for the 118 ENGLAND AND AMERICA TO-DAY hand and eye of any one artist. In conversation once, Sem de- clared him to be une espéce de Ford. It was largely owing to the unselfish kindness of Mr. Barton and to the admiration of Mr. Carl van Vechten, the well-known American writer, that the first chance, brilliantly and success- fully seized upon, was given to a young Mexican, Miguel Covarrubias, who was born but ten years before the war. He too believes in drawing from the life: he combines some of the tricks of modern simplification with a distinguished facility for recording likenesses. His caricatures are wildly exaggerated, savagely cruel sometimes, but nearly always in a physical respect almost marvellously successful. His method varies from a clean, almost mechanically accurate pen line to elaborate designs in pencil and wash. In his book The Prince of Wales and other Famous Americans, the title-subject is handled both in the frontispiece and in various manifestations upon the wrapper with great skill. Upwards of fifty Americans are caricatured and a number of foreigners, including Mr. William Somerset Maugham, with spirit and invention. Nor does he exclude women from the onslaughts of his strong pen-line. Miss Lilian Gish is observed with a certain relentlessness, which will not be unwel- come to those who remember the type of film in which that gifted lady is called upon to act, rather than her personal beauty. The caricature is sob-stuff incarnate. ““ Miss Mary Pickford ”’, all eyelashes and brightness, will also fail to be popular with those who take their pictures seriously. The assertive incorruptibility of Mr. H. L. Mencken, the almost horrible vigour of Jack Dempsey are personified with an agreeable devilry. There is as yet little subtlety in Mr. Covarrubias’ work: but a caricaturist who begins as he has done ought to be welcomed with open arms. 11g END “ Will you not,” asks a child of about five as described in certain works of an hundred years ago, “ will you not relate to us, dear Papa, some History or Account of one of the Arts, which will improve our minds and elevate our thoughts? ” ~ Indeed, my dear children (for such it is my privilege to call you), I deem it both a pleasure, and a duty which I owe to you, to endeavour from time to time to mingle instruction with what I may term entertainment, for your benefit. . . . ” The preceding pages are, then, to represent both that pleasure and that endeavour. The Earl of Lonsdale By the Author — BUBLLOGRAP HY + Bayard, E.: La Caricature et Les Caricaturistes, Paris 1901. Beerbohm, Max: Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (Leonard Smithers), 1896. The Poets’ Corner (Heinemann), 1904. A Book of Caricatures (Methuen), 1907. Cartoons : The Second Childhood of fohn Bull (Stephen Swift), 1911. * Fifty Caricatures (Heinemann), 1913. v A Survey (Heinemann), 1921. « Rosetti and His Circle (Heinemann), 1922. + Things New and Old (Heinemann), 1923. * Observations (Heinemann), 1925. [These are collections of Mr. Beerbohm’s exhibited work, including a few cari- catures not previously shown. Other caricatures by the same hand are scattered in various periodical publications and in books by other people.] Bergson, Henri: Laughter: An Essay on the meaning of the Comic. Authorized Translation