Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/caricatureotherc00part_0 CARICATURE AND OTHER COMIC ART IN ALL TIMES AND MANY LANDS By JAMES BARTON WITH SOS ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YOEK HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS FRANKLIN SQUARE 1878 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. PREFACE. this volume there is, I believe, a greater variety of pictures of a comic and satirical cast than was ever before presented at one view. Many nations, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, are represented in it, as well as most of the names identified with art of this nature. The extraordinary liberality of the publishers, and the skill of their corps of engravers, have seconded my own industrious reseai’ches, and the result is a volume unique, at least, in the character of its illustrations. A large portion of its contents appeared in Har- per’s Monthly Magazine during the year 18Y5; but many of the most curious and interesting of the pictures are given here for the first time ; notably, those exhibiting the present or recent caricature of Germany, Spain, Italy, China, and Japan, several of which did not arrive in time for use in the periodical. Generally speaking, articles contributed to a Magazine may as well be left in their natural tomb of “ back numbers,” or bound volumes for the better they serve a temporary purpose, the less adapted they are for permanent utili- ty. Among the exceptions are such series as the present, which had no refer- ence whatever to the passing months, and in the preparation of which a great expenditure was directed to a single class of objects of special interest. I am, indeed, amazed at the cost of producing such articles as these. So very great is the expense, that many subjects could not be adequately treated, with all de- sirable illustration, unless the publishers could offer the work to the public in portions. There is not much to be said upon the subject treated in this volume. When I was invited by the learned and urbane editor of Harper's Monthly to furnish a number of articles upon caricature, I supposed that the work pro- posed would be a relief after labors too arduous, too long continued, and of a more serious character. On the contrary, no subject that I ever attempted presented such baffling difflculties. After ransacking the world for specimens. 8 PREFACE. and colle-cting them by the hundred, I found that, lusually, a caricature is a thing of a moment, and that, dying as soon as its moment has passed, it loses all power to interest, instantly and forever. I found, too, that our respectable ancestors had not the least notion of what we call decency. When, therefore, I had laid aside from the mass the obsolete and the improper, there were not so very many left, and most of those told their own story so plainly that no elucidation was necessary. Instead of wearying the reader with a mere de- scriptive catalogue, I have preferred to accompany the. pictures with allusions to contemporary satire other than pictorial. The great living authorities upon this branch of art are two in number — one English, and one French — to both of whom I am greatly indebted. The En- glish author is Thomas Wright, M.A., F.S.A., etc., whose ‘‘History of Carica- ture and the Grotesque ” is well known among us, as well as his more recent volume upon the incomparable caricaturist of the last generation, James Gill- ray. The French writer is M. Jules Champfleury, author of a valuable series of volumes reviewing satiric art from ancient times to our own day, with countless illustrations. No one has treated so fully or so well as he the carica- ture of the Greeks and Romans. Many years ago, M. Champfleury began to illustrate this part of his subject in the Gazette des Beaux ArtSj and his con- tributions to that important periodical were the basis of his subsequent vol- umes. He is one of the few writers on comic matters who have avoided the lapse into catalogue, and contrived to be interesting. It has been agreeable to me to observe that Americans are not without nat- ural aptitude in this kind of art. Our generous Franklin, the friend of Ho- garth, to whom the dying artist wrote his last letter, replying to the last letter he ever received, was a capital caricaturist, and used his skill in this way, as he did all his other gifts and powers, in behalf of his country and his kind. At the present time, every week’s issue of the illustrated periodicals exhibits evi- dence of the skill, as well as the patriotism and right feeling, of the humorous artists of the United States. For some years past, caricature has been a pow- er in the land, and a power generally on the right side. There are also humor- ous artists of another and gentler kind, some even of the gentler sex, who pre- sent to us scenes which surprise us all into smiles and good temper without having in them any lurking sting of reproof. These domestic humorists, I trust, will continue to amuse and soften us, while the avenging satirist with dreadful pencil makes mad the guilty, and appalls the free. PKEFACE. There must be something precious in caricature, else the enemies of truth and freedom would not hate it as they do. Some of the worst excesses and perversions of satiric art are due to that very hatred. Persecuted and re- pressed, caricature becomes malign and perverse ; or, being excluded from le- gitimate subjects, it seems as if it were compelled to ally itself to vice. We have only to turn from a heap of French albums to volumes of English carica- ture to have a striking evidence of the truth, that the repressive system re- presses good and develops evil. It is the Censure ” that debauches the comic pencil; it is freedom that makes it the ally of good conduct and sound politics. In free countries alone it has scope enough, without wandering into paths which the eternal proprieties forbid. I am sometimes sanguine enough to think that the pencil of the satirist will at last render war impossible, by bringing vividly home to all genial minds the ludicrous absurdity of such a method of arriving at truth. Fancy two armies “ in presence.” By some proc- ess yet to be developed, the Kast of the next generation, if not the admirable Nast of this, projects upon the sky, in the sight of the belligerent forces, a PICTURE exhibiting the enormous comicality of their attitude and purpose. They all see the point, and both armies break up in laughter, and come to- gether roaring over the joke. In the hope that this volume may contribute something to the amusement of the happy at festive seasons, and to the instruction of the curious at all times, it is presented to the consideration of the public. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. page Among the Romans 15 CHAPTER II. Among the Greeks 28 CHAPTER III. Among the Ancient Egyptians 32 CHAPTER IV. Among the Hindoos 36 CHAPTER V. Religious Caricature in the Middle Ages 40 CHAPTER VI. Secular Caricature in the Middle Ages 50 CHAPTER VII. Caricatures preceding the Reformation 64 CHAPTER VIII. Comic Art and the Reformation 76 CHAPTER IX. In the Puritan Period 90 CHAPTER X. Later Puritan Caricature 105 CHAPTER XI. Preceding Hogarth 120 CHAPTER XII. Hogarth and his Time 133 CHAPTER XIII. English Caricature in the Revolutionary Period 147 12 INDEX. CHAPTER XIV. Duking the Fkench Revolution 159 , CHAPTER XV. Caricatures of Women and Matrimony 171 CHAPTER XVI. Among the Chinese 191 CHAPTER XVII. Comic Art in Japan 198 CHAPTER XVIII. French Caricature 208 CHAPTER XIX. Later French Caricature 230 CHAPTER XX. Comic Art in Germany 242 CHAPTER XXI. Comic Art in Spain 249 CHAPTER XXII. Italian Caricature 257 CHAPTER XXIII. English Caricature of the Present Century 267 CHAPTER XXIV. Comic Art in ‘‘Punch” 284 CHAPTER XXV. Early American Caricature 300 CHAPTER XXVI. Later American Caricature.. 318 INDEX. 335 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, PAGE Pigmy Pugilists, from Pompeii 15 Chalk Drawing by Roman Soldier in Pompeii 15 Chalk Caricature on a Wall in Pompeii 16 Battle between Pigmies and Geese 17 A Pigmy Scene— from Pompeii 18 Vases with Pigmy Designs 19 A Grasshopper driving a Chariot 19 From an Antique Amethyst 19 Flight of ^ueas from Troy 20 Caricature of the Flight of ^neas 20 From a Red Jasper 21 Roman Masks, Comic and Tragic 22 Roman Comic Actor, masked for Silenus 22 Roman Wall Caricature of a Christian 25 Burlesque of Jupiter’s Wooing of Princess Alcmena 29 Greek Caricature of the Oracle of Apollo 30 An Egyptian Caricature 32 A Condemned Soul, Egyptian Caricature 33 Egyptian Servants conveying Home their Masters from a Carouse 33 Too Late with the Basin 34 The Hindoo God Krishna on his Travels 37 Krishna’s Attendants assuming the Form of a Bird 37 Krishna in his Palanquin 38 Capital in the Autun Cathedral 41 Capitals in the Strasburg Cathedral, a.i>. 1300 41 Engraved upon a Stall in Sherborne Minster, En- gland 43 From a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century 43 From a Mass-book of the Fourteenth Century 44 From a French Prayer-book of the Thirteenth Century 45 From Queen Mary’s Prayer-book, a.d. 1553 46 Gog and Magog, Guildhall, London 50 Head of the Great Dragon of Norwich 51 Souls weighed in the Balance, Autun Cathedral. ... 51 Struggle for Possession of a Soul between Angel and Devil 52 Lost Souls cast into Hell 53 Devils seizing their Prey 54 The Temptation 55 French Death-crier 56 Death and the Cripple 57 Death and the Old Man 58 Death and the Peddler 58 Death and the Knight 58 Heaven and Earth weighed in the Balance 60 English Caricature of an Irishman, a.d. 1280 62 Caricature of the Jews in England, a.d. 1233 63 Luther inspired by Satan 64 Devil fiddling upon a Pair of Bellows 65 Oldest Drawing in the British Museum, a.d. 1320. . 66 Bishop’s Seal, a.d. 1300 67 Pastor and Flock, Sixteenth Century 70 Confessing to God ; and Sale of Indulgences 72 Christ, the True Light 73 PAGE Papa, Doctor Theologise et Magister Fidei 77 The Pope cast into Hell 77 “The Beam that is in thine own Eye,” a.d. 1540. .*. 78 Luther Triumphant 79 The Triumph of Riches 81 Calvin branded 83 Calvin at the Burning of Servetus 84 Calvin, the Pope, and Luther 85 Titian’s Caricature of the Laocoou 89 The Papal Gorgon 90 Spayne and Rome defeated 94 From Title-page to Sermon “Woe to Drunkards”. 97 “Let not the World devide those whom Christ hath joined” 99 “ England’s Wolfe with Eagle’s Clawes,” 1647 102 Charles II. and the Scotch Presbyterians, 1651 — 103 Cris-cross Rhymes on Love’s Crosses, 1640 105 Shrove-tide in Arms against Lent 107 Lent tilting at Shrove-tide 108 The Queen of James II. and Father Petre 109 Caricature of Corpulent General Galas 115 A Quaker Meeting, 1710 116 Archbishop of Paris 118 Archbishop of Rheims 118 Caricature of Louis XIV., by Thackeray 119 “Shares! Shares! Shares!” Caricature of John Law 120 Island of Madhead 122 Speculative Map of Louisiana 126 John Law, Wind Monopolist 129 The Sleeping Congregation 134 Hogarth’s Drawing in Three Strokes 137 Hogarth's Invitation Card 137 Time Smoking a Picture 138 Dedication of a Proposed History of the Arts. .... 140 Walpole paring the Nails of the British Lion 142 Dutch Neutrality, 1745 142 British Idolatry of the Opera-singer Mingotti 143 The Motion (for the Removal of Walpole) 144 Antiquaries puzzled 146 Caricature designed by Benjamin Franklin 147 Lord Bute 152 Princess of Wales — Bute— George III 152 The Wire-master (Bute) and his Puppets 153 The Gouty Colossus, William Pitt , 156 The Mask (Coalition) 157 Heads of Pox and North 158 Assembly of the Notables at Paris 161 Mirabeau 162 The Dagger Scene in the House of Commons 164 The Zenith of French Glory 165 The Estates 166 The New Calvary 166 President of Revolutionary Committee amusing himself with his Art 163 Rare Animals 169 14 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Aristocrat and Democrat 170 “ You frank ! Have confidence in you /" 171 Matrimony— A Man loaded with Mischief 173 Settling the Odd Trick 174 “Who was that gentleman that just went out?”.. 176 “Now, Understand me. To-morrow morning he will ask you to dinner ” 177 “Madame, your Cousin Betty wishes to know if you can receive her ” 179 A Scene of Conjugal Life 180 A Splendid Spread 181 American Lady walking in the Snow 183 “My dear Baron, I am in the most pressing need of five hundred franc ” 184 “ Sir, be good enough to come round in front and speak to me ” 185 “ Where are the diamonds exhibited?” 185 Evening Scene in the Parlor of an American Boarding-house 186 “ He’s coming ! Take off your hat !” 188 The Scholastic Hen and her Chickens 189 Chinese Caricature of an English Foraging Party. 191 A Deaf Mandarin 196 After Dinner. A Chinese Caricature 197 The Eat Kice Merchants. A Japanese Carica- ture 206 Talleyrand— the Man with Six Heads, 209 A Great Man’s Last Leap 210 Talleyrand 211 A Promenade in the Palais Koyal 213 Family of the Extinguishers 214 The Jesuits at Court 215 Charles Philipon 218 Robert Macaire fishing for Share-holders, 221 A Husband’s Dilemma 223 Housekeeping 224 A Poultice for Two 226 Parisian “ Shoo, Fly !” 227 Three! 228 Two Attitudes 230 The Den of Lions at the Opera 231 The Vulture 233 Partant pour la Syrie 234 Gavarni 236 Honore Daumier 237 Evolution of the Piano 243 A Corporal interviewed by the Major 244 A Bold Comparison 245 Strict Discipline in the Field. 246 Ahead of Time 247 A Journeyman’s Leave-taking 248 After Sedan 250 To the Bull-fight 251 PAGE A Delegation of Birds of Prey. 252 “Child, you will take cold” 253 Inconvenience of the New Collar 254 Sufferings endured by a Prisoner of War. 255 King Bomba’s Ultimatum to Sicily 259 He has begun the Service with Mass, and com- pleted it with Bombs 260 The Burial of Liberty 261 Bomba at Supper 262 “ Such is the Love of Kings ” 263 Mr. Punch 264 Return of the Pope to Rome 265 James Gillray 267 Tiddy-Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Baker. 268 The Threatened Invasion of England 269 The Bibliomaniac 270 Hope— A Phrenological Illustration 271 Term Time 273 Box in a New York Theatre in 1830 276 Seymour’s Conception of Mr. Winkle 278 Probable Suggestion of the Fat Boy 280 A Wedding Breakfast 281 The Boy who chalked up “No Popery !” 284 John Leech 285 Preparatory School for Young Ladies 286 The Quarrel.— England and France 287 Obstructives 290 Jeddo and Belfast; or, a Puzzle for Japan 291 “At the Church-gate” 292 An Early Quibble 294 John Tenniel 295 Soliloquy of a Rationalistic Chicken 298 “ I’ll follow thee I” 299 Join or Die 304 Boston Massacre Coffins 306 A Militia Drill in Massachusetts in 1832 308 Fight in Congress between Lyon and Griswold. . . 312 The Gerry-mander 316 Thomas Nast 318 Wholesale and Retail 319 The Brains of the Tammany Ring 320 “What are the wild waves saying?” 321 Shin-plaster Caricature of General Jackson’s War on the United States Bank 322 City People in a Country Church 323 “Why don’t you take it?” 324 Popular Caricature of the Secession War 325 Virginia pausing 326 Tweedledee and Sweedledum 328 “Who Stole the People’s Money?” 329 “On to Richmond !” 330 Christmas-time. — Won at a Turkey Raffle 331 “ He cometh not, she said” 332 Pigmy Pugilists — from Pompeii, CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. CHAPTER I. AMONG THE ROMANS. M uch as the ancients differed from ourselves in other particulars, they cer- tainly laughed at one another just as we do, for precisely the same rea- sons, and employed every art, device, and implement of ridicule which is known to us. Observe this rude and childish attempt at a drawing. Go into any boys’ school to-day, and turn over the slates and copy-books, or visit an inclosure where men are obliged to pass idle days, and you will be likely to find pictures conceived in this taste, and executed with this degree of artistic skill. But the drawing dates back nearly eighteen centuries. It was done on one of the hot, languid days of August, a.d. 79, by a Roman soldier with a piece of red chalk on a wall of his barracks in the city of Pompeii.* On the 23d of August, in the year 79, occurred the eruption of Vesuvius, which buried not Italian cities only, but Antiq- uity itself, and, by burying, preserved it for the instruction of after-times. In disinterred Pompeii, the Past stands revealed to us, and we remark with a kind * “Naples and the Canipagna Felice.” In a Series of Letters addressed to a Friend in En- gland, in 1802, p. 104. 16 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. of infantile surprise the great number of particulars in which the people of that day were even such as we are. There was found the familiar apothecary’s shop, with a box of pills on the counter, and a roll of material that was about to be made up when the apothecary heard the warning thunder and fled. The baker’s shop remained, with a loaf of bread stamped with the maker’s name. A sculptor’s studio was strewed with blocks of marble, unfinished statues, mal- lets, compasses, chisels, and saws. A thousand objects attest that when the fatal eruption burst upon these cities, life and its activities were going forward in all essential particulars as they are at this moment in any rich and luxurious town of Southern Europe. In the building supposed to have been the quarters of the Roman garrison, many of the walls were covered with such attempts at caricature as the speci- men just given, to some of which were appended opprobrious epithets and phrases. The name of the personage above portrayed was Nonius Maximus, who was probably a martinet centurion, odious to his company, for the name was found in various parts of the inclosure, usually accompanied by dispara- ging words. Many of the soldiers had simply chalked their own names; others had added the number of their cohort or legion, precisely as in the late war soldiers left records of their stay on the walls of fort and hospital. A large number of these wall-chalkings in red, white, and black (most of them in red) CUALK CaRIOATUKE ON A WaLE IN PoMPEII. were clearly legible fifty years after exposure. I give another specimen, a gen- uine political caricature, copied from an outside wall of a private house in Pompeii. The allusion is to an occurrence in local history of the liveliest possible in- terest to the people. A few years before the fatal eruption there was a fierce town-and-country row in the amphitheatre, in which the Pompeians defeated and AMONG THE KOMANS. 17 put to flight the provincial Nucerians. Nero condemned the pugnacious men of Pompeii to the terrible penalty of closing their amphitheatre for ten years. In the picture an armed man descends into the arena bearing the palm of vic- tory, while on the other side a prisoner is dragged away bound. The inscrip- tion alone gives us the key to the street artist’s meaning, Campani victoria una cum Nucerinis peristis — “Men of Campania, you perished in tlie victory not less than the Nucerians;” as though the patriotic son of Campania had written, “ We beat ’em, but very little we got by it.” If the idlers of the streets chalked caricature on the walls, we can not be surprised to discover that Pompeian artists delighted in the comic and bur- lesque. Comic scenes from the plays of Terence and Plautus, with the names of the characters written over them, have been found, as well as a large num- ber of burlesque scenes, in which dwarfs, deformed people. Pigmies, beasts, and birds are engaged in the ordinary labors of men. The gay and luxurious peo- ple of the buried cities seem to have delighted in nothing so much as in repre- sentations of Pigmies, for there was scarcely a house in Pompeii yet uncovered which did not exhibit some trace of the ancient belief in the existence of these little people. Homer, Aristotle, and Pliny all discourse of the Pigmies as act- ually existing, and the artists, availing themselves of this belief, which they shared, employed it in a hundred ways to caricature the doings of men of larger growth. Pliny describes them as inhabiting the salubrious mountain- ous regions of India, their stature about twenty-seven inches, and engaged in eternal war with their enemies, the geese. “They say,” Pliny continues, “that. mounted upon rams and goats, and armed with bows and arrows, they descend in a body during spring-time to the edge of the waters, where they eat the eggs and the young of those birds, not returning to the mountains for three months. Otherwise they could not resist the ever-increasing multitude of the geese. The Pigmies live in cabins made of mud, the shells of goose eggs, and feathers of the same bird.” Homer, in the third book of the “ Iliad,” alludes to the wars of the Cranes and Pigmies : “So when inclement winters vex the plnin With piercing fi’osts, or thick-descending rain, 2 18 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. To warmer seas the Cranes embodied fly, With noise and order through the midway sky; To Pigmy nations wounds and death they bring, And all the war descends upon the wing.” One of our engravings sliows that not India only, but Egypt also, was re- garded as the haunt of the Pigmy race; for the Upper Nile was then, as now, the home of the hip- popotamus, the crocodile, and the lotus. Here we see a bald-headed Pigmy hero riding triumphantly on a mighty crocodile, regardless of the open- mouthed, bellowing hip- popotamus behind him. In other pictures, howev- er, the scaly monster, so far from playing this sub- missive part, is seen plung- ing in fierce pursuit of a Pigmy, who flies headlong before the foe. Frescoes, vases, mosaics, statuettes, paintings, and signet-rings found in the ancient cit- ies all attest the populari- ty of the little men. The odd pair of vases on the following page, one in the shape of a boar’s head and the other in that of A Pigmy Scene — fuom Pumpeii. , i i ^ a ram s, are both adorned with a representation of the fierce combats between the Pigmies and the geese. There has been an extraordinary display of erudition in the attempt to ac- count for the endless repetition of Pigmy subjects in the houses of the Pom- peians; but the learned and acute M. Champfleury “humbly hazards a con- jecture,” as he modestly expresses it, which commends itself at once to general acceptance. He thinks these Pigmy pictures were designed to amuse the chil- dren. No conjecture could be less erudite or more probable. We know, however, as a matter of record, that the walls of taverns and wine-shops were usually adorned with Pigmy pictures, such subjects being associated in every AMONG THE ROMANS. 