by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (Macmillan), 1911. Bourgeois, Emile: Modern France: 1815-1913 (Cambridge University Press), 1919. \ Brisson, Adolphe: Nos Humoristes (Société d’edition artistique), Paris, 1900. Cary, Elizabeth Luther: Honoré Daumier (Putnam), 1907. Champfleury, Jules Fleury: Histoire de la Caricature Antique, 1865. . Histotre de la Caricature au Moyen Age, 1871. | Histoire de la Caricature sous la République, 1874. | Histoire de la Caricature la Réforme et la Ligue, 1880. . Histoire de la Caricature Moderne, 1865. (Libraire de la Société des gens de lettres), Paris. [Champfleury’s works embrace all caricature in its widest possible sense, are full of scholarly appreciation, and are sufficiently illustrated with small line draw- ings. These books are indispensable to the student of the subject.] Chatto, W.: Treatise on Wood-Engraving. With illustrations engraved on wood by John Jackson (Charles Knight), 1839. Cloud, Yvonne: Pastiche : a Music-Room Book. With twenty-eight draw- ings by Edmond X. Kapp (Faber and Gwyer), 1926. " Covarrubias, Miguel: The Prince of Wales and other Famous Americans (Alfred A. Knopf, London), 1926. I2I BIBLIOGRA LAY Dayot, Armand: Les Maitres de la Caricature Frangaise au 19" stécle, Paris, 1888. Evans, Powys: The Beggar’s Opera : Caricatures (Cecil Palmer), 1922. *Everitt, Graham: English Caricaturists of the Nineteenth Century (Swan, Sonnenschein), 1886. [A misleading title, the author being a first-rate authority on comic art, ex- clusive of caricature.] Fry, Roger: Vision and Design (Chatto and Windus), 1920. _ [An indispensable book for the general student of art.] Fuchs, Eduard: Die Karikatur der Europdischen Volker. 2 vols. (A. Langen), Munich, 1go1 and 1ga2r. [A comprehensive survey of caricature and satiric art, profusely and finely illustrated; learned, but not well arranged in chronological order. An invaluable work of reference. | Gautier, Paul: Le Rive et la Caricature. Préface par Sully Prudhomme (Hachette), Paris, 1906. [A scientifically arranged book, sparsely but intelligently illustrated.] Goncourt, de, Edmund et Jules: Gavarni: L’Homme et l’cuvre. Gourmont de, Remy (see Rouveyre, André). Grego, Joseph: Rowlandson, The Caricaturist (Chatto and Windus), 1880. Grose, Francis, F.S.A.: Rules for Drawing Caricaturas. With an Essay on Comic Painting, 1788. [The copy of this work in the British Museum is bound up with The Analysis of Beauty, by William Hogarth, “‘ written with a view of fixing the fluctuating ideas of Taste’’. A curious and admirable little work.] Kapp, Edmond Xavier: Personalities : Twenty-four Drawings (Martin Secker), 1919. Reflections (Jonathan Cape), 1922. (See also Cloud, Yvonne.) [Selections from the artist’s exhibited work, not all caricatures.] Lacroix, Paul (see Rabelais, Francois). Larwood, Jacob, and Hotten, J.C.: History of Signboards, 1864, Lynch, Bohun: Max Beerbohm in Perspective (Heinemann), paar: (With a Prefatory letter by Max Beerbohm.) Malcolm, James Peller, F.S.A.: Historical Sketch of the an of Carica- turing, 1813. [One of the earliest books on the subject, well illustrated by the author’s own engravings, which, especially in the case of drawings i in the Harleian MSS., very closely and accurately follow the originals. ‘The work is badly arranged, and is ‘often more amusing than the author intended; but it is extremely useful and is the foundation of most of the later works on Caricature written in English.] * Pseudonym for William Rodgers Richardson. I22 Buse LO.G RAE HS, Onions, Oliver: The Art of Henry Ospovat, with an Appreciation by Oliver Onions (St. Catherine Press), 1911. Parton, James: Caricature and other Comic Art in all times and many lands (Harper Brothers), 1877. [A concise chronological study of the subject, lucidly arranged and copiously illustrated. | Paston, George (pseudonym): Social Caricature in the Eighteenth Century (Methuen), 1905. [Finely illustrated, amusing, and admirably arranged.] Pike, Luke Owen: History of Crime in England, 1873. Rabelais, Francois (attributed to): Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel. Edited by Paul Lacroix. 1868. Rasi, Luigi: La Caricatura e 1 Comict ttaliant. 1907. [The letterpress is negligible and gives very little information. ‘There are, how- ever, many excellent illustrations.] Rouveyre, André: Visages des Contemporains. Préface par Remy de Gourmont (Mercure de France). 1913. Ward, Leslie (Sir): Forty Years of “ Spy” (Chatto and Windus). 1915. Wright, Thomas, F.S.A.: History of Caricature and Grotesque in Litera- ture and Art. Illustrated by F. W. Fairholt, F.S.A. (Virtue Brothers), 1865. England Under the House of Hanover (Richard Bentley), 1848. [Admirable, exhaustive, and invaluable works, which include researches into all satiric art from the earliest times. The illustrations, judged from a pictorial point of view, are poor, being for the most part mere notes in line copied from various originals and engravings: but they are extremely useful in helping the student to identify these originals in collections elsewhere.] 123 INDEX A—o (see le Strange, Roland) Academy, Royal, 57 Aigrefeuille, Marquis d’, 80 Alexander VI, Pope, 28, 34, 35 America, Caricature in, 118, 119 Ape (see Carlo Pellegrini) Batt I, 30 Balzac, 85, 86 Barrés, Maurice, 69 Barton, Ralph, 98, 118, 119 Bateman, H. M., 117 Baudelaire, Charles, 85 Beardsley, Aubrey, 28, 101 Beerbohm, Max, vii, 17, 53, 64, 71, 97- Beggar’s Opera, The, 114 112 Bella, Stefano della, 47 Belloc, Hilaire, 117 Benjamin, 81 Bergson, Henri, 5 Binyon, Laurence, 113 Blunden, Edmund, 115 Boldrini, 25 Book of Caricatures, A, 101 Bourgeois, Emile, 83 Bowles, Thomas Gibson, 70, 73 Boxing Match, A, 58 Browne, Hablot Knight (Phiz), 4 Browne, Sir Thomas, 3 Brueghel Pieter, the elder, 28, 29 Bubble companies, 48, 49 Bull, John, 54, 61, 64, 104 Bunbury, Henry William, 51 CALLOT, Jacques, vii, 10, 29, 30, 31, 47, Calvin, 38, 39, 43 [59 Cambacérés, 80 Canta Gallina, 30, 47 Capricct di Varie Figure, 30 Caran D’Ache (Emmanuel Poirée), 88, 89, Caricature, La, 80, 81 [117 Caricature and other Comic Art, 17 Caricature Magazine, 63 Cartoons: The Second Childhood of John Caruso, 95 [Bull, to1 Cavaliers, 41 124 Cham (Amédée de Noé), 24, 86, 88 Champfleury, Jules Henri, 12, 16-19, 27, 28, 81 Characters and Caricaturas, 47, 78 Charivari, Le, 82, 83, 85 Charles I, 41 Charles IT, 43 Charles X, 56, 86, 87 Chataigner, 79 Christie’s, 62 City trained bands, 53 Clarke, Mrs. Mary Anne, 58.