19 mind with pleasure and gayety. It is not difficult to imagine that a picture of a pugilistic encounter between Pig- mies, like the one given at the head of this chapter, or a fanciful representa- tion of a combat of Pigmy gladiators, of which many have been discovered, would be both welcome and suitable as tavern pictures in the Italian cities of the classic period. The Pompeians, in common with all the people of antiquity, had a child- like enjoyment in witnessing represen- tations of animals engaged in the la- bors or the sports of human beings. A very large number of specimens have been uncovered, some of them gorgeous with the hues given them by masters of coloring eighteen hundred years ago. In the following cut is a . n . . Vases with Pigmy Designs. specimen oi these — a representation of a grasshopper driving a chariot, copied in 1802 from a Pompeian work for an English traveler. Nothing can exceed either the brilliancy or the delicacy of the coloring of this picture in the original, the splendid plumage of the bird and the bright gold of the chariot shaft and wheel being relieved and heighten- ed by a gray background and the greenish brown of the course. The colorists of Pompeii have obviously in- fluenced the taste of Christendom. There are few houses of pretension dec- orated within the last quarter of a century, either in Europe or America, which do not ex- hibit combinations and contrasts of color of which the hint was found in exhumed Pom- peii. One or two other small specimens of this kind of art, selected from a large number accessible, may interest the reader. The spirited air of the team of cocks, and the nonchalant professional attitude of the From an Antique Amethyst. charioteer, will not escape notice. Perhaps the most interesting example of A Grasshopper driving a Chariot. 20 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. this propensity to personify animals which the exhumed cities have fur- nished us is a burlesque of a popular picture of ^neas escaping from Troy, carrying his father, Anchises, on his back, and leading by the hand his son^ Ascanius, the old man carrying the casket of household gods. No scene could have been more familiar to the people of Italy than one which exhib- ited the hero whom they regarded as the founder of their empire in so enga- ging a light, and to which the genius of Virgil had given a deathless charm : “Thus ord’ring all that prudence could provide I clothe my shoulders with a lion’s hide And yellow spoils ; then on my bejiding back The welcome load of my dear father take ; While on my better hand Ascanius hung, And with unequal paces tripped along.” Artists found a subject in these lines, and of one picture suggested by them two copies have been found carved upon stone. I Flight of .iEneas from Troy. This device of employing animals’ heads upon human bodies is still used by the caricaturist, so few are the re- sources of his branch of art; and we can not deny that it retains a portion of its power to excite laughter. If we may judge from what has been discov- ered of the burlesque art of the ancient nations, we may conclude that this idea, poor as it seems to us, was the one which the artists of antiquity most frequently employed. It was also com- mon with them to burlesque familiar paintings, as in the instance given. It is not unlikely that the cloyed and dainty taste of the Pompeian connois- seur perceived something ridiculous in the too -familiar exploit of Father ^neas as represented in serious art. Caricature of tue Flight of j^Eneas. AMONG THE ROMANS. 21 just as we smile at the theatrical attitudes and costumes in the picture of ‘‘Washington crossing the Delaware.” Fancy that work burlesqued by put- ting an eagle’s head upon the Father of his Country, filling the boat with magpie soldiers, covering the river with icebergs, and making the oars still more ludicrously inadequate to the work in hand than they are in tlie paint- ing. Thus a caricaturist of Pompeii, Rome, Greece, Egypt, or Assyria would have endeavored to cast ridicule upon such a picture. Few events of the last century were more infiuential upon the progress of knowledge than the chance discovery of the buried cities, since it nourished a curiosity re- specting the past which could not be confined to those excavations, and which has since been disclosing antiquity in every quarter of the globe. We call it a chance discovery, although the part which accident plays in such matters is more interesting than important. The dig- ging of a well in 1708 let daylight into the ” ® ® Fuom a Red Jasper. amphitheatre of Herculaneum, and caused some languid exploration, which had small results. Forty years later, a peasant at work in a vineyard five miles from the same spot struck with his hoe something hard, which was too firmly fixed in the ground to be moved. It proved to be a small statue of metal, upright, and riveted to a stone pedestal, which was itself immovably fastened to some solid mass still deeper in the earth. Where the hoe had struck the statue the metal showed the tempting hue of gold, and the peasant, after carefully smooth- ing over the surface, hurried away with a fragment of it to a goldsmith, intending (so runs the local gossip) to work this opening as his private gold mine. But as the metal was pronounced brass, he honestly reported the discovery to a magistrate, who set on foot an excavation. The statue was found to be a Minerva, fixed to the centre of a small roof-like dome, and when the dome was broken through it was seen to be the roof of a tem- ple, of which the Minerva had been the topmost ornament. And thus was discovered, about the middle of the last century, the ancient city of Pompeii, buried by a storm of light ashes from Vesuvius sixteen hundred and seventy years before. It was not the accident, but the timeliness of the accident, which made it important; for there never could have been an excavation fifteen feet deep over the site of Pompeii without revealing indications of the buried city. But the time was then ripe for an exploration. It had become possible to excite a general curiosity in a Past exhumed; and such a curiosity is a late result of culture: it does not exist in a dull or in an ignorant mind. And this curios- ity, nourished and inflamed as it was by the brilliant and marvelous things brought to light in Pompeii and Herculaneum, has sought new gratification 22 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART, wherever a heap of ruins betrayed an ancient civilization. It looks now as if many of the old cities of the world are in layers or strata — a new London upon an old London, and perhaps a Lon- don under that — a city three or four deep, each the record of an era. Two Romes we familiarly know, one of which is built in part upon the oth- er; and at Cairo we can see the process going on by which some ancient cities w^ere bur- ied without volcanic aid. The dirt of the un swept streets, never removed, has raised the grade of Cairo from age to age. Eoman Masks, Comio and Tkagio. The excavations at Rome, so rich in re- sults, were not needed to prove that to the Romans of old caricature was a familiar thing. The mere magnitude of their thea- tres, and their habit of performing plays in the open air, compelled caricature, the basis of which is exaggeration. Actors, both comic and tragic, wore masks of very elaborate con- struction, made of resonant metal, and so shaped as to serve, in some degree, the office of a speaking-trumpet. In the engravings on this page are represented a pair of masks such as were worn by Roman actors through- out the empire, of which many specimens have been found. If the reader has ever visited the Coli- seum at Rome, or even one of the large hip- podromes of Paris or New York, and can imagine the attempts of an actor to exhib- it comic or tragic effects of countenance or of vocal utterance across spaces so extensive, he will readily understand the necessity of such masks as these. The art of acting could only have been developed in small theatres. In the open air or in the uncovered amphi- theatre all must have been vociferation and A Roman Comio Actor masked for the Part op Silenus. AMONG THE KOMANS. 23 caricature. Observe the figure of old Silenus, on preceding page, one of the chief mirth-makers of antiquity, who lives for us in the Old Man of the panto- mime. He is masked for the theatre. The legend of Silenus is itself an evidence of the tendency of the ancients to fall into caricature. To the Romans he was at once the tutor, the comrade, and the butt of jolly Bacchus. He discoursed wisdom and made fun. He was usually represented as an old man, bald, flat-nosed, half drunk, riding upon a broad-backed ass, or reeling along by the aid of a staff, uttering shrewd max- ims and doing ludicrous acts. People wonder that the pantomime called ‘‘Humpty Dumpty” should be played a thousand nights in New York; but the substance of all that boisterous nonsense, that exhibition of rollicking free- dom from restraints of law, usage, and gravitation, has amused mankind for unknown thousands of years ; for it is merely what remains to us of the leg- endary Bacchus and his jovial crew. We observe, too, that the great comic books, such as Gil Bias,” “Hon Quixote,” “ Pickwick,” and others, are most effective when the hero is most like Bacchus, roaming over the earth with mer- ry blades, delightfully free from the duties and conditions which make bond- men of us all. Mr. Dickens may never have thought of it — and lie may — but there is much of the charm of the ancient Bacchic legends in the narrative of the four Pickwickians and Samuel Weller setting off on the top of a coach, and meeting all kinds of gay and semi -lawless adventures in country towns and rambling inns. Even the ancient distribution of characters is hinted at. With a few changes, easily imagined, the irrepressible Sam might represent Bacchus, and his master bring to mind the sage and comic Silenus. Nothing is older than our modes of fun. Even in seeking the origin of Punch, investigators lose themselves groping in the dim light of the most remote antiquity. How readily the Roman satirists ran into caricature all their readers know, except those who take the amusing exaggerations of Juvenal and Horace as statements of fact. During the heat of our antislavery contest, Dryden’s trans- lation of the passage in Juvenal which pictures the luxurious Roman lady or- dering her slave to be put to death was used by the late Mr. W. H. Fry, in the New York Tribune^ with thrilling effect: “ Go drag that slave to death ! You reason, Why Should the poor innocent be doomed to die? What proofs? For, when man’s life is in debate, The judge can ne’er too long deliberate. Call’st thou that slave a man ? the wife" replies. Proved or unproved the crime, the villain dies. I have the sovereign power to save or kill. And give no other reason but my will.” This is evidently caricature. Not only is the whole of Juvenal’s sixth satire a series of the broadest exaggerations, but with regard to this particular passage we have evidence of its burlesque character in Horace (Satire HI., Book I.), where, wishing to give an example of impossible folly, he says, “ If a 24 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. man should crucify a slave for eating some of the fish which he had been ordered to take away, people in their senses would call him a madman.” Ju- venal exhibits the Roman matron of his period undergoing the dressing of her hair, giving the scene the same unmistakable character of caricature : “She hurries all her handmaids to the task; Her head alone will twenty dressers ask. Psecas, the chief, with breast and shoulders bare, Trembling, considers every sacred hair : If any straggler from his rank be found, A pinch must for the mortal sin compound. “With curls on curls they build her head before, And mount it with a formidable tower, A giantess she seems ; but look behind. And then she dwindles to the Pigmy kind. Duck-legged, short-waisted, such a dwarf she is That she must rise on tiptoe for a kiss. Meanwhile her husband’s whole estate is spent ; He may go bare, while she receives his rent,” The spirit of caricature speaks in these lines. There are passages of Hor- ace, too, in reading which the picture forms itself before the mind ; and the poet supplies the very words which caricaturists usually employ to make their meaning more obvious. In the third satire of the second book a caricature is exhibited to the mind’s eye without the intervention of pencil. We see the miser Opirnius, “ poor amid his hoards of gold,” who has starved himself into a lethargy ; his heir is scouring his coffers in triumph ; but the doctor devises a mode of rousing his patient. He orders a table to be brought into the room, upon which he causes the hidden bags of money to be poured out, and several persons to draw near as if to count it. Opirnius revives at this maddening spectacle, and the doctor urges him to strengthen himself by generous food, and so balk his rapacious heir. Do you hesitate ?” cries the doctor. “ Come, now, take this preparation of rice.” ‘‘How much did it cost?” asks the miser. “ Only a trifie.” “ But how much ?” “ Eightpence.” Opirnius, appalled at the price, whimpers, “Alas ! what does it matter whether I die of a disease, or by plunder and extortion?” Many similar examples will arrest the eye of one who turns over the pages of this master of satire. The great festival of the Roman year, the Saturnalia, which occurred in the latter half of December, we may almost say was consecrated to caricature, so fond were the Romans of every kind of ludicrous exaggeration. This festival, the merry Christmas of the Roman world, gave to the Christian festival many of its enlivening observances. During the Saturnalia the law courts and schools were closed; there was a general interchange of presents, and universal feasting; there were fantastic games, processions of masked figures in extrav- agant costumes, and religious sacrifices. For three days the slaves were not merely exempt from labor, but they enjoyed freedom of speech, even to the AMONG THE ROMANS. 25 abusing of their masters. In one of his satires, Horace gives us an idea of the manner in which slaves burlesqued their lords at this jocund time. He reports some of the remarks of his own slave, Davus, upon himself and his poetry. Davus, it is evident, had discovered the histrionic element in literature, and pressed it home upon his master. ‘‘You praise the simplicity of the ancient Romans; but if any god were to reduce you to their condition, you, the same man that wrote those fine things, would beg to be let off. At Rome you long for the country ; and when you are in the country, you praise the distant city to the skies. When you are not invited out to suj:)per, you extol your homely repast at home, and hug yourself that you are not obliged to drink with any body abroad. As if you ever went out upon compulsion ! But let Maecenas send you an invitation for early lam.p-light, what do we hear? Will no one bring the oil quicker? Does any body hear me? You bellow and storm with fury. You bought me for five hundred drachmas, but what if it turns out that you are the greater fool of the two ?” And thus the astute and witty Davus continues to ply his master with taunts and jeers and wise saws, till Horace, in fury, cries out, “ Where can I find a stone ?” Davus innocently asks, “ What need is there here of such a thing as a stone ?” “ Where can I get some javelins?” roars Horace. Upon which Davus quietly remarks, “This man is either mad or making verses.” Horace ends the colloquy by saying, “ If you do not this instant take yourself off. I’ll make a field-hand of you on my Sabine estate !” That Roman satirists employed the pencil and the brush as well as the sty- lus, and employed them freely and con- stantly, we should have surmised if the fact had not been discovered. Most of the caricatures of passing events speed- ily perish in all countries, because the materials usually employed in them are perishable. To preserve so slight a thing as a chalk sketch on a wall for eighteen centuries, accident must lend a hand, as it has in the instance now given. This picture was found in 1857 upon the wall of a narrow Roman street, which was closed up and shut out from the light of day about a.d. 100, to facilitate an extension of the imperial palace. The wall when uncovered was found scratch- ed all over with rude caricature draw- ^ p - . . Roman Wall Caeioature of a Christian. ings in the style oi the specimen given. This one immediately arrested attention, and the part of the wall on which it was drawn was carefully removed to the Collegio Romano, in the museum of 26 CARICATUKE AND COMIC ART. which it may now be inspected. The Greek words scrawled upon the picture may be translated thus: “Alexamenos is worshiping his god.” These words sufficiently indicate that the picture was aimed at some mem- ber, to us unknown, of the despised sect of the Christians. It is the only allu- sion to Christianity which has yet been found upon the walls of the Italian cit- ies; but it is extremely probable that the street artists found in the strange usages of the Christians a very frequent subject. We know well what the educated class of the Romans thought of the Christians, when they thought of them at all. They regarded them as a sect of extremely absurd Jews, insanely obstinate, and wholly contemptible. If the professors and students of Harvard and Yale should read in the papers that a new sect had arisen among the Mormons, more eccentric and ridiculous even than the Mormons themselves, the intelligence would excite in their minds about the same feeling that the courtly scholars of the Roman Empire mani- fest when they speak of the early Christians. Nothing astonished them so much as their ‘^obstinacy.” “A man,” says the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, “ ought to be ready to die when the time comes ; but this readiness should be the result of a calm judgment, and not be an exhibition of mere obstinacy, as with the Christians.” The younger Pliny, too, in his character of magistrate, was extremely perplexed with this same obstinacy. He tells us that when peo- ple were brought before him charged with being Christians, he asked them the question. Are you a Christian ? If they said they were, he repeated it twice, threatening them with punishment ; and if they persisted, he ordered them to be punished. If they denied the charge, he put them to the proof by requir- ing them to repeat after him an invocation to the gods, and to offer wine and incense to the emperor’s statue. Some of the accused, he says, reviled Christ ; and this he regarded as a sure proof of innocence, for people told him there was no forcing real Christians to do an act of that nature. Some of the ac- cused owned that they had been Christians once, three years ago or more, and some twenty years ago, but had returned to the worship of the gods. These, however, declared that, after all, there was no great offense in being Chris- tians. They had merely met on a regular day before dawn, addressed a form of prayer to Christ as to a divinity, and bound themselves by a solemn oath not to commit frnud, theft, or other immoral act, nor break their word, nor betray a trust ; after which they used to separate, then re-assemble, and eat together a harmless meal. All this seemed innocent enough; but Pliny was not satisfied. judged it necessary,” he writes to the emperor, “ to try to get at the real truth by put- ting to the torture two female slaves who were said to officiate at their relig- ious rites; but all I could discover was evidence of an absurd and extravagant superstition.” So he refers the whole matter to the emperor, telling him that the ‘^contagion” is not confined to the cities, but has spread into the villages and into the country. Still, he thought it could be checked : nay, it had been AMONG THE KOMANS. 27 checked; for the temples, which had been almost abandoned, were beginning to be frequented again, and there was also a general demand for victims for sacrifice, which till lately had found few purchasers.” The wise Trajan ap- proved the course of his representative. He tells him, however, not to go out of his way to look for Christians ; but if any were brought before him, why, of course he must inflict the penalty unless they proved their innocence by in- voking the gods. The remains of Roman literature have nothing so interest- ing for us as these two letters of Pliny and Trajan of the year 103. We may rest assured that the walls of every Roman town bore testimony to the con- tempt and aversion in which the Christians were held, particularly by those who dealt in ^Sdctims” and served the altars — a very numerous and important class throughout the ancient world. 28 CARICATUEE AND COMIC AKT. CHAPTER II AMONG THE GREEKS. REECE was the native home of all that we now call art. Upon looking over the two hundred pages of art gossip in the writings of the elder Pliny, most of which relates to Greece, we are ready to ask. Is there one thing in painting or drawing, one school, device, style, or method, known to us which was not familiar to the Greeks? They had their Landseers — men great in dogs and all animals; they had artists renowned in the “Dutch style” ages before the Dutch ceased to be amphibious — artists who painted barber-shop interiors to a hair, and donkeys eating cabbages correct to a fibre; they had cattle pieces as famous throughout the classic world as Rosa Bonheur’s “Horse Fair” is now in ours; they had Rosa Bonheurs of their own — famous women, a list of whose names Pliny gives; they had portrait-painters too good to be fashionable, and portrait-painters too fashionable to be good ; they had artists who excelled in flesh, others great in form, others excellent in composition ; they took plaster casts of dead faces; they had varnishers and picture-clean- ers. NToted pictures were spoken of as having lost their charm through an unskillful cleaner. They had their “ life school,” and used it as artists now do, borrowing from each model her special beauty. Zeuxis, as Pliny records, was so scrupulously careful in the execution of a religious painting that “ he had the young maidens of the place stripped for examination, and selected five of them, in order to adopt in his picture the most commendable points in the form of each.” And we may be sure that every maiden of them felt it to be an honor thus to contribute perfection to a Juno, executed by the first artist of the world, which was to adorn the temple of her native city. played with art as men are apt to play with the implements of which they are masters. Sosus, the great artist in mosaics, executed at Pergamus the pavement of a banqueting-room which presented the appearance of a floor strewed with crumbs, fragments and scraps of a feast, not yet swept away. It was renowned as the “ Unswept Hall of Pergamus.” And what a pleasing story is that of the contest between Zeuxis and his rival, Parrhasius ! On the day of trial Zeuxis hung in the place of exhibition a painting of grapes, and Parrhasius a picture of a curtain. Some birds flew to the grapes of Zeuxis, and began to pick at them. The artist, overjoyed at so striking a proof of his success, turned haughtily to his rival, and demanded that the curtain should be AMONG THE GREEKS. 29 Burlesque op Jupiter’s Wooing op the Princess Alomena. drawn aside and the picture revealed. But the curtain teas the picture. He owned himself surpassed, since he had only deceived birds, but Parrhasius had deceived Zeuxis. Could comic artists and caricatur- ists be wanting in Athens? Strange to say, it was the gods and goddesses whom the caricaturists of Greece as well as the comic writers chiefly select- ed for ridicule. All their works have perished except a few specimens pre- served upon pottery. We show one from a Greek vase, a rude burlesque of one of Jupiter’s love adventures, the father of gods and men being accom- panied by a Mercury ludicrously unlike the light and agile messenger of tlie gods. The story goes that the Prin- cess Alcmena, though betrothed to a lover, vowed her hand to the man who should avenge her slaughtered broth- ers. Jupiter assumed the form and face of the lover, and, pretending to have avenged her brothers’ death, gained admittance. Pliny describes a celebrated burlesque painting of the birth of Bacchus from Jupiter’s thigh, in which the god of the gods was represented wearing a woman’s cap, in a highly ridicu- lous posture, crying out, and surrounded by goddesses in the character of mid- wives. The best specimen of Greek caricature that has come down to us burlesques no less serious a theme than the great oracle of Apollo at Delphos, given on page 30. This remarkable work owes its preservation to the imperishable nature of the material on which it was executed. It was copied from a large vessel used by the Greeks and Romans for holding vinegar, a conspicuous object upon their tables, and therefore inviting ornament. What audacity to bur- lesque an oracle to which kings and conquerors humbly repaired for direction, and which all Greece held in awe ! Croesus propitiated this oracle by the gift of a solid golden lion as large as life, and the Phocians found in its coffers, and carried off, a sum equal to nearly eleven millions of dollars in gold. Such was the general belief in its divine inspiration ! But in this picture we see the oracle, the god, and those who consult them, all exhibited in the broadest bur- lesque : Apollo as a quack doctor on his platform, with bag, bow, and cap; Chiron, old and blind, struggling up the steps to consult him, aided by Apollo at his head and a friend pushing behind ; the nymphs surveying the scene from the heights of Parnassus ; and the manager of the spectacle, who looks on from below. How strange is this ! 30 CARICATUKE AND COMIC ART. But the Greek literature is also full of this wild license. Lucian depicts the gods in council ludicrously discussing the danger they were in from the philosophers. Jupiter says, “If men are once persuaded that there are no gods, or, if there are gods, that we take no’ care of human affairs, we shall have no more gifts or victims from them, but may sit and starve on Olympus with- out festivals, holidays, sacrifices, or any pomp or ceremonies whatever.” The wdiole debate is in this manner, and is at the same time a burlesque of the political discussions at the Athenian mass-meetings. What can be more ludi- crous than the story of Mercury visiting Athens in disguise in order to dis- cover the estimation in which he was held among mortals? He enters the shop of a dealer in images, where he inquires the price first of a Jupiter, then Gkeek Caricature of tue Oracle of Apollo at Delpuos. of an Apollo, and, lastly, with a blush, of a Mercury. “ Oh,” says the dealer, “if you take the Jupiter and the Apollo, I will throw the Mercury in.” Xor did the witty, rollicking Greeks confine their satire to the immortals. Of the famous mirth -provokers of the world, such as Cervantes, Ariosto, Moliere, Rabelais, Sterne, Voltaire, Thackeray, Dickens, the one that had most power to produce mere physical laughter, power to shake the sides and cause ])eople to roll helpless upon the floor, was the Greek dramatist Aristophanes. The force of the comic can no farther go than he has carried it in some of the scenes of his best comedies. Even to us, far removed as we are, in taste as well as in time, from that wonderful Athens of his, they are still irresistibly di- verting. This master of mirth is never so effective as when he is turning into AMONG THE GREEKS. 31 ridicule the philosophers and poets for whose sake Greece is still a dear, ven- erable name to all the civilized w^orld. In his comedy of “The Frogs” he sends Bacchus down into Hades with every circumstance of riotous burlesque, and there he exhibits the two great tragic poets, ^schylus and Euripides, standing opposite each other, and competing for the tragic throne by reciting verses in which the mannerism of each, as well as familiar passages of their plays, is broadly burlesqued. ^N’othing in literature can be found more ludicrous or less becoming, unless we look for it in Aristophanes himself. In his play of “The Clouds” occurs his caricature of Socrates, of infinite absurdity, but not ludicrous to us, because we read it as part of the story of a sublime and affect- ing martyrdom. It fills our minds with wonder to think that a people among whom a Socrates could have been formed could have borne to see him thus profaned. A rogue of a father, plagued by an extravagant son, repairs to the school of Socrates to learn the arts by which creditors are argued out of their just claims in courts of justice. Upon reaching the place, the door of the “ Thinking Shop ” opens, and behold ! a caricature all ready for the artist’s pencil. The pupils are discovered with their heads fixed to the floor, their backs uppermost, and Socrates hanging from the ceiling in a basket. The vis- itor, transfixed with wonder, questions his companion. He asks why they pre- sent that portion of their bodies to heaven. “It is getting taught astrono- my alone by itself.” “And who is this man in the basket?” “Himself.” “Who’s Himself?” “Socrates!” The visitor at length addresses the master by a diminutive, as though he had said, “ Socrates, dear little Socrates.” The philosopher speaks: “Why callest thou me, thou creature of a day?” “Tell me, first, I beg, what you are doing up there.” “ I am walking in the air, and speculating about the sun ; for I should never have rightly learned celestial things if I had not suspended the intellect, and subtly mingled Thought with its kindred Air.” All this is in the very spirit of caricature. Half of Aris- tophanes is caricature. In characterizing the light literature of Greece we are reminded of Juvenal’s remark upon the Greek people, “All Greece is a comedian.” 32 CARICATUEE AND COMIC ART. CHAPTER III. AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. E gyptian art was old when Grecian art was young, and it remained crude when the art of Greece had reached its highest development. But not the less did it delight in caricature and burlesque. In the Egyptian collec- tion belonging to the New York Historical Society there is a specimen of the Egyptians’ favorite kind of burlesque picture which dates back three thousand years, but which stands out more clearly now upon its slab of limestone than we can engrave it here. An Egyptian Caiuoature. Dr, Abbott, who brought this specimen from Thebes, interpreted it to be a representation of a lion seated upon a throne, as king, receiving from a fox, personating a high-priest, an offering of a goose and a fan. It is probably a burlesque of a well-known picture ; for in one of the Egyptian papyri in the British Museum there is a drawing of a lion and unicorn playing chess, which is a manifest caricature of a j>icture frequently repeated upon the ancient mon- uments. It was from Egypt, then, that the classic nations caught this childish fancy of ridiculing the actions of men by picturing animals performing similar ones; and it is surprising to note how fond the Egyptian artists were of this simple device. On the same papyrus there are several other interesting speci- mens: a lion on his hind-legs engaged in laying out as a mummy the dead body of a hoofed animal ; a tiger or wild cat driving a flock of geese to mar- AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. 33 ket; another tiger carrying a hoe on one shoulder and a bag of seed on the other; an animal playing on a double pipe, and driving before him a herd of small stags, like a shepherd ; a hippopotamus washing his hands in a tall wa- ter-jar; an animal on a throne, with another behind him as a fan-bearer, and a third presenting him with a bouquet. No place was too sacred for such play- ful delineations. In one of the royal sepulchres at Thebes, as Kenrick relates, there is a picture of an ass and a lion singing, accompanying themselves on the phorminx and the harp. There is also an elaborate burlesque of a battle piece, in which a fortress is attacked by rats, and defended by cats, which are visible on the battlements. Some rats bring a ladder to the walls and prepare to scale them, while others, armed witli spears, shields, and bows, protect the assailants. One rat of enormous size, in a chariot drawn by dogs, has pierced several cats with arrows, and is swinging round his battle-axe in exact imita- tion of Raineses, in a serious picture, dealing destruction on his enemies. On a papyrus at Turin there is a representation of a cat with a shepherd’s crook watching a dock of geese, while a cynocephalus near by plays upon the flute. Of this class of burlesques the most interesting example, perhaps, is the one annexed, representing a Soul doomed to return to its earth- ly home in the form of a pig. This picture, which is of such antiquity that it was an object of curiosity to the Ro- mans and the Greeks, is part .. of the decoration of a king’s a Conbemned Soul, Egyptian Caeicatdee. tomb. In the original, Osiris, the august judge of departed spirits, is repre- sented on his throne, near the stern of the boat, waving away the Soul, which he has just weighed in his unerring scales and found wanting; while close to the shore a man hews away the ground, to intimate that all communication is cut off between the lost spirit and the abode of the blessed. The animals that execute the stern decree are the dog-headed monkeys, sacred in the mythology of Egypt. That the ancient Egyptians were a jovial people who sat long at the wine, we might infer from the caricatures which have been discovered in Egypt, if Egyptian Sekvants conveying THEIR Masters from a Carouse. we did not know it from other sources of information. Repre- sentations have been , found of every part of the process of wine - making, from the planting of the vineyard to the stor- 3 34 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. ing-away of the wine-jars. In the valuable works of Sir Gardner Wilkinson* many of these curious pictures are given : the vineyard and its trellis-work ; men frightening away the birds with slings ; a vineyard with a water-tank for irrigation ; the grape harvest ; baskets full of grapes covered with leaves ; kids browsing upon the vines; trained monkeys gathering grapes; the wine-press in- operation ; men pressing grapes by the natural process of treading ; pour- ing the wine into jars; and rows of jars put away for future use. The same laborious author favors us with ancient Egyptian caricatures which serve to show that wine was a creature as capable of abuse thirty centuries ago as it is now. Pictures of similar character are not unfrequent upon the ancient frescoes, and many of them are far more extravagant than this, exhibiting men dancing wildly, standing upon their heads, and riotously fighting. From Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s disclosures we may reasonably infer that the arts of debauchery have received little addition during the last three thousand years. Even the seductive cocktail is not modern. The ancient Egyptians imbibed stimulants to excite an appetite for wine, and munched the biting cabbage-leaf for the same purpose. Beer in several varieties was known to them also ; veritable beer, made of barley and a bitter herb ; beer so excellent that the dainty Greek travelers commended it as a drink only inferior to wine. Even the Egyptian ladies did not always resist the temptation of so many modes of intoxication. Nor did they escape the cari- caturist’s pencil. This unfortunate lady, as Sir Gardner conjectures, after indulging in potations deep of the renowned Egyptian wine, had been suddenly overtaken by the consequences, and had called for assistance too late. Egyptian satirists did not spare the ladies, and they aim- ed their shafts at the same foi- bles that have called forth so many efforts of pencil and pen in later times. Whenever, indeed, we look closely into ancient life, we are struck with the similarity of the daily routine to that of our own time. Every detail of social existence is imperishably re- corded upon the monuments of ancient Egypt, even to the tone and style and mishaps of a fashionable party. We see the givers of the entertainment, the master and mistress of the mansion, seated side by side upon a sofa; the Too Late with the Babin. * “A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians,” by Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, 2 vols. Harper & Brothers, 1854. AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. 35 guests coming up as they arrive to salute them; the musicians and dancers bowing low to them before beginning to perform ; a pet monkey, a dog, or a gazelle tied to the leg of the sofa; the youngest child of the family sitting on the floor by its mother’s side, or upon its father’s knee ; the ladies sitting in groups, conversing upon the deathless, inexhaustible subject of dress, and showing one another their trinkets. Sir Gardner Wilkinson gives us also the pleasing information that it was thought a pretty compliment for one guest to offer another a flower from his bouquet, and that the guests endeavored to gratify their entertainers by point- ing out to one another, with expressions of admiration, the tasteful knickknacks, the boxes of carved wood or ivory, the vases, the elegant light tables, the chairs, ottomans, cushions, carpets, and furniture with which the apartment was pro- vided. This too transparent flattery could not escape such inveterate carica- turists as the Egyptian artists. In a tomb at Thebes may be seen a ludicrous representation of scenes at a party where several of the guests had been lost in rapturous admiration of the objects around them. A young man, either from awkwardness or from having gone too often to the wine -jar, had reclined against a wooden column placed in the centre of the room to support a tempo- rary ornament. There is a crash ! The ornamental structure falls upon some of the absorbed guests. Ladies have recourse to the immortal privilege of their sex — they scream. All is confusion. Uplifted hands ward off the fall- ing masses. In a few moments, when it is discovered that no one is hurt, peace is restored, and all the company converse merrily over the incident. It is strange to find such pictures in a tomb. But it seems as if death and funerals and graves, with their elaborate paraphernalia, were provocative of mirthful delineation. In one noted royal tomb there is a representation of the funeral procession, part of which was evidently designed to excite merriment. The Ethiopians who follow in the train of the mourning queen have their hair plaited in most fantastic fashion, and their tunics of leopard’s skin are so ar- ranged that a preposterously enormous tail hangs down behind for the next man to step upon. One of the extensive colored plates of Sir Gardner Wilkin- son’s larger work presents to our view a solemn and stately procession of fu- neral barges crossing the Lake of the Dead at Thebes on its way to the place of burial. The first boat contains the coffin, decorated with flowers, a high- priest burning incense before a table of offerings, and the female relatives of the deceased lamenting their loss ; two barges are filled with mourning friends, one containing only women and the other only men ; two more are occupied by professional persons — the undertaker’s assistants, as we should call them — em- ployed to carry offerings, boxes, chairs, and other funeral objects. It was in drawing one of these vessels that the artist could not refrain from putting in a little fun. One of the barges having grounded upon the shore, the vessel be- hind comes into collision with her, upsetting a table upon the oarsmen and causing much confusion. It is not improbable that the picture records an in- cident of that particular funeral. 