- Clemenceau, M., 89, 107, 116 Clement VII, Pope, 37 Conrad, Joseph, 1 Continental caricature, 76-92 Covarrubias, Miguel, 92, 96, 119 Cranach, Hans, 33 Cranach, Lucas, 33 Cromwell, Oliver, 42 Cruikshanks, the, 4, 62 Cruikshank, George, 7, 55, 65-67, 77, 78 DANDIES, 64 Dandizettes, 64 Dantan, 88 Daumier, Honoré, vii, 80-86 Dead, Book of the, 11 Debussy, Claude, 108 Decamps, Alexandre, 80, 87 Degas, 73 Derby, Lord, 62 Devil in caricature, the, 14, 17-19, 39, 44 Dighton, Robert and Richard, 9, 20, 67, Disraeli, 71 [68, 78, 105 Doddington, George Bubb, 46 Don Pirlone, Il, 88 Doré, Gustave, 86, 87 Doyle, John and Richard, 4, 68 Dreyfus, 89 Dulac, Edmund, 116 Dusart, Cornelis, 43 Epict of Nantes, Revocation of, 43 Egyptian caricature, 11 Erasmus, 32, 33 oe ee a INDEX Evans, Powys (Quiz), 112, 114, 115 Everitt, Graham, 4, 6, 8, 55, 86 FarrEN, Miss, 62 Fashion-Caricature, 31 Forain, 89 Fox, Charles James, 63, Fraser, Claude Lovat, 95 French caricature, 19, 27, 76-91 French revolution, 78, 79} Fry, Roger, | Fuchs, Eduard, 6, 26 Furniss, Harry, 96 GamMBETTA, 89 Gaudissart, 80 Gaultier, Paul, 6 Gauthier, Théophile, 85 Gavarni (S. P. Chevalier), 80, 82, 85-87 George III, 61 German caricature, 26, 27, 91, 92 Ghezzi, Pier Leone, 79 Gill, André (Gosset de Guine), 89 Gillray, James, 9, 24, 51,54, 55,57, 59-62, Giraldus, Cambrensis, 23 [65, 105 Gladstone, Mr., 71 Gobbi, I., 30 Gourmont, Remy de, 6, 90, 91 Goursat, Georges (see Sem) Giz, 78 Grandville, 80 Greek caricature, 12 Grego, Joseph, 55, 57 Grose, Francis, 3, 65 Grossmith, George, 94 Gulbransson, Olaf, 20, 91, 1o1 Hame_rTOoN, Philip Gilbert, 67 Hammond, Aubrey, vili, 117 Hanlon, William, 50 Harleian collection, 21, 24 Haselden, W. K., 117 Heath, William, 63 Historical Sketch of the Art of Cartca- Hobby-horse, 64 [turing, 13 Hogarth, William, 47, 48, 52, 53, 78 Holbein, 19, 32 Hooghe, Romeyn de, 47 Horace, 2 Hubert, 78 Humphreys, 51, 59, 60 INCROYABLES, Les, 80, 87 Indian caricature, 12 125 Irish warriors, 23, 24 Isaac of Norwich, 20, 21 Isabey, the elder, 24, 79 Italian opera, 50 James IT, 43 Jehu junior, 73 Jews in caricature, the, 20-21 Johnson, Dr., 1, 4, 53 Journal Pour Rire, 87 Jugend, 91 Julius II, Pope, 28 Kapp, Edmond Xavier, 109-114 Kartkatur der Europdischen Vélker, Die, 6 Kenyon, Lord, 62 Keppel, Admiral Sir Harry, 75 Kladderadatsch, 91 Laocoon, the, 25, 26 Laud, Archbishop, 41 Law, John, 48, 49 Léandre, Charles, 88, 89 Leech, John, 4, 68 Leonardo da Vinci, 25, 47 Le Strange, Roland, 74, 75 Liszt, Abbé, 73, 74 London Mercury, The, 114 Louis XIV, 43-45, 49 Louvre, Musée de, 12 Lovat, Simon Lord, 48 Low, David, 116, 117 MacalreE, Robert, 82, 85, 88 Macaulay, Lord, 1 Maintenon, Madame de, 44 Malcolm, James Peller, 13-16, 21, 40, 53, Marks, Arthur J., 73 [54, 76 Marlborough, Sarah Duchess of, 46 Marriott, Charles, 9, 10 Mary, Queen, 16 Maugham, W. S., 92, 119 Maurier, George du, vii, 68 May, Phil, 96 Mayeux, 82, 85 Melanchthon, Philip, 33, 35, 36 Mencken, H. L., 119 Mercure de France, 90 Merveilleuses, les, 80 Minims, 113 Monnier, 80, 82, 83 Napo_eon I, 54, 60, 63, 79, 85, 90, 104, Napoleon III, 77 [105 New Statesman, The, 116-117 o7 se. . ac ‘ AIAN i << The Public Record Office. (Plate 1) A caricature of Isaac of Norwich and other Jews from the head of an Exchequer roll of a.p. 1233 gz6 ON ‘SW UvIopLTeEy UI SSUIMVIP POINO[OD JOYE WORT JoT[aq sowel fq ssutavisuyq "ULNasSnpY YSYIAT ‘sadzassnuv py fo guampavgagr (II 21d) (at PIP UpooTP Py eid [pay 23 