36 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. CHAPTER IV. AMONG THE HINDOOS. I F we go farther back into antiquity, it is India which first arrests and long- est absorbs our attention — India, fecund mother of tradition, the source of almost all the rites, beliefs, and observances of the ancient nations. When we visit the collections of the India House, the British Museum, the Mission Rooms, or turn over the startling pages of “The Hindu Pantheon” of Major Edward Moor, we are ready to exclaim. Here all is caricature ! This brazen image, for example, of a partly naked man with an ele]3hant’s head and trunk, seated upon a huge rat, and feeding himself with his trunk from a bowl held in his hand — surely this is caricature. By no means. It is an image of the most popular of the Hindoo deities — Ganesa, god of prudence and policy, in- voked at the beginning of all enterprises, and over whose head is written the sacred word Aum^ never uttered by a Hindoo except with awe and veneration. If a man begins to build a house, he calls on Ganesa, and sets up an image of him near the spot. Mile-stones are fashioned in his likeness, and he serves as the road-side god, even if the pious peasants who place him where two roads cross can only afford the rudest resemblance to an elephant’s head daubed with oil and red ochre. Rude as it may be, a passing traveler will occasionally hang upon it a wreath of flowers. Major Moor gives us a hideous picture of Maha- Kala, with huge mouth and enormous protruding tongue, squat, naked, upon the ground, and holding up a large sword. This preposterous figure is still farther removed from the burlesque. It is the Hindoo mode of representing Eternity^ whose vast insatiate maw devours men, cities, kingdoms, and will at length swallow the universe ; then all the crowd of inferior deities, and finally itself, leaving only Bralim, the One Eternal, to inhabit the infinite void. Hun- dreds of such revolting crudities meet the eye in every extensive Indian col- lection. But the element of fun and burlesque is not wanting in the Hindoo Pan- theon. Krishna is the jolly Bacchus, the Don Juan, of the Indian deities. Behold him on his travels mounted upon an elephant, which is formed of the bodies of the obliging damsels who accompany him ! There is no end to the tales related of the mischievous, jovial, irrepressible Krishna. The ladies who go with him everywhere, a countless multitude, are so accommodating as to wreathe and twist themselves into the form of any AMONG THE HINDOOS. 37 creature he may wish to ride ; sometimes into that of a horse, sometimes into that of a bird. In other pictures he appears riding in a palanquin, which is likewise composed of girls, and the bearers are girls also. In the course of one advent- ure, being in great dan- ger from the wrath of his numerous enemies, he created an enormous snake, in whose vast interior his flocks, his herds, his followers, and himself found ref- uge. At a festival held in his honor, which was attended by a great number of damsels, he suddenly appeared, in Keisuna’s Attendants assuming the Form of a Bird, 38 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. Kkishna in his Palanquin. the midst of the company and proposed a dance ; and, that each of them might be provided with a partner, he divided himself into as many complete and captivating Krishnas as there were ladies. One summer, when he was pass- ing the hot season on the sea -shore with his retinue of ladies, his musical comrade, Nareda, hinted to him that, since he had such a multitude of wives, it would be no great stretch of generosity to spare one to a poor musician who had no wife at all. “ Court any one you please,” said the merry god. So IsTareda went wooing from house to house, but in every house he found Krishna perfectly domesticated, the ever -attentive husband, and the lady quite sure that she had him all to herself. Kareda continued his quest until he had visited precisely sixteen thousand and eight houses, in each and all of which, at one and the same time, Krishna was the established lord. Then he gave it up. One of the pictures which illustrate the endless biography of this entertaining deity represents him going through the cere- mony of marriage with a bear, both squatting upon a carpet in the prescribed attitude, the bear grinning satisfaction, two bears in attendance standing on their hind -feet, and two priests blessing the union. This picture is more spirited, is more like art, than any other yet copied from Hindoo originals. To this day, as the missionaries report, the people of India are excessively addicted to every kind of jesting which is within their capacity, and delight especially in all the monstrous comicalities of their mythology. ~No matter how serious an impression a speaker may have made upon a village group, let him but use a word in a manner which suggests a ludicrous image or ridic- ulous pun, and the assembly at once breaks up in laughter, not to be gathered again. O AMONG THE HINDOOS. 39 In late years, those of the inhabitants of India who read the language of their conquerors have had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with their humor. Wherever a hundred English officers are gathered, there is the posr sibility of an illustrated comic periodical, and, accordingly, we find one such in several of the garrisoned places held by the English in remote parts of the world. Calcutta, as the Athenmum informs us, “ has its Punchy or Indian Charivari^'’ which is not unworthy of its English namesake. 40 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. CHAPTER y. RELIGIOUS CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. R. ROBERT TOMES, American consul, a few years ago, at the French city of Rheims, describes very agreeably the impression made upon his mind by the grand historic cathedral of that ancient place.* Filled with a sense of the majestic presence of the edifice, he approached one of the chief portals, to find it crusted with a most uncouth semi-burlesque representation, cut in stone, of the Last Judgment. The trump has sounded, and the Lord from a lofty throne is pronouncing doom upon the risen as they are brought up to the judgment -seat by the angels. Below him are two rows of the dead just rising from their graves, extending to the full width of the great door. Upoil many of the faces there is an expression of amazement, which the artist apparently designed to be comic, and several of the attitudes are ex- tremely absurd and ludicrous. Some have managed to push off the lid of their touibs a little way, and are peeping out through the narrow aperture, others have just got their heads above the surface of the ground, and others are sitting up in their graves; some have one leg out, some are springing into the air, and some are running, as if in wild fright, for their lives. Though the usual expression upon the faces is one of astonishment, yet this is varied. Some are rubbing their eyes as if startled from a deep sleep, but not yet aware of the cause of alarm; others are utterly bewildered, and hesitate to leave their resting-place ; some leap out in mad excitement, and others hurry off as if fear- ing to be again consigned to the tomb. An angel is leading a cheerful com- pany of popes, bishops, and kings toward the Saviour, while a hideous demon, with a mouth stretching from ear to ear, is dragging off a number of the con- demned toward the devil, who is seen stirring up a huge caldron boiling and bubbling with naked babies, dead before baptism. On another part of the wall is a carved representation of the vices which led to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. These were so monstrously obscene that the authori- ties of the cathedral, in deference to the modern sense of decency, have caused them to be partly cut away by the chisel. The first cut on the next page is an example of burlesque ornament. The artist apparently intended to indicate another termination of the interview * “The Champagne Country, ”p. 34, by Robert Tomes, London, 1867. RELIGIOUS CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 41 than the one recorded by ^sop between the wolf and the stork. The old cathedral at Strasburg, destroyed a hun- dred years ago, was long renowned for its sculptured burlesques. We give two of several capitals exhibiting the sacred rites of the Church travestied by animals. It marks the change in the feelings and manners of men that, three hundred years after those Strasburg capitals were carved, with the sanction of the chapter, a book- seller, for only exhibiting an engraving of some of them in his shop window, was con- victed of having committed a crime ^^most scandalous and injurious to religion.” His sentence was “ to make the amende hono- rable^ naked to his shirt, a rope round his neck, holding in his hand a lighted wax-candle weighing two pounds, before the principal door of the cathedral, whither he will be conducted by the execu- tioner, and there, on his knees, with uncovered head,” confess his fault and ask pardon of God and the king. The pictures were to be burned before his eyes, and then, after paying all the costs of the prosecution, he was to go into eter- nal banishment. Other American consuls besides Mr. Tomes, and multitudes of American Capital in the Aijtun Cathedeal. Capitals in the Stkasburg Cathedeal, a.d, 1300. citizens not so fortunate as to study mediaeval art at their country’s expense, have been profoundly puzzled by this crust of crude burlesque on ecclesias- tical architecture. The objects in Europe which usually give to a susceptible American his first and his last rapture are the cathedrals, those venerable enig- mas, the glory and shame of the Middle Ages, which present so complete a 42 CARICATUKE AND COMIC ART. contrast to the toy- temples, new, cabinet-finished, upholstered, sofa-seated, of American cities, not to mention the consecrated barns, white-painted and tree- less, of the rural districts. And the cathedrals are a contrast to every thing in Europe also, if only from their prodigious magnitude. A cathedral town generally stands in a valley, through which a small river winds. When the visitor from any of the encompassing hills gets his first view of the compact little city, the cathedral looms up in the midst thereof so vast, so tall, that the disproportion to the surrounding structures is sometimes even ludicrous, like a huge black elephant with a flock of small brown sheep huddling about its feet. But when at last the stranger stands in its shadow, he finds the spell of its presence irresistible ; and it is a spell which the lapse of time not unfrequently strengthens, till he is conscious of a tender, strong attachment to the edifice, which leads him to visit it at unusual times, to try the effect upon it of moon- light, of storm, of dawn and twilight, of mist, rain, and snow. He finds him- self going to it for solace and rest. On setting out upon a journey, he makes a detour to get another last look, and, returning, goes, valise in hand, to see his cathedral before he sees his companions. Many American consuls have had this experience, have truly fallen in love wdth the cathedral of their station, and remained faithful to it for years after their return, like Mr. Howells, whose heart and pen still return to Venice and San Carlo, so much to the delight of his readers. This charm appears to lie in the mere grandeur of the edifice as a work of art, for we observe it to be most potent over persons who are least in sympa- thy with the feeling which cathedrals embody. Very religious people are as likely to be repelled as attracted by them ; and, indeed, in England and Scot- land there are large numbers of Dissenters who have avoided entering them all their lives on principle. It is Americans who enjoy them most; for they see in them a most captivating assemblage of novelties — vast magnitude, solid- ity of structure only inferior to nature’s own work, venerable age, harmonious and solemn magnificence — all combined in an edifice which can not, on any principle of utility, justify its existence, and does not pay the least fraction of its expenses. Little do they know personally of the state of feeling which made successive generations of human beings willing to live in hovels and inhale pollution in order that they might erect those wondrous piles. The cost of maintaining them — of which cost the annual expenditure in money is the least important part — does not come home to us. We abandon ourselves without reserve to the enjoyment of stupendous works wholly new to our ex- perience. It is Americans, also, who are most bafiled by the attempt to exjflain the contradiction between the noble proportions of these edifices and the decora- tions upon some of their walls. How could it have been, w^e ask in amaze- ment, that minds capable of conceiving the harmonies of these fretted roofs, these majestic colonnades, these symmetrical towers, could also have permitted KELIGIOUS CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 43 their surfaces to be profaned by sculptures so absurd and so abominable that by no artifice of cir- cumlocution can an idea of some of them be conveyed in print- able words? In close proximity to statues of the Virgin, and in chapels whose every line is a line of beau- ty, we know not how to interpret what M. Champfleury truly styles ‘‘ deviltries and obscenities unnamable, vice and pas- sion depicted with gross brutality, luxury which has thrown off every disguise, and shows itself naked, bestial, and shameless.” And these mediaeval artists availed themselves of the accumulated buffooneries and monstrosities of all the previous ages. The gross conceptions of India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome ap- pear in the ornamentation of Christian temples along with shapes hideous or grotesque which may have been original. Even the oaken stalls in which the officiating priests rested during the prolonged ceremonials of festive days are in many cathedrals covered with comic carving, some of which is pure carica- ture. A rather favorite subject was the one shown above, a whipping-scene in a school, carved upon an ancient stall in an English cathedral. It is not certain, however, that the artist had any comic intention in en- graving this picture of retributive justice, with which the children of former ages were so familiar. It was a standard subject. The troops of Flemish carvers who roamed over Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, offer- ing their services wherever a church was to be decorated, carried with them port-folios of stock subjects, of which this was one. Other carvings are unmis- takable caricatures: a monk caught making love to a nun, a wife beating her husband, an aged philosopher ridden by a woman, monkeys wearing bishops’ mitres, barbers drawing teeth in ludicrous attitudes, and others less describa- ble. In the huge cathe- dral of English Win- chester, which abounds in curious relics of the Middle Ages, there is a series of painted panels in the chapel of Our Lady, one of which is ^ „ an evident caricature of Feom a Manubokipt op tub Tuieteentu Centtjey. the devil. He is hav- ing his portrait painted, and the Virgin Mary is near the artist, urging him to 44 CAKICATURE AND COMIC ART. paint him blacker and uglier than usual. The devil does not like this, and wears an expression similar to that of a rogue in a modern police station who objects to being photographed. Often, however, in these old pictures the devil is master of the situation, and exhibits contempt for his adversaries in indecorous ways. If we turn from the sacred edifices to the sacred books used in them — those richly illuminated missals, the books of “ Hours,” the psalters, and other works of devotion — we are amazed beyond expression to discover upon their brilliant pages a similar taste in ornamentation. The school scene on the pre- vious page, in which monkey-headed children are playing school, dates back to the thirteenth century. Burlesque tournaments, in the same taste, often figure in the prayer-books among representations of the Madonna, the crucifixion, and scenes in the lives of the patriarchs. The gallant hare tilts at the fierce cock of the barn-yard, or sly Reynard parries the thrust of the clumsy bear. One of the most curious relics of those religious centuries is a French prayer-book preserved in the British Museum, where it was discovered and described by Mr. Malcolm, one of the first persons who ever attempted to elu- cidate the subject of caricature. Besides the “Hours of the Blessed Virgin,” it contains various prayers and collects, the office for the dead, and some psalms, all in Latin. It is illustrated by several brilliantly colored, well-drawn, but most grotesque and incomprehensible figures, designed, as has been con- jectured, to “ expose the wicked and inordinate lives of the clergy, who were hated by the manuscript writers as taking away much of their business.” This was the explanation given of these remarkable pictures to the trustees of the Museum by the collector of whom they bought the volume. Several of them are submitted to the reader’s ingenuity on the following page. Besides the specimens given, there is a wolf growling at a snake twisting itself round its hind-leg ; there is “ a grinning-match ” between a human head on an animal’s body and a boar’s head on a monkey’s body; there is a creature like a pea-hen, with two bodies, one neck, and two dogs’ heads ; there is an ani- mal with four bodies and one head ; there is a bearded man’s face and a wom- an’s on one neck, and the body has no limbs, but an enormous tail ; there is a turret, on the top of which a monkey sits, and a savage below is aiming an ar- EELIGIOUS CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 45 FEOii A Fkenou Prayek-book of the Thirteenth Century, in the British Museum. row at him. In the British Mnsenra — that iinequaled repository of all that is curious and rare — there is the famous and splendid psalter of Richard II., con- taining many strange pictures in the taste of the period. On the second page, for example, along with two pictures of the kind usual in Catholic works of devotion, there is a third which represents an absurd combat within lists be- tween the court-fool and the court-giant. The fool, who. is also a dwarf, is belaboring the giant with an instrument like those hollow clubs used in our pantomimes when the clown is to be whacked with great violence. The giant shrinks from the blows, and the king, pointing at the dwarf, seems to say, Go it, little one ; I bet upon you."’'’ Mr. Malcolm, who copied this picture from the original, where, he says, it is most superbly finished, interprets it to be a caricature of the famous combat between David and Goliath in the presence of King Saul and his court. In the same mass -book there is a highly ridiculous representation of Jonah on 46 CARICATUKE AND COMIC ART. board ship, with a blue Boreas with cheeks puffed out raising the tempest, and a black devil clawing the sail from the yard. In selecting a few of the more innocent pictures from the prayer-book of Queen Mary, daughter of Henry VIII. of England, Mr. Malcolm gives expression to his amazement at the char- acter of the drawings, which he dared not exhibit to a British public ! Was this book, he asks, made on purpose for the queen? Was it a gift or a pur- chase ? But whether she bought or whether she accepted it, he thinks she must have ‘^delighted in ludicrous and improper ideas,” or else ‘‘her inclina- tion for absurdity and caricature conquered even her religion, in defense of which she spread ruin and desolation through her kingdom.” As the reader has now before his eyes a sufficient number of specimens of the grotesque ecclesiastical ornamentation of the period under consideration, he is prepared to consider the question which has perplexed so many students be- sides Mr. Malcolm: How are we to account for these indecencies in places and books consecrated to devotion? A voice from the Church of the fifth century gives us the hint of the true answer. “You ask me,” writes St. Nilus to Olympiodorus of Alexandria, “ if it is becoming in us to cover the walls of the sanctuary with representations of animals of all kinds, so that we see upon them snares set, hares, goats, and other beasts in full flight before hunters ex- hausting themselves in taking and pursuing them with their dogs; and, again, upon the bank of a river, all kinds of fish caught by fishermen. I answer you that this is ^'puerility with which to amuse the eyes of the faithfuir'^ To one who is acquainted with the history and genius of the Roman Catholic Church, this very simple explanation of the incongruity is sufficient. The policy of that wonderful organization in every age has been to make every possible con- cession to ignorance that is compatible with the continuance of ignorance. It Quoted in Chiimpfleury, p. 7, from “ Maxima Bibliotheca Patnim,” vol. xxvii., p. 323. RELIGIOUS CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 47 has sought always to amuse, to edify, to moralize, and console ignorance, but never to enlighten it. The mind that planned the magnificent cathedral at Rheims, of which Mr. Tomes was so much enamored, and the artists who designed the glorious San Carlo that kindled rapture in the poetical mind of Mr. Howells, did indeed permit the scandalous burlesques that disfigure their walls; but they only permitted them. It was a concession which they had to grant to the ignorant multitude whose unquestioning faith alone made these enormous structures possible. We touch here the question insinuated by Gibbon in his first volume, where he plainly enough intimates his belief that Christianity was a lapse into barbarism rather than a deliverance from it. Plausible arguments in the same direction have been frequently made since Gibbon’s time by comparing the best of Roman civilization with the worst of the self- torturing monkery of the early Christian centuries. In a debate on this subject in Hew York not long since between a member of the bar and a doctor of divinity, both of them gentlemen of learning, ability, and candor, the lawyer pointed to the famous picture of St. Jerome (a.d. 375), naked, grasping a human skull, his magnificent head showing vast capacity paralyzed by an absorbing terror, and exclaimed, “Behold the lapse from Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Seneca, the Plinys, and the Antonines !” The answer made by the clergyman was, “ That is ?io( Christianity ! In the Christian books no hint of that, no utterance justifying that, can be found.” Perhaps neither of the disputants succeeded in express- ing the whole truth on this point. The vaunted Roman civilization was, in truth, only a thin crust upon the surface of the empire, embracing but one small class in each province, the people everywhere being ignorant slaves. Into that inert mass of servile ignorance Christianity enters, and receives from it the interpretation which ignorance always puts upon ideas advanced or new, interpreting it as hungry French peasants in 1792 and South Carolina negroes in 1870 interpreted modern ideas of human rights. The new leaven set the mass heaving and swelling until the crust was broken to pieces. The civiliza- tion of Marcus AurelHs was lost. From parchment scrolls poetry and philos- ophy were obliterated, that the sheets might be used for prayers and medita- tions. The system of which St. Jerome was the product and representative was a baleful mixture, of which nine -tenths were Hindoo and the remaining tenth was half Christian and half Plato. The true inference to be drawn is that no civilization is safe, nor even gen- uine, until it embraces all classes of the community; and the promulgation of Christianity was the first step toward that. As the centuries wore on, the best of the clergy grew restive under this monstrous style of ornamentation. “What purpose,” wrote St. Bernard,- about A.D. 1140, “serve in our cloisters, under the eyes of the brothers and during their pious readings, those ridiculous monstrosities, those prodigies of beauties deformed or deformities made beautiful? Why those nasty monkeys, those 48 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. furious lions, those monstrous centaurs, those animals half human, those spot- ted tigers, those soldiers in combat, those huntsmen sounding the horn ? Here a single head is fitted to several bodies ; there upon a single body there are several heads ; now a quadruped has a serpent’s tail, and now a quadruped’s head figures upon a fish’s body. Sometimes it is a monster with the fore parts of a horse and the hinder parts of a goat; again an animal with horns ends with the hind quarters of a horse. Everywhere is seen a variety of strange forms, so numerous and so odd that the brothers occupy themselves more in deciphering the marbles than their books, and pass whole days in studying all those figures much more attentively than the divine law. Great God ! if you are not ashamed of such useless things, how, at least, can you avoid regretting the enormity of their cost?” How, indeed ! The honest abb6 was far from seeing the symbolical mean- ing in those odd figures which modern investigators have imagined. He was simply ashamed of the ecclesiastical caricatures ; but a century or two later ingenious writers began to cover them with the fig-leaves of a symbolical in- terpretation. According to the ingenious M. Durand, who wrote (a.d. 1459) thirty years before Luther was born, every part of a cathedral has its spiritual meaning. The stones of which it is built represent the faithful, the lime that forms part of the cement is an emblem of fervent charity, the sand mingled with it signifies the actions undertaken by us for the good of our brethren, and the water in which these ingredients blend is the symbol of the Holy Ghost. The hideous shapes sculptured upon the portals are, of course, malign spirits flying from the temple of the Lord, and seeking refuge in the very substance of the icalls! The great length of the temple signifies the tireless patience with which the faithful support the ills of this life in expectation of their celestial home ; its breadth symbolizes that large and noble love which embraces both the friends and the enemies of God ; its height typifies the hope of final pardon ; the roof beams are the prelates, who by the labor of preaching exhibit the truth in all its clearness; the windows are the Script- ures, which receive the light from the sun of truth, and keep out the winds, snows, and hail of heresy and false doctrine devised by the father of schism and falsehood ; the iron bars and pins that sustain the windows are the gen- eral councils, ecumenical and orthodox, which have sustained the holy and canonical Scriptures ; the two perpendicular stone columns which support the windows are the two precepts of Christian charity, to love God and our neigh- bor ; the length of the windows shows the profundity and obscurity of Script- ure, and their roundness indicates that the Church is always in harmony with itself. This is simple enough. But M. Jerome Bugeaud, in his collection of “Chansons Populaires” of the western provinces of France, gives part of a catechism still taught to children, though coming down from the Middle Ages, which carries this quaint symbolizing to a point of the highest ab- RELIGIOUS CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 49 surdity. The catechism turns upon the sacred character of the lowly animal that most needed any protection which priestly ingenuity could afford. Here are a few of the questions and answers : Priest. What signify the two ears of the ass?” Child. “ The two ears of the ass signify the two great patron saints of our city.” Priest. What signifies the head of the ass?” Child. ‘^The head of the ass signifies the great bell, and the halter the clapper of the great bell, which is in the tower of the cathedral of the patron saints of our city.” Priest. What signifies the ass’s mouth ?” Child. ^^The ass’s mouth signifies the great door of the cathedral of the patron saints of our city.” Priest. ‘‘ What signify the four feet of the ass ?” Child. ‘‘ The four feet of the ass signify the four great pillars of the cathe- dral of the patron saints of our city.” Priest. What signifies the paunch of the ass ?” Child. “ The paunch of the ass signifies the great chest wherein Christians put tlieir offerings to the patron saints of our cathedral.” Priest. “ What signifies the tail of the ass ?” Child. The tail of the ass signifies the holy-water brush of the good dean of the cathedral of the patron saints of our city.” The priest does not stop at the tail, but pursues the symbolism with a simplicity and innocence which do not bear translating into our blunt English words. As late as 1750 Bishop Burnet saw in a church at Worms an altar- piece of a crudity almost incredible. It represented the Virgin Mary throwing Christ into the hopper of a windmill, from the spout of which he was issuing in the form of sacramental wafers, and priests were about to distribute them among the people. The unquestionable purpose of this picture was to assist the faith and animate the piety of the people of Worms. 4 50 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. CHAPTER VI. SECULAR CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. I F we turn from the sacred to the secular, we find the ornamentation not less barbarous. Many readers have seen the two giants that stand in the Guildhall of London, where they, or ugly images like them, have stood from time immemorial. A little book sold near by used to inform a credulous pub- lic that Gog and Magog were two gigantic brothers taken prisoners in Corn- wall fighting against the Trojan invaders, who brought them in triumph to the site of London, where their chief chained them to the gate of his palace as por- ters. But, unfortunately for this romantic tale, Mr. Fairholt, in his work upon the giants,* makes it known that many other towns and cities of Europe cher- ish from a remote antiquity similar images. He gives pictures of the Salisbury giant, the huge helmeted giant in Antwerp, the family of giants at Douai, the “ Gog and Magog ; the Giants in Gnildhall,” by E.W. Fairholt, F.S. A., London, 1859. SECULAR CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 51 Head of the Great Dragon OF Norwich. giant and giantess of Ath, the giants of Brussels, as well as of the mighty dragon of Norwich, with practicable iron jaw. We may therefore discard learned theories and sage conjectures concerning Gog and Magog, and at- tribute them to the poverty of invention and the bar- barity of taste which prevailed in the ages of faith. One of the subjects most frequently chosen for caricature during this period was that cunning and audacious enemy of God and man, the devil — a com- posite being, made up of the Satan who tested Job, the devil who tempted Jesus, and the Egyptain Osi- ris who weighed souls in the balance, and claimed as his own those found wanting. Tlie theory of the universe then generally ac- cepted was that the world was merely a field of strife between God and this malignant spirit; on the side of God were ranged archangels, angels, the countless host of celestial beings, and all the saints on earth and in heaven, while on the devil’s side were a vast army of fallen spirits and all the de- praved portion of the human race. The simple souls of that period did not accept this explanation in an allegorical sense, but as the most literal statement of facts familiarly known, concerning which no one in Christendom had any doubt whatever. The devil was as composite in his external form as he was in his traditional character. All the mythologies appear to have con- tributed something to his make-up, until he had acquired many of the most repulsive features and members of which animated nature gives the suggestion. He was hairy, hoofed, and horned ; he had a forked tail ; he had a countenance which expressed the fox’s cunning, the serpent’s mal- ice, the pig’s appetite, the monkey’s grin. As to his body, it varied ac- cording to the design of the artist, but it usually resembled creatures base or loathsome. In one picture there is a very rude but curious representation of the weighing of souls, superintended by the devil and an archangel. The dev- il, in the form of a hog, has won a . prize in the soul of a wicked woman, SODES WEIGHED IN THE BaLANOE. (BaS-ie.lel uf LllC , _ _ _ ’ Autun Cathedral.) which he is Carrying off in a highly 52 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. disrespectful manner, while casting a backward glance to see that he has fair play in the next weighing. This was an exceedingly favorite subject with the artists of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They delighted to picture the Struggle for the Possession of a Soul between Angel and Devil. (From a Psalter, 1300.) SECULAR CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 53 devil, in their crude uncompromising way, as an insatiate miser of human souls, eager to seize them, demanding a thousand, a million, a billion, all ; and when one appeared in the scales so void of guilt that the good angel must needs pos- sess it, he may be seen slyly putting a finger upon the opposite scale to weigh it down, and this sometimes in spite of the angel’s remonstrance. In one pict- ure, described by M. Merimee in his ‘^Voyage en Auvergne,” the devil plays this trick at a moment when the archangel Michael has turned to look an- other way. It is a strange circumstance that in a large number of these representations the devil is exhibited triumphant, and in others the victory is at least doubt- ful. In a splendid psalter preserved in the British Museum there is a large picture (an engraving of which is given on the preceding page) of a soul climbing an extremely steep and high mountain, on the summit of which a winged archangel stands with outstretched arms to receive him. The soul has nearly reached the top ; another step will bring him within the archangel’s reach ; but behind him is the devil with a long three-pronged clawing instru- ment, which he is about to thrust into the hair of the ascending saint; and no man can tell which is ’to finally have that soul, the angel or the devil. M. Champfieury describes a capital in a French church which represents one of the minions of the devil carrying a lizard, symbol of evil, which he is about to add to the scale containing the sins; and the spectator is left to infer that Lost Souls oast into Hell. (From Queen Mary’s Psalter.) fraud of this kind is likely to be successful, for underneath is written, ^^Ecce Diaholus E It is as if the artist had said, “ Such is the devil, and this is one of his modes of entrapping his natural prey of human souls !” From a large number of similar pictures the inference is fair that, let a man lead a spotless life from the cradle to the grave, the devil, by a mere trick, may get his soul at last. Some of the artists might be suspected of sympathizing with the devil in his triumphs over the weakness of man. Observe, for example, the comic exuberance of the above picture, in which devils are seen tumbling their im- mortal booty into the jaws of perdition. 54 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. It is difficult to look at this picture without feeling that the artist must have been alive to the humors of the situation. It is, however, the opinion of students of these quaint relics that the authors of such designs honestly in- tended to excite horror, not hilarity. Queen Mary probably saw in this pict- ure, as she turned the page of her sumptuous psalter, an argument to inflame her bloody zeal for the ancient faith. In the writings of some of the early fathers we observe the same appearance of joyous exultation at the suffer- ings of the lost, if not a sense of the comic absurdity of their doom. Read- ers may remember the passage from Tertullian (a.d. 200) quoted so effectively by Gibbon : ‘‘^You are fond of all spectacles,” exclaims this truly ferocious Christian; “expect the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment of the uni- verse. How shall I rejoice, how laugh, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs and fancied gods groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates who persecuted the name of the Lord liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against Christians; so many sage philoso- phers blushing in red-hot flames with their deluded scholars; so many cele- Devilb seizing lUEiii Peey. (Bas-relief on the Portal of a Church at Troyes.) brated poets trembling before the tribunal; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers — ” This is assuredly not the utterance of compassion, but rather of the fierce delight of an unregenerate Roman, when at the amphitheatre he doomed a rival’s defeated gladiator to death by pointing downward with his thumb. In a similar spirit such pictures were conceived as the one given above. The sculptor, it is apparent, is “with” the adversary of mankind in the present case. Kings and bishops carried things with a high hand during their mortal career, but the devils have them .at last with a rope round their necks, crown and mitre notwithstanding ! SECULAR CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 55 The devil was not always victor. There was One whom neither his low cunning nor his bland address nor his blunt audacity could beguile — the Son of God, his predestined conqueror. The passages in the Gospels which relate the attempts made by Satan to tempt the Lord furnished congenial subjects to the illuminators of the Middle Ages, and they treated those subjects wdth their usual enormous crudity. In one very ancient Saxon psalter, in manuscript, preserved at the British Museum, there is a colossal Christ, with one foot upon a devil, the other foot about to fall upon a second devil, and with his hands delivering from the open mouth of a third devil human souls, who hold up to him their hands clasped as in prayer. In this picture the sympathies of the artist are evidently not on the side of the evil spirits. Their malevolence is apparent, and their attitude is ignominious. The rescued souls are, indeed, a pigmy crew, of woe-begone aspect; but their resistless Deliverer towers aloft in such imposing altitude that the tallest of the saints hardly reaches above his knees. In another picture of very early date, the Lord upon a high place is rescuing a soul from three scoffing devils, who are endeavoring to pull him down to perdition by cords twisted round his legs. This soul we are permit- ted to consider safe ; but below, in a cor- ner of the spacious drawing, a winged archangel is spearing a lost soul into the flames of hell, using the spear in the man- ner of a farmer handling a pitchfork. These ancient attempts to exhibit the endless conflict between good and evil are too rude even to be interesting. The specimen annexed, of later date, about 1475, occurs in a Poor People’s Bible {JBiblia Pcmpermii)^ block -printed, in which it forms part of an extensive frontispiece. The book was once the property of George III., at the sale of whose personal effects it was bought for the British Museum, where it now is. It has the additional interest of being one of the oldest specimens of wood-engraving yet discovered. The mountain in the background, adorned by a single tree, is the height to which the Lord was taken by the tempter, and from which the devil urged him to cast himself down. A very frequent object of caricature during the ages when terror ruled the minds of men was human life itself — its brevity, its uncertainty, and the ab- surd, ill-timed suddenness with which inexorable death sometimes cuts it short. 56 CAKICATUEE AND COMIC ART. Herodotus records that at the banquets of the Egyptians it was customary for a person to carry about the table the figure of a corpse lying upon a coffin, and to cry out, Behold this image of what yourselves shall be; therefore eat, drink, and be merry.” There are traces of a similar custom in the records of other ancient nations, among whom it was regarded as a self-evident truth that the shortness of life was a reason for making the most of it while it lasted. And their notion of making the most of it was to get from it the greatest amount of pleasure. This vulgar scheme of existence vanished at the pro- mulgation of the doctrine that the condition of every soul was fixed unaltera- bly at the moment of its severance from the body, or, at best, after a short period of purgation, and that the only way to avoid unending anguish was to do what the Church commanded and to avoid what the Church forbade. Ter- ror from that time ruled Christendom. Terror covered the earth with ecclesi- astical structures, gave the Church a tenth of all revenues and two-fifths of all property. By every possible device death was clothed with new and vivid terrors, and in every possible way the truth was brought home to the mind that the coming of death could be as unexpected as it was inevitable and un- welcome. The tolling of the church-bell spread the gloom of the death-cham- ber over the whole town; and the death-crier, with bell and lantern, wear- ing a garment made terrible by a skull and cross-bones, went his rounds, by day or night, crying to all good people to pray for the soul just departed.* These criers did not cease to per- ambulate the streets of Paris until about the year 1690, and M. Langlois informs us that in remote provinces of France their doleful cry was heard as recently as 1850. Blessed gift of humor ! Against the most complicated and effective ap- paratus of terror ever contrived, woi-k- ed by the most powerful organization that ever existed, the sense of the ludi- crous asserted itself, and saved the human mind from being crushed down into abject and hopeless idiocy. The readers of “Don Quixote” can not have forgotten the colloquy in the highway between the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance and the head of the company of strollers. “ ‘ Sir,’ replied the Devil, politely, stopping his cart, “ we are the actors of the company of the Evil Spirit. This morning, which is the octave of Corpus Fkencu JJeath-ckiek— “ Pkay fok tub Soul just DEPAKTEO.’- * “Essai sur les Dances des Morts,” vol. i., p. 151, par E. H. Langlois, Paris, 1852. SECULAR CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 57 Christi, we have represented the play of the Empire of Death. This young man played Death, and this one an Angel. This woman, who is the wife of the author of the comedy, is the Queen. Over there is one who played the part of an Emperor, and the other man that of a Soldier. As to myself, I am the Devil, at your service, and one of the principal actors.’ ” For centuries the comedy of Death was a standard play at high festivals, the main interest being the rude, sudden interruption of human lives and joys and schemes by the grim messenger. Art adopted the theme, and the Dance of Death began to figure among the decorations of ecclesiastical struct- ures and on the vellum of il- luminated prayer-books. No sculptor but executed his Dance of Death ; no painter but tried his skill upon it; and by whom- soever the subject was treated, the element of humor was sel- dom wanting. So numerous are the pict- ures and series of pictures us- ually styled Dances of Death, that a descriptive catalogue of them would fill the space as- signed to this chapter; and the literature to which they have given rise forms an important class of the works relating to the Middle Ages. Two phases of the subject were especially atti’active to artists. One was the impartiality of Death, noted by Horace in the familiar pas- sage ; and the other the incongruity between the summons to depart and the condition of the person summoned. When these two aspects of the subject had become hackneyed, artists pleased themselves sometimes with a treat- ment precisely the opposite, and represented Death dancing gayly away with the most battered, ancient, and forlorn of human kind, who had least reason to love life, but did not the less shrink from the skeleton’s icy touch. Every one feels the comic absurdity of gay and sprightly Death hurrying oft to the tomb a cripple as dilapidated as the one in the picture above. In another engraving we see Death, with exaggerated courtesy, handing to an open tomb an extreme- ly old man just able to totter. Another subject in the same series is Death dragging at the garment of a peddler, who is so heavily laden as he trudges along the highway that one Death and tue Cripple. 58 CARICATUKE AND COMIC ART. would imagine even the rest of the grave welcome. But the peddler, too, makes a very wry face when he recognizes who it is that has interrupted his weary tramp. The triumphant gayety of Death in this picture is in humorous contrast with the lugubrious ex- pression on the countenance of his victim. In other series we have Death dressed as a beau seizing a young maiden. Death taking from a house-maid her broom. Death laying hold of a washer-woman, Death taking apples from an ap- ple-stand, Death beckoning away a bar -maid. Death summoning a female mourner at a funeral, and Death plundering a tinker’s basket. Death, standing in a grave, pulls the grave-digger in by the leg; seated on a plow, he seizes the farmer; with an ale-pot at his back, he throttles an inn- keeper who is adulterating his liquors; he strikes with a bone the irksome chain of matrimony, and thus sets free a couple bound by it; he mows down a philosopher holding a clock ; upon a miser who has thrust his body deep down into a massive chest he shuts the heavy lid; he shows himself in the mirror in which a young beauty is looking; to a philosopher seated in his study he enters and presents an hour-glass. A pope on his throne is crowning an emperor kneeling at his feet, with princes, cardinals, and bishops in attendance, when a Death appears at his side, and another in his retinue dressed as a cardinal. Death lays his hand upon an emperor’s crown at the moment when he is doing justice to a poor man against a rich; but in another picture of the same series. Death seizes a duke while he is disdainfully turning from a poor woman with her child who has asked alms of him. The dignitaries of the Church were not SECULAR CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 59 spared. Fat abbots, gorgeous cardinals, and vehement preachers all figure in these series in circumstances of honor and of dishonor. In most of them the person summoned yields to King Death without a struggle ; but in one a knight makes a furious resistance, laying about him with a broadsword most energetically. It is of no avail. Death runs him through the body with his own lance, though in the other picture the weapon in Death’s hand was only a long thigh-bone. Mr. Longfellow, in his “ Golden Legend,” has availed himself of the Dance of Death painted on the walls of the covered bridge at Lucerne to give natural- ness and charm to the conversation of Elsie and Prince Henry while they are crossing the river. The strange pictures excite the curiosity of Elsie, and the Prince explains them to her as they walk : Elsie. What is this picture? ‘•‘‘Prince. It is a yoimg man singing to a nun, Who kneels at her devotions, but in kneeling Turns round to look at him ; and Death meanwhile Is putting out the candles on the altar ! ‘•^•Elsie. Ah, Avhat a pity ’tis that she should listen Unto such songs, when in her orisons She might have heard in heaven the angels singing ! ‘•‘•Prince. Here he has stolen a jester’s cap and bells, And dances with the queen. ‘•‘■Elsie. A foolish jest ! ‘•‘•Prince. And here the heart of the new-wedded wife. Coming from church with her beloved lord, He startles with the rattle of his drum. ‘•‘Elsie. Ah, that is sad! And yet perhaps ’tis best That she should die with all the sunshine on her And all the benedictions of the morning. Before this affluence of golden light Shall fade into a cold and clouded gray. Then into darkness! “ Prince. Under it is written, ‘Nothing but death shall separate thee and me!’ “•Elsie. And what is this that follows close upon it? . “Prince. Death playing on a dulcimer.” And so the lovers converse on the bridge, all covered from end to end with these caricatures of human existence, until the girl hurries with affright from what she calls “ this great picture-gallery of death.” Tournaments were among the usual subjects of caricature during the cent- ury or two preceding the Reformation. Some specimens have already been given from the illuminated prayer-books (pp. 44, 46). The device, however, seldom rises above the ancient one of investing animals with the gifts and qualities of men. Monkeys mounted upon the backs of dogs tilt at one an- other with long lances, or monsters utterly nondescript charge upon other mon- sters more ridiculous than themselves. 60 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. All the ordinary foibles of human nature received attention. These never change. There are always gluttons, misers, and spendthrifts. There are al- ways weak men and vain women. There are always husbands whose wives deceive and worry them, as there are always wives whom husbands worry and deceive ; and the artists of the Middle Ages, in their own direct rude fashion, turned both into caricature. The mere list of subjects treated in Brandt’s ‘‘Ship of Fools,” written when Luther was a school -boy, shows us that men were men and women were women in 1490. That quaint reformer of manners dealt mild rebuke to men who gathered great store of books and put them to no good use ; to women who were ever changing the fashion of their dress; to men who began to build without counting the cost; to “great borrowers and slack payers;” to fools “who will serve two lords both together;” to them who correct others while themselves are “ culpable in the same fault ;” to “fools who can not keep secret their own counsel;” to people who believe in “ predestinacyon ;” to men who attend closely to other people’s business, leav- ing their own undone ; to “ old folks that give example of vice to youth ;” and so on through the long catalogue of human follies. His homely and wise ditties are illustrated by pictures of cu- rious simplicity. Observe the one sub- joined, in which “a foule” is weigh- ing the transitory things of this world against things everlasting, one being represented by a scale full of castles and towers, and the other by a scale full of stars — the earthly castles out- weighing the heavenly bodies in the balance of this “ foule.” One of the quaint poems of the gentle priest descants upon the bad behavior of people at church. This poem has an historical interest, for it throws light upon the manners of the time, over which poetry, tradition, and romance have thrown a very delusive charm. We learn from it that while the Christian people of Europe were on their knees praying in church they were liable to be disturbed by the “mad noise and shout” of a loitering crowd; by knights coming in from the field, falcon upon wrist, with their dogs yelping at their heels ; by men chaf- fering and bargaining as they walked up and down; by the wanton laughter of girls ogled by young men ; by lawyers conferring with clients ; and by all the usual noises of a crowd at a fair. The author wonders SECULAR CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 61 “ That the false paynyms within theyr Temples be To theyr ydols moche more devout than we.” The worthy Brandt was not the only satirist of Church manners. The ‘^Usurer’s Paternoster,” given by M. Champfleury, is more incisive than Brandt’s amiable remonstrance. The usurer, hurrying away to church, tells his wife that if any one comes to borrow money while he is gone, some one must be sent in all haste for him. On his way he says his paternoster thus : ‘‘Our Father. Blessed Lord God [Beau Sire Dieu], be favorable to me, and give me grace to prosper exceedingly. Let me become the richest money- lender in the world. Who art in heaven. I am sorry I wasn’t at home the day that woman came to borrow. Really I am a fool to go to church, where I can gain nothing. Hallowed he thy name. It’s too bad I have a servant so expert in pilfering my money. Thy kingdom come. I have a mind to go home to see what my wife is about. I’ll bet she sells a chicken while I am away, and keeps the money. Thy will he done. It pops into my mind that the chevalier who owed me fifty francs paid me only half. In heaven. Those damned Jews do a rushing business in lending to every one. I should like very much to do as they do. As on earth. The king plagues me to death in raising taxes so often.” Arrived at church, the money-lender goes through part of the service as best he may; but as soon as sermon time comes, off he goes, saying to him- self, ‘‘’I must get away home: the priest is going to preach a sermon to draw money out of our purses.” Doubtless the priest in those times of ignorance had to deal with many most profane and unspiritual people, who could only be restrained by fear, and to whose ‘‘puerility” much had to be conceded. In touching upon the Church manners of the Middle Ages, M. Champfleury makes a remark that startles a Protestant mind accustomed only to the most exact decorum in churches. “Old men of to -day (1850), he says, speaking of France, “will recall to mind the gayety of the midnight masses, when buffoons from the country waited impatiently to send down showers of small torpedoes upon the pavement of the nave, to barricade the alcoves with mountains of chairs, to fill with ink the holy-water basins, and to steal kisses in out-of-the- way corners from girls who would not give them.” These proceedings, which M. Champfleury styles “ the pleasantries of our fathers,” were among the con- cessions made by a worldly-wise old Church to the “ puerility ” of the people, or rather to the absolute necessity of occasional hilarious fun to healthy ex- istence. Amusing and even valuable caricatures six and seven centuries old have been discovered upon parchment documents in the English record offices, exe-* cuted apparently by idle clerks for their amusement when they had nothing else to do. One of these, copied by Mr. Wright, gives us the popular English conception of an Irish warrior of the thirteenth century. 62 CAEICATUEE. AND COMIC AET. The broad-axes of the Irish were held in great terror by the English. An historian of Edward I.’s time, while discoursing on that supreme perplexity of British kings and ministers, how Ireland should be governed after being quite reduced to subjection, expresses the opinion that the Irish ought not to be allowed in time of peace to use “ that detestable in- strument of destruction which by an ancient but accursed custom they constantly carry in their hands instead of a staff.” The modern Irish shillalah, then, is only the resid- uum of the ancient Irish broad -axe — the broad -axe with its head taken off. The humanized Irishman of to-day is content with the handle of “the detestable instrument.” Other pen-and-ink sketches of England’s dreaded foes, the Irish and the Welsh, have been found upon ancient vellum rolls, but none better than the specimen given has yet been copied. The last object of caricature which can be mentioned in the present chapter is the Jew — the odious Jew — accursed by the clergy as a Jew, despised by good citizens as a usurer, and dreaded by many a profligate Christian as the holder of mortgages upon his estate. When the ruling class of a country loses its hold upon virtue, becomes profuse in expenditure, ceases to comply with natural law, comes to regard licentious living as something to be expected of young blood, and makes a jest of a decorous and moral conver- sation, then there is usually in that country a less refined, stronger class, who do comply with natural law, who do live in that virtuous, frugal, and orderly manner by which alone families can be perpetuated and states established. In several communities during the centuries preceding the Reformation, when the nobles and great merchants wasted their substance in riotous living or in in- sensate pilgrimages and crusades, the Jew was the virtuous, sensible, and solv- ent man. He did not escape the evil influence wrought into the texture of the character by living in an atmosphere of hatred and contempt, nor the narrow- ness of mind caused by his being excluded from all the more generous and high avocations. But he remained through all those dismal ages temperate, chaste, industrious, and saving, as well as heroically faithful to the best light on high things that he had. Hence he always had money to lend, and he could only lend it to men who were too glad to think he had no rights which they were bound to respect. The caricature on the next page was also discovered upon a vellum roll in the Public Record Office in London, the work of some idle clerk 642 years ago, and recently transferred to an English work* of much interest, in which it serves as a frontispiece. English Caricature OF AN Irishman, A.H. 12S0. * “ History of Crime in England,” vol. i., by Luke Owen Pike, London, 1873. SECULAR CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 63 Caeioatuue of the Jews in England, a.d. 1233. The ridicule is aimed at the famous Jew, Isaac of INorwich, a rich money- lender and merchant, to whom abbots, bishops, and wealthy vicars were heav- ily indebted. At Norwich he had a wharf at which his vessels could receive and discharge their freights, and whole districts were mortgaged to him at once. He lent money to the king’s exchequer. He was the Rothschild of his day. In the picture, which represents the outside of a castle — his own castle, wrested from some lavish Christian by a money-lender’s wiles — the Jew Isaac stands above all the other figures, and is blessed with four faces and a crown, which imply, as Mr. Pike conjectures, that, let him look whichever, way he will, he beholds possessions over which he holds kingly sway. Lower down, and nearer the centre, are Mosse Mokke, another Jewish money-lender of Norwich, and Madame Avegay, one of many Jewesses who lent money, between whom is a horned devil pointing to their noses. The Jewish nose was a peculiarly offensive feature to Christians, and was usually exaggerated by caricaturists. The figure holding up scales heaped with coin is, so far as we can guess, mere- ly a taunt ; and the seating of Dagon, the god of the Philistines, upon the tur- ret seems to be an intimation that the Jews, in their dispersion, had abandoned the God of their fathers, and taken up with the deity of his inveterate foes. So far as the records of those ages disclose, there was no one enlightened enough to judge the long-suffering Jews with just allowance. Luther’s aver- sion to them was morbid and violent. He confesses, in his Table-talk, that if it had fallen to his lot to have much to do with Jews, his patience would have given way ; and when, one day. Dr. Menius asked him how a Jew ought to be baptized, he replied, You must fill a large tub with water, and, having divested a Jew of his clothes, cover him with a white garment. He must then sit down in the tub, and you must baptize him quite under the water.” He said further to Dr. Menius that if a Jew, not converted at heart, were to ask baptism at his hands, he would take him to the bridge, tie a stone round his neck, and hurl him into the river, such an obstinate and scoffing race were they. If Luther felt thus toward them, we can not wonder that the luxurious dignitaries of the Church, two centuries before his time, should have had qualms of conscience with regard to paying Isaac of Norwich interest upon money borrowed. 64 CAKICATURE AND COMIC ART. CHAPTER VII. CARICATURES PRECEDING THE REFORMATION. W E have in this strange, rude picture* a device of contemporary carica- ture to cast ridicule upon the movement of which Martin Luther was the conspicuous figure. It is reduced from a large wood-cut which appeared in Germany at the crisis of the lion- hearted reformer’s career, the year of his appearance at the Diet of Worms, when he said to dissuading friends, “ If I knew there were as many devils at Worms as there are tiles upon the houses, I would go.” The intention of the artist is obvious ; but, in addi- tion to the leading purpose, he desired, as Mr. Chatto conjectures, to remind his public of the nasal drawl of the preaching friars of the time, for which they were as proverbial as the Puri- tans of London in Cromwell’s day. Such is the poverty of human inven- tion that the idea of this caricature has been employed several times since Lu- ther’s time — even as recently as 1873, when a London draughtsman made it serve his turn in the contentions of party politics. The best humorous talent of Christendom, whether it wrought with pencil or with pen, wliether it avowed or veiled its sympathy with reform, was on Luther’s side. It prepared the way for his coming, co-operated with him dur- ing his life-time, carried on his work after he was gone, and continues it to the present hour. Recent investigators tell us, indeed, that the Reformation began in laughter, which the Church itself nourished and sanctioned. M. Viollet-le-Duc, author of the Dictionnaire d’Architecture,” discourses upon the gradual change * From “A Treatise on Wood-engraving,” p. 268, by Jackson and Chatto, London, 1866. CARICATURES PRECEDING THE REFORMATION. 65 which church decorators of the Middle Ages effected in the figure of the devil. Upon edifices erected before the year 1000 there are few traces of the devil, and upon those of much earlier date none at all; but from the eleventh cent- ury he begins to play an important role^'‘ artists striving which should give him the most hideous form. No one was then audacious enough to take liber- ties with a being so potent, so awful, so real, the competitor and antagonist of the Almighty Lord of Heaven and Earth. But mortals must laugh, and famil- iarity produces its well-known effect. In the eyes of men of the world the devil became gradually less terrible and more grotesque, became occasionally ridiculous, often contemptible, sometimes silly. His tricks are met by tricks more cunning than his own ; he is duped, and retires discomfited. Before Luther appeared on the scene, the painters and sculptors, not to mention the authors and poets, had made progress in reducing the devil from the grade of an antagonist of deity and arch-enemy of men to that of a cunning and amus- ing deceiver of simpletons. ‘‘The great devil,” as the author just mentioned remarks, “sculptured over the door of the Autun Cathedral in the twelfth century is a frightful being, well designed to strike terror to unformed souls ; but the young devils carved in bas-reliefs of the fifteenth century are more comic than terrible, and it is evident that the artists who executed them cared very little for the wicked tricks of the Evil Spirit.” We may be sure that the artist who could sketch the devil fiddling upon a pair of bel- lows with a kitchen dipper had outgrown the horror which that personage had once excited in all minds. Such a sketch is here reproduced from a Flemish MS. in the library of Cam- brai. But this could not be said of the great mass of Christian people for centuries after. Luther, as the reader is aware, speaks of the devil with as absolute an assurance of his ex- istence, activity, and nearness as if he were a member of his own household. God, he once said, mocks and scorns the devil by putting under his nose such a weak creature as man ; and at other times he dwelt upon the hardness of the conflict which the devil has to main- tain. “ It were not good for us to know how earnestly the holy angels strive for us against the devil, or how hard a combat it is. If we could see for how many angels one devil makes work, we should be in despair.” Many devils, he remarks with curious certainty, are in forests, in waters, in wildernesses, in dark pooly places, ready to hurt and prejudice people; and there are some in the thick black clouds, which cause hail, lightnings, and thunderings, and poi- son the air, the pastures, and grounds. He derides the philosophers and phy- sicians who say that these things have merely natural causes ; and as to the witches who torment honest people, and spoil their eggs, milk, and butter, “ I should have no compassion upon them — I would burn them all.” The Table- talk of the great reformer is full of such robust credulity. 