ee” = at Baie Died Leonardo da Vinct. (Plate II1) Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum. A sheet of caricatures —— ss re Heung oes Dunc labs su Gretberg /Ooctoris Marent Luthers. Mine wy a WN WSS Ny LS SN Ass : SAS RUZ ~e& ANN (Plate IV) From “ Die Karikatur der Europaischen Volker”, by Eduard Fuchs. THE MONK-CALF OF FREIBERG (After a German wood-engraving. F irst half of the sixteenth century) . a a ha I ae a a ee ee ee = a ee A\\\ Gee \ \\ 1 | \ NE (ARYAN A\ (Plate V) From“ A Treatise on Wood Engraving”, by W. Chatto and John Jackson. A reputed caricature of Martin Luther (After a German wood-engraving. First half of the sixteenth century) : “ieepaeens patente eke y e ¢ ; ¢ Bb © Wh Cineinrechter weinfclaud FImalter aBerwirds mir fdyweer Suir auff der RadwerG meinen Baudy Wen mie mein groffer wamft ftectleee Ich haG mirszogenein fay (ten Bacher Dnd tft alls durdy den Ars gefarer Dnd mag mit fein yes wol geladyen Dasma icy waynenin alten Jaren. . Ps 7 L oy See ee See (Plate VI) From “ Die Karikatur der Europdischen Volker”, by Eduard Fuchs. THE TOPER (After a German wood-engraving of 1510) (II snynf{ edog jo ainyeories v SI yo] 94} UO VY, ‘sBuravssus-poom youary s191sV) (IIA 4d) "4 JINASOIUD J ap SANDIBWIOACT SISUOS SIT ,, UlOAT ‘SIDJIQOY S103UDAY 07 PIjNQrypy rh eK 2 Nov. 17g | BILLY POLITICAL PLAYTHING. ** 7 r Richard Newton. Department of Prints and Drawings, ; (Plate VIIT) British Museum. G William Pitt and Charles James Fox (After a coloured print of 1796) —— SSIW GCNV YMOH IVYANAD (XJ 270d) “ay0) puousag uivjygv7 “UOSPUDIMOY SvULOY T ames Gillray. Department of Prints and Drawings, (Plate X) British Museunt. The Tsar Paul I of Russia AVIEW fromMAGDALEN HALL,OXFORD. Robert Dighton. Captain Desmond Coke. (Plate X/) An Oxford Don Honoré Daumter. Department of Prints and Drawings, (Plate XI) British Museum. ACTUALITES: IRLANDE ET JAMAIQUE ” Pea SL TTETIEL agence (After a coloured lithograph) William Nicholson, Esq. if / Piet ge 4 ele” amar satis a - oe Vai e ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (A study on blotting-paper for the caricature in Vanity Fair, 1874) From Zhe Winter Owl, 1923 Carlo Pellegrini (Ape (Plate XII1) M Beerbohm. Philip Guedalla, Esq. (Plate XIV) “MR. SWINBURNE, JUNE 1899” Roland le Strange (A-o) From “Vanity Fair”, 1903. (Plate XV) ” “04 (Admiral of the Fleet the Honourable Sir Henry Keppel) \) “i ay SRE Nee ‘ 1 s ‘ pu \ peer ‘ . ¢ ’ Pa TP Ra NY IRTP ite er eS Ry Se ean Captain Desmond Coke. ow GEORGE GROSSMITH MR NE GENO Te PIL HI em ae OIE ONE MO ea NUK 7 nese ge am y a ER, ES oe PR eee ANNE ERATOR LAI EEN ONES RAIA wasn cntn me ig ¥ hive Seat Re tet Aid # flenry Ospovat. (Plate X V7) a ne een en TET ST SIRE tatters: tena \) \ IER From “The Outlook”, 1919. Edmund Dulac. (Plate XVII) “HIS FIRST WOUND-STRIPE” (Monsieur Clemenceau) Ty! rea Edmond Xavier Kapp. The Artist. (Plate XVIII) BUFFOON (George Graves enlarging our vocabulary) 7 a ee ft ee ae _y - ee a ee Sa ae es Ee eo Nee ee SSS Se ee eee . ee a ee ee ee ee a Powys Evans (Quiz). (Plate X1X) RL) "% Ole ZS C2 SCO IRO %2 MDESLoAs SVR iS N= Kw AN ea Wiireatatiamme _/ From “ The Saturday Review”, 1923. MR. EDMUND BLUNDEN Ralph Barton. (Plate XX) AS OTHERS SEE US (A celebrity-at-large and, on the right, a self-caricature) 97-24 2F) GETTY CENTER LIBRARY UTE