5 66 CARICATUEE AND COMIC ART. Luther represented, as much as he reformed, his age and country. In these utterances of his we discern the spirit against which the humor and gayety of art had to contend, and over which it has gained a tardy victory, not yet com- plete. Let us keep in mind also that in those twilight ages, as in all ages, there were the two contending influences which we now call “ the world ” and the church.” In other words, there were people who took the devil light- ly, as they did all invisible and spiritual things, and there were people who dreaded the devil in every “ dark pooly place,” and to whom nothing could be a jest which appertained to him. Humorous art has in it healing and ad- monition for both these classes. It was in those centuries, also, that men of the world learned to laugh at the clergy, and, again, not without clerical encouragement. In the brilliantly illuminated religious manuscripts of the two centuries preceding Luther, along with other ludicrous and absurd images, of which specimens have been given, we find many pictures in which the vices of the religious orders are exhibited. The oldest drawing in the British Museum, one of the only two that bear the date 1320, shows us two devils tossing a monk headlong from a bridge into a Oldest Drawing in the Beitisii Museum, a.d. 1320. rough and rapid river, an act which they perform in a manner not calculated to excite serious thought in modern minds. In the old Strasburg Cathedral there was a brass door, made in 1545, upon which was engraved a convent with a procession of monks issuing from it bearing the cross and banners. The foremost figure of this procession was a monk carrying a girl upon his shoulders. This was not the coarse fling of an enemy. It was not the scoff of an Erasmus, who said once, ‘‘These paunchy monks are called fathers^ and they take good care to deserve the name.” It was engraved on the eternal brass of a religious edifice for the warning and edification of the faithful. Nothing more surprises the modern reader than the frequency and severity CAKICATURES PRECEDING THE REFORMATION. 67 with which the clergy of those centuries were denounced and satirized, as well by themselves as by others. A Church which showed itself sensitive to the least taint of what it deemed heresy appears to have beheld with indifference the exhibition of its moral delinquencies — nay, taken the lead in exposing them. It was a clergyman who said, in the Council of Siena, fifty years before Luther was born : ‘‘We see to-day priests who are usurers, wine-shop keepers, mer- chants, governors of castles, notaries, stewards, and debauch brokers. The only trade which they have not yet commenced is that of executioner. The bishops surpass Epicurus himself in sensuality, and it is between the courses of a banquet that they discuss the authority of the Pope and that of the Coun- cil.” The same speaker related that St. Bridget, being in St. Peter’s at Rome, looked up in a religious ecstasy, and saw the nave filled with mitred hogs. She asked the Lord to explain this fantastic vision. “These,” replied the Lord, “ are the bishops and abbes of to-day.” M. Champfleury, the first living authority on subjects of this nature, declares that the manuscript Bibles of the century preceding Luther are so filled with pictures exhibiting monks and nuns in equivocal circumstances that he was only puzzled to decide which specimens were most suitable to give his readers an adequate idea of them. From mere gayety of heart, from the exuberant jollity of a well-beneficed scholar, whose future was secure and whose time was all his own, some of the higher clergy appear to have jested upon themselves and their office. Two finely engraved seals have been found in France, one dating as far back as 1300, which represent monkeys arrayed in the vest- ments of a Church dignitary. Upon one of them the monkey wears the hood and holds the staff of an abbot, and upon the other the animal appears in the character of a bishop. One of these seals is known to have been executed at the express order of an abbot. The other, a copy of which is given here, was found in the ruins of an ancient chateau of Picardy, and bears the inscription, “le: scel: de: leuecque: de: la: cyte: de: pi- NON ” — “ The seal of the bishop of the city of Pinon.” This interesting relic was at first thought to be the work of some scoffing Huguenot, but there can now be no doubt of its having been the merry conceit of the personage whose title it bears. The discovery of the record relating to the monkey seal of the abbot, showing it to have been ordered and paid for by the actual head of a great monastery, throws light upon all the grotesque ornamentation of those centuries. It suggests to us also the idea that the clergy joined in the general ridicule of their order as much from a sense of the ludicrous as from conviction of its justice. In the British Museum there is a religious manuscript of the thirteenth century. 68 CAKICATURE AND COMIC ART. splendidly illuminated, one of the initial letters of which represents a young friar drawing wine from a cask in a cellar, that contains several humorous points. With his left hand he holds the great wine-jug, into which the liquid is running from the barrel ; with his right he lifts to his lips a bowlful of the wine, and from the same hand dangle the large keys of the cellar. If this was intended as a hint to the younger brethren how they ought not to behave when sent to the cellar for wine, the artist evidently felt also the comic ab- surdity of the situation. The vast cellars still to be seen under ancient monasteries and priories, as well as the kitchens, not less spacious, and supported by archways of the most massive masonry, tell a tale of the habits of the religious orders which is abundantly confirmed in the records and literature of the time. “ Capuchins,” says the old French doggerel, ‘‘ drink poorly, Benedictines deeply, Dominicans pint after pint, but Franciscans drink the cellar dry.” The great number of old taverns in Europe named the Mitre, the Church, the Chapel-bell, St. Dom- inic, and other ecclesiastical names, point to the conclusion that the class that professed to dispense good cheer for the soul was not averse to good cheer for the body.* If the clergy led the merriment caused by their own excesses, we can not wonder they should have had many followers. In the popular tales of the time, which have been gathered and made accessible in recent years, we find the priest, the monk, the nun, the abbot, often figuring in absurd situations, rarely in creditable ones. The priest seems to have been regarded as the sat- irist’s fair game, the common butt of the jester. In one of these stories a butcher, returning home from a fair, asks a night’s lodging at the house of a priest, who churlishly refuses it. The butcher, returning, offers in recompense to kill one of his fine fat sheep for supper, and to leave behind him all the meat not eaten. On this condition he is received, and the family enjoy an excellent supper in his society. After supper he wins the favor first of the priest’s concubine and afterward of the maid-servant by secretly promising to each of them the skin of the sheep. In the morning, after he has gone, a pro- digious uproar arises, the priest and the two women each vehemently claiming the skin, in the midst of which it is discovered that the butcher had stolen the sheep from the priest’s own flock. From a merry tale of these ages a jest was taken which to-day forms one of the stock dialogues of our negro-minstrel bands. The story was apparently designed to show the sorry stuff of which priests were sometimes made. A farmer sends a lout of a son to college, intending to make a priest of him, and the lad was examined as to the extent of his knowledge. “Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob,” said the examiner: “who was Jacob’s father?” The candi- date, being unable to answer this question, is sent home to his tutor with a let- “ History of Sign-boards,” p. 319, by Larwood and Hotten, London. CARICATURES PRECEDING THE REFORMATION. 69 ter relating his discomfiture. Thou foole and ass-head !” exclaims the tutor. “Dost thou not know Tom Miller of Oseney?” “Yes,” answered the hope- ful scholar. “Then thou knowest he had two sons, Tom and Jacke: who is Jacke’s father?” “Tom Miller.” Back goes the youth to college with a let- ter to the examiner, who, for the tutor’s sake, gives him another chance, and asks once more who was Jacob’s father. “ Marry 1” cries the candidate, “I can tell you now : that was Tom Miller of Oseney.” We must be cautious in drawing inferences from the popular literature of a period, since there is in the unformed mind a propensity to circulate amusing scandal, and the satirist is apt to aim his shaft at characters and actions which are exceptional, not representative. In some of the less frequented nooks of Europe, w^here the tone of mind among the people has not materially changed since the fifteenth century, we still find priests the constant theme of scandal. The Tyrolese, for example, as some readers may have observed, are profuse in their votive offerings, and indefatigable in their pilgrimages, processions, and observances — the most superstitious people in Europe; but a recent writer tells us that they “ have a large collection of anecdotes, humorous and scandal- ous, about their priests, and they take infinite delight in telling them.” They are not pious, as the writer remarks, “ but magpious.” The Tyrolese may judge their priests correctly, but a person who believes in magpious humbug may be expected to lend greedy ears to comic scandal, and what the Tyrolese do to-day, their ancestors may have done when Luther was a school-boy. But of late years the exact, methodical records of the past, the laws, law- books, and trials, which are now recognized to be among the most trustworthy guides to a correct interpretation of antiquity, have been diligently scrutinized, and we learn from them that it was among the commonest of criminal events for clergymen, in the time of Edward III. of England, to take part in acts of brigandage. A band of fifty men, for example, broke into the park and war- ren of a lady, the Countess of Lincoln, killed her game, cut down two thousand pounds’ worth of timber, and carried it off. In the list of the accused are the names of two abbots and a prior. Several chaplains were in a band of knights and squires who entered an inclosure belonging to the Archbishop of Canter- bury, drove off his cattle, cut down his trees, harvested his wheat, and marched away with their booty. In a band of seventy who committed a similar out- rage at Carlton there were five parsons. Two parsons were accused of assist- ing to break into the Earl of NTorthampton’s park and driving off his cattle. The prior of Bollington was charged with a robbery of horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs. Five clergymen were in the band that damaged the Bishop of Dur- ham’s park to the extent of a thousand pounds. These examples and others were drawn from a single roll of parchment of the year 1348; and that roll, itself one of three, is only one of many sources of information. The author of the “History of Crime” explains that the rolls of that year consist of more than one hundred and twenty skins of parchment, among which there are few VO CARICATUEE AND COMIC ART. that do not contain a reference to some lawless act committed by knights or priests, or by a band consisting of both.* This is record, not gossip, not literature ; and it may serve to indicate the basis of truth there was for the countless allusions to the dissoluteness of the clergy in the popular writings and pictures of the century that formed Luther and the Lutherans. It is scarcely possible in the compass of a chapter to convey an idea of the burst of laughter that broke the long spell of superstitious terror, and opened the minds of men to receive the better light. Such works as the “Decam- eron ” of Boccaccio, which to modern readers is only interesting as showing what indecency could be read and uttered by fine ladies and gentlemen on a picnic in 1350, had one character that harmonized with the new infiuence. Their tone was utterly at variance with the voice of the priest. The clergy, self-indulgent, preached self-denial; practicing vice, they exaggerated human guilt. But the ladies and gentlemen of the “Decameron,” while practicing virtue, made light of vice, and brought off the graceful profligate victorious. Later was circulated in every land and tongue the merry tale of “ Reynard the Fox,” which children still cherish among the choicest of their literary treasures. Reynard, who appears in the sculptures of so many convents and in the illumi- nations of so many pious manuscripts, whom monks loved better than their missal, exhibits the same moral: wit- ty wickedness triumphant over brute strength. The fox cheats the wolf, de- ludes the bear, lies to King Lion, turns monk, gallops headlong up and down the commandments, only to be at last Pastor and Flook. (From the Window of a French jjjto the highest faVOr by the king and made Prime Minister. It is not necessary to discover allegory in this tale. What made it potent against the spell of priestly influence was the innocent and boisterous merriment which it excited, amidst which the gloom evoked by priestly arts began to break away. Innocent mirth, next to immortal truth, is the thing most hostile to whatever is mingled with religion which is hostile to the interests of human nature. And “Reynard,” we must remember, was only the best and gayest of a large class of similar fables that circulated during the childhood of Columbus and of Luther. In one of the Latin stories given by Mr. Wright in his “Selection,” we have an account of the death and burial of the wolf, the hero of the tale. * “History of Crime in England,” p. 248, by L. O. Pike, London, 1873, CARICATURES PRECEDING THE REFORMATION. 71 which makes a most profane use of sacred objects and rites, though it was written by a priest. The holy water was carried by the hare, hedgehogs bore the candles, goats rang the bell, moles dug the grave, foxes carried the bier, the bear celebrated mass, the ox read the gospel, and the ass the epistle. When the burial was complete, the animals sat down to a splendid banquet, and wished for another grand funeral. Mark the moral drawn by the priestly author : “ So it frequently happens that when some rich man, an extortionist or a usurer, dies, the abbot or prior of a convent of beasts [i. 6., of men living like beasts] causes them to assemble. For it commonly happens that in a great convent of black or white monks [Benedictines or Augustinians] there are none but beasts — lions by their pride, foxes by their craftiness, bears by their voracity, stinking goats by their incontinence, asses by their sluggishness, hedgehogs by their asperity, hares by their timidity (because they were cow- ardly when there was no fear), and oxen by their laborious cultivation of their land.” Unquestionably this author belonged to another order than those named in his tirade. A book with original life in it becomes usually the progenitor of a line of books. Brandt’s “ Ship of Fools,” which was published when Luther was eleven years old, gave rise to a literature. As soon as it appeared it kindled the zeal of a noted preacher of Strasburg, Jacob Geiler by name, who turned Brandt’s gentle satire’ into fierce invective, which he directed chiefly against the monks. The black friars, he said, were the devil, the white friars his dame, and the others were their chickens. The qualities of a good monk, he declared, were an almighty belly, an ass’s back, and a raven’s mouth. From the pulpit, on another occasion, he foretold a coming reformation in the Church, adding that he did not expect to live to see it, though some that heard him might. The monks taunted him with looking into the “Ship of P''ools” for his texts instead of the Scripture; but the people heard him ea- gerly, and one of his pupils gave the public a series of his homely, biting ser- mons, illustrated by wood-cuts, which ran through edition after edition. Ba- dius, a noted scholar of the time, was another who imitated the Ship of Fools,” in a series of satirical pieces entitled “The Boats of Foolish Women,” in which the follies of the ladies of the period were ridiculed. Among the great number of works which the “Ship of Fools” suggested, there was one which directly and powerfully prepared the way for Luther. Erasmus, while residing in England, from 1497 to 1506, Luther being still a student, read Brandt’s work, and was stirred by it to write his “ Praise of Folly,” which, under the most transparent disguise, is chiefly a satire upon the ecclesiastics of the day. We may at least say that it is only in the passages aimed at them that the author is at his best. Before Luther had begun to think of the abuses of the Church, Erasmus, in his little work, derided the credulous Christians who thought to escape mishaps all day by paying devo- tion to St. Christopher in the morning, and laughed at the soldiers who ex- V2 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. pected to come out of battle with a whole skin if they had but taken the precaution to ‘‘ mumble over a set prayer before the picture of St. Bar- bara.” He jested upon the English who had constructed a gigantic figure of their patron saint as large as the images of Hercules; only the saint was mounted upon a horse “ very glo- riously accoutred,” which the people scarcely refrained from worshiping. But observe this passage in the very spirit of Luther, though written fif- teen years before the reformer public- ly denounced indulgences : “ What shall I say of such as cry up and maintain the cheat of pardons and indulgences? who by these com- pute the time of each soul’s residence in purgatory, and assign them a long- er or shorter continuance, according as they purchase more or fewer of these paltry pardons and salable ex- emptions?. . . . By this easy way of purchasing pardon, any notorious high- wayman, any plundering soldier, or any bribe-taking judge shall disburse some part of their unjust gains, and so think all their grossest impieties suf- ficiently atoned for And what can be more ridiculous than for some others to be confident of going to heaven by repeating daily those seven verses out of the Psalms?” These ‘‘fooleries,” which Erasmus calls most gross and absurd, he says are practiced not merely by the vul- gar, but by “ such proficients in relig- ion as one might well expect should have more wit.” He ridicules the notion of each country and place be- ing under the special protection of a patron saint, as well as the kindred CARICATURES PRECEDING THE REFORMATION. 73 absurdity of calling upon one saint to store lost goods, upon another to pro- tect seamen, and upon another to guard cows and sheep. ISTor does he refrain from reflecting upon the homage paid to the Virgin Mary, “ whose blind de- votees think it manners now to place the mother before the Son.” He ut- terly scouts and reviles the folly of hanging up offerings at the shrines of saints for their imaginary aid in getting the donors out of trouble or danger. The responsibility of all this folly and delusion he boldly assigns to the priests, who gain money by them. “They blacken the darkness and pro- mote the delusion, wisely foreseeing that the people (like cows which never give down their milk so well as when they are gently stroked) would part with less if they knew more.” If any serious and wise man, he adds, should tell the people that a pious life is the only way of securing a peaceful death, that repentance and amendment alone can procure pardon, and that the best devotion to a saint is to imitate his example, there wmuld be a very differ- ent estimate put upon masses, fastings, and other austerities. Erasmus saw this prophecy fulfilled before many years had rolled over his head. It is, however, in his chapters upon the amazingly ridiculous subtleties of the monastic theology of his time that Erasmus gives us his most exquisite fooling. Here he becomes, indeed, the merry Erasmus who was so welcome at English Cambridge, at Paris, at Rome, in Germany, in Holland, wherever there were good scholars and good fellows. He pretends to approach this part of his subject with fear; for divines, he cure a toothache, upon another to re- 74 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. says, are generally very hot and passionate, and when provoked they set upon a man in full cry, and hurl at him the thunders of excommunication, that being their spiritual weapon to wound such as lift up a hand against them. But he plucks up courage, and proceeds to discourse upon the puer- ilities which absorbed their minds. Among the theological questions which they delighted to discuss were such as these: the precise manner in which original sin was derived from our first parents; whether time was an ele- ment in the supernatural generation of our Lord ; whether it would be a thing possible for the first person in the Trinity to hate the second; whether God, who took our nature upon him in the form of a man, could as well have become a woman, a beast, an herb, or a stone ; and if he could, how could he have then preached the gospel, or been nailed to the cross ? whether if St. Peter had celebrated the eucharist at the time when our Saviour was upon the cross, the consecrated bread would have been transubstantiated into the same body that remained on the tree; whether, in Christ’s corporal pres- ence in the sacramental wafer, his humanity was not abstracted from his God- head ; whether, after the resurrection, we shall carnally eat and drink as we do in this life ; how it is possible, in the transubstantiation, for one body to be in several places at the same time; which is the greater sin, to kill a hundred men, or for a cobbler to set one stitch in a shoe on Sunday ? Such subtleties as these alternated with curious and minute delineations of purgatory, heaven, and hell, their divisions, subdivisions, degrees, and qualities. He heaps ridicule also upon the public preaching of those profound theo- logians. It was mere stage-playing ; and their delivery was the very acme of the droll and the absurd. “ Good Lord ! how mimical are their gestures ! What heights and falls in their voice ! What toning, what bawling, what singing, what squeaking, what grimaces, what making of mouths, wLat apes’ faces and distorting of their countenances !” And their matter was even more ridiculous than their manner. One of these absurd divines, discoursing upon the name of Jesus, subtly pretended to discover a revelation of the Trinity in the very letters of which the name was composed. It was declined only in three cases. That was one mysterious coincidence. Then the nominative ended in S, the accusative in M, and the ablative in U, which obviously indi- cated Sumraus, the beginning; Medius, the middle; and Ultimus, the end of all things. Other examples he gives of the same profound nature. Hor did the different orders of monks escape his lash. He dwelt upon the preposterous importance they attached to trifling details of dress and ceremonial. ‘‘They must be very critical in the precise number of their knots, in the tying -on of their sandals, of what precise colors their respective habits should be made, and of what stuff; how broad and long their girdles, how big and in what fashion their hoods, whether their bald crowns be of the right cut to a hair’s- breadth,how many hours they must sleep, and at what minute rise to prayers.” In this manner he proceeds for many a sprightly page, rising from monks CARICATURES PRECEDING THE REFORMATION. 15 to bishops and cardinals, and from them to popes, “ who pretend themselves Christ’s vicars,” while resembling the Lord in nothing. Luther never went farther, never was bolder or more biting, than Erasmus in this essay. But all went for nothing with the great leader of reform, because Erasmus refused to abandon the Church, and cast in his lot openly with the reformers. Lu- ther calls him ‘‘ a mere Momus,” who laughed at Catholic and Protestant alike, and looked upon the Christian religion itself very much as Lucian did upon the Greek. Whenever I pray,” said Luther once, ‘‘ I pray for a curse upon Erasmus.” It was certainly a significant fact that in the heat of that con- test Erasmus should have given the world a translation of Lucian. But he was a great, wise, genial soul, whose fame will brighten as that age becomes more justly and familiarly known to us. The first place in the annals of such a warfare belongs of right to the sol- diers who took their lives in their hands and went forth to meet the foe in the open field, braving torture, infamy, and death for the cause. Such were Lu- ther and his followers. But there is a place in human memory for the phi- losopher and the humorist who first made the contest possible, and then ren- dered it shorter and easier. V6 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. CHAPTER YIII. COMIC ART AND THE REFORMATION. W HEN Luther began the immortal part of his public career in 1517 by nailing to the church door his ninety -five theses against the sale of in- dulgences, wood-engraving was an art which had been practiced nearly a cent- ury. He found also, as we have seen, a public accustomed to satirical writings illustrated by wood-cuts. The great Holbein illustrated Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly.” Brandt’s “Ship of Fools,” as well as the litter of works which it called forth, was even profusely illustrated. Caricatures as distinct works, though usually accompanied with abundant verbal commentary, were familiar objects. Among the curiosities which Luther himself brought from Rome in 1510, some years before he began his special work, was a caricature suggested by the “Ship of Fools,” showing how the Pope had “fooled the whole world with his superstitions and idolatries.” He showed it to the Prince Elector of Saxony at the time. The picture exhibited a little ship filled with monks, friars, and priests casting lines to people swimming in the sea, while in the stern sat comfortably the Pope with his cardinals and bishops, overshadowed and covered by the Holy Ghost, who was looking up to heaven, and through whose help alone the drowning wretches were saved. In talking about the picture many years after, Luther said, “ These and the like fooleries we then believed as articles of faith.” He had not reached the point when he could talk at his own table of the cardinals as “ peevish milk- sops, effeminate, unlearned blockheads, whom the Pope places in all kingdoms, where they lie lolling in kings’ courts among the ladies and women.” Finding this weapon of caricature ready-made to his hands, he used it freely, as did also his friends and his foes. He was himself a caricaturist. When Pope Clement VII. seemed disposed to meet the reformers half-way, and proposed a council to that end, Luther wrote a pamphlet ridiculing the scheme, and, to give more force to his satire, he “ caused a picture to be drawn” and placed in the title-page. It was not a work describable to the fastidious ears of our century, unless we leave part of the description in Latin. The Pope was seated on a lofty throne surrounded by cardinals having foxes’ tails, and seeming “ siirswn et deorsum repurgare^ In the “ Table-talk ” we read also of a picture being brought to Luther in which the Pope and Judas were represented hanging to the purse and keys. “ ’Twill vex the Pope hor- COMIC ART AND THE REFORMATION. 11 Papa, Doctor Theologi^ ex Magister Fidei. ribly,” said Luther, “that he whom emperors and kings have worshiped should now be figured hanging upon his own pick- locks.” The picture annexed, in which the Pope is exhibited with an ass’s head perform- ing on the bagpipes, was entirely in the taste of Luther. “ The Pope’s decretals,” he once said, “are naught; he that drew them up was an ass.” No word was too contemptuous for the papacy. “ Pope, cardinals, and bishops,” said he, “ are a pack of guzzling, stuffing wretches ; rich, wallowing in wealth and lazi- ness, resting secure in their power, and never thinking of accomplishing God’s will.” The famous pamphlet of caricatures pub- lished in 1521 by Luther’s friend and follower, Lucas Cranach, contains pictures that we could easily believe Luther himself suggested. The object was to exhibit to the eyes of the people of Germany the contrast between the religion “A long-eared ass can with the Bagpipes inculcated by the lowly Jesus and the pompous as well as with Theology the Pope.”— worldliness of the papacy. There was a pict- Germany, 1545. lire on each page which nearly filled it, and at the bottom there were a few lines in German of explanation ; the engraving on the page to the left repre- senting an incident in the life of Christ, and the page to the right a feature of the papal system at variance with it. Thus, on the first page was shown Jesus, in humble attitude and simple raiment, refusing honors and dignities, and on the page opposite the Pope, cardinals, and bishops, with warriors, cannon, and forts, assuming lordship over kings. On an- other page Christ was seen crowned with thorns by the scoffing soldiers, and on the opposite page the Pope wearing his triple crown, and seated on his throne, an object of adoration to his court. On another was shown Christ washing the feet of his disciples, in contrast to the Pope presenting his toe to an emperor to be kissed. At length we have Christ ascending to heaven with a glorious es- cort of angels, and on the other page the Pope hurled headlong to hell, accompa- Tue Pope cast into Hell. (Lucas Crauach, 1521.) llied by devils, with SOIlie of his OWIl 18 CAKICATURE AND COMIC ART. monks already in the flames waiting to receive him. This concluding picture may serve as a specimen of a series that must have told powerfully on the side of reform.* These pictorial pamphlets were an important part of the stock in trade of the colporteurs who pervaded the villages and by-ways of Germany during Luther’s life-time, selling the sermons of the reformers, homely satiric verses, and broadside caricatures. The simplicity and directness of the caricatures of that age reflected perfectly both the character and the methods of Luther. One picture of Hans Sachs’s has been preserved, which was designed as an illustration of the words of Christ : I am the door. He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” The honest Sachs shows us a lofty, well-built barn, with a very steep roof, on the very top of which sits the Pope crowned with his tiara. To him cardinals and bishops are directing people, and urging them to climb up the steep and slippery height. Two monks have done so, and are getting in at a high window. At the open door of the edifice stands the Lord, with a halo round his head, inviting a humble inquirer to enter freely. Noth- ing was farther from the popular caricaturists of that age than to allegorize a doctrine or a moral lesson ; on the contrary, it was their habit to interpret alle- gory in the most absurdly literal man- ner. Observe, for example, the treat- ment of the subject contained in the words, “How wilt thou say to thy brother. Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye, and, behold, a bea7n is in thine own eye?” The marriage of Luther in 1525 was followed by a burst of caricature. The idea of a priest marrying excited then, as it does now in a Catholic mind, a sense of ludicrous incongruity. It is as though the words “ married priest ” were a contradiction in terms, and the relation implied by them was a sort of manifest incompatibility, half comic, half disgusting. The spectacle occa- sionally presented in a Protestant church of a clergyman ordained and married in the same hour is so opposed to the Cath- olic conception of the priesthood that some Catholics can only express their sense of it by laughter. Equally amazing and equally ludicrous to them is the From “ A History of Caricature,” p. 254, by Thomas Wright, London, 1864. COMIC AET AND THE EEFORMATION. 79 Lutuek Tkiumpjiant. (Paris, 1535.) more frequent case of missionaries coming home to be married, or young mis- sionaries married in the evening and setting out for their station the next morning. We observe that some of Luther’s nearest friends — nay, Luther himself — saw something both ridiculous and contemptible in his marriage, par- ticularly in the haste with which it was concluded, and the disparity in the ages of the pair, Luther being forty-two and his wife twenty-six. My mar- riage,” wrote Luther, “ has made me so despicable that I hope my humiliation will rejoice the angels and vex the devils.” And Melanchthon, while doing his best to restore his leader’s self-respect, expressed the hope that the ^^accidenV'^ might be of use in humbling Luther a little in the midst of a success perilous to his good sense. Luther was not long abased. We find him soon justifying the act, which was among the boldest and wisest of his life, as a tribute of obe- dience to his aged father, who required it in hopes of issue,” and as a practi- cal confirmation of what he had himself taught. He speaks gayly of my rib, Kate,” and declared once that he would not exchange his wife for the kingdom of France or the wealth of Venice. But the caricaturists were not soon weary of the theme. Readers at all familiar with the manners of that age do not need to be told that few of the efforts of their free pencils will bear reproduction now. Besides exhibiting the pair carousing, dancing, romping, caressing, and in various situations sup- posed to be ridiculous, the satirists harped a good deal upon the old prophecy that Antichrist would be the offspring of a monk and a nun. “If that is the case,” said Erasmus, “ how many thousands of Antichrists there are in the world already !” Luther was evidently of the same opinion, for he gave full credit to the story of six thousand infants’ skulls having been found at the bottom of a pond near a convent, as well as to that of “ twelve great pots, in 80 CAKICATURE AND COMIC ART. each of which was the carcass of an infant,” discovered under the cellars of an- other convent. But, then, Luther was among the most credulous of men. The marriage of the monk and the nun gave only a brief advantage to the enemies of reform. The great German artists of that generation were friends of Luther. No name is more distinguished in the early annals of German art than Albert Diirer, painter, engraver, sculptor, and author. He did not em- ploy his pencil in furtherance of Luther’s cause, nor did he forsake the com- munion of the ancient Church, but he expressed the warmest sympathy with the objects of the reformer. A report of Luther’s death in 1521 struck horror to his soul. ‘‘ Whether Luther be yet living,” he wrote, “ or whether his ene- mies have put him to death, I know not; yet certainly what he has suffered has been for the sake of truth, and because he has reprehended the abuses of un- christian papacy, which strives to fetter Christian liberty with the incumbrance of human ordinances, that we may be robbed of the price of our blood and sweat, and shamefully plundered by idlers, while the sick and needy perish through hunger.” These words go to the heart of the controversy. Holbein, nearly thirty years younger than Diirer, only just coming of age when Luther nailed his theses to the castle church, did more, as the reader has already seen, than express in words his sympathy with reform. The fineness and graphic force of the two specimens of his youthful talent given on pages 72 , 73 ,^ every reader must have remarked. Only three copies of these pict- ures are known to exist. They appeared at the time when Luther had kindled a general opposition to the sale of indulgences, as well as some ill feeling to- ward the classic authors so highly esteemed by Erasmus. They are in a pecul- iar sense Lutheran pictures, and they give expression to the reformer’s preju- dices and convictions. A third wood- cut of Holbein’s is mentioned by Wolt- mann, dated 1524 , in which the Pope is shown riding in a litter surrounded by an armed escort, and on the other side Christ is seen on an ass, accompa- nied by his disciples. These three works were Holbein’s contribution to the earlier stage of the movement. This artist was soon drawn away to the splendid court of Henry VHI. of England, where, among other works, he executed his renowned paintings, “The Triumph of Riches” and “The Triumph of Poverty,” in both of which there is satire enough to bring them within our subject. Of these stupendous works, each containing seventeen or more life-size figures, every trace has per- ished except the artist’s original sketch of “ The Triumph of Riches.” But they made a vivid impression upon the two generations which saw them, and we have so many engravings, copies, and descriptions of them that it is almost as if we still possessed the originals. Holbein’s sketch is now in the Louvre at Paris. It will convey to the reader some idea of the harmonious grandeur * From “Holbein and his Time,” p. 241-243, by Alfred Woltmann; translated by F. E. Bunnett, London, 1872. COMIC ART AND THE REFORxMATION. 81 of the painting, and some notion of the ingenious and friendly nature of its satire upon hu- man life. In accordance with the custom of the age, the paint- ing bore an explan- atory motto in Lat- in : Gold is the father of lust and the son of sorrow. He who lacks it laments ; he who ^ has it fears.” Plu- tiis, the god of 2 wealth, is an old, g old man, long past ^ enjoyment ; but his foot rests upon p sacks of superflu- ^ ous coin, and an Cl open vessel before him, heaped with g money, affords the ^ only pleasures left p to him — the sight and conscious pos- session of the wealth he can nev- er use. Below him Fortuna, a young and lovely wom- an, scatters money among the people who throng about her, among whom are the portly Si- clueus. Dido’s hus- band, the richest of his people; Themis- 6 82 CAEICATURE AND COMIC ART. tocles, who stooped to accept wealth from the Persian king ; and many others noted in classic story for the part gold played in their lives. Croesus, Midas, and Tantalus follow on horseback, and, last of all, the unveiled Cleopatra. The careful driver of Plutus’s chariot is Ratio — reason. “ Faster !” cries one of the crowd, but the charioteer still holds a tight rein. The unruly horses next the chariot, named Interest and Contract, are led by the noble maidens Equity and Justice; and the wild pair in front. Avarice and Deceit, are held in by Generosity and Good Faith. In the rear, hovering over the triumphal band, Nemesis threatens. The companion picture, The Triumph of Poverty,” had also a Latin motto, to the effect that, while the rich man is ever anxious, “ the poor man fears nothing, joyous hope is his portion, and he learns to serve God by the practice of virtue.” In the picture a lean and hungry -looking old woman. Poverty, was seen riding in the lowliest of vehicles, a cart, drawn by two don- keys, Stupidity and Clumsiness, and by two oxen. Negligence and Indolence. Beside her in the cart sits Misfortune. A meagre and forlorn crowd surround and follow them. But the slow-moving team is guided by the four blooming girls. Moderation, Diligence, Alertness, and Toil, of whom the last is the one most abounding in vigor and health. The reins are held by Hope, her eyes toward heaven. Industry, Memory, and Experience sit behind, giving out to the hungry crowd the means of honorable plenty in the form of flails, axes, squares, and hammers. These human and cheerful works stand in the waste of that age of wrath- ful controversy and irrational devotion like green islands in the desert, a rest to the eye and a solace to the mind. When Luther was face to face with the hierarchy at the Diet of Worms, Calvin, a French boy of twelve, was already a sharer in the worldly advantage which the hierarchy could bestow upon its favorites. He held a benefice in the Cathedral of Noyon, his native town, and at seventeen he drew additional revenue from a curacy in a neighboring parish. The tonsured boy owed this ridiculous preferment to the circumstance that his father, being secretary to the bishop of the diocese, was sure to be at hand when the bishop happened to have a good thing to give away. In all probability Jean Calvin would have died an archbishop or a cardinal if he had remained in the Church of his an- cestors, for he possessed the two requisites for advancement — fervent zeal for the Church and access to the bestowers of its prizes. At Paris, however, whither he was sent by his father to pursue his studies, a shy, intense, devout lad, already thin and sallow with fasting and study, the light of the Reforma- tion broke upon him. Like Luther, he long resisted it, and still longer hoped to see a reformation m the Church, not outside of its pale. The Church never had a more devoted son. Not Luther himself loved it more. “ I was so ob- stinately given to the superstitions of popery,” he said, long after, “ that it seemed impossible I should ever be pulled out of the deep mire.” COMIC ART AND THE REFORMATION. 83 He struggled out at length. Observe one of the results of his conversion in this picture, in which a slander of the day is preserved for our inspection.* Gross and filthy calumny was one of the familiar weapons in the theological contests of that century. Both sides employed it — Luther and Calvin not less than others — for it belonged to that age to hate, and hence to misinterpret, opponents. Search the records of the city of N"oyon, in Picardie,” wrote Stapleton, an eminent controversial- ist on the Catholic side, and professor in a Catholic college of Calvin’s own day, “ and read again that Jean Calvin, convicted of a crime” (infamous and unmentionable), ‘‘ by the very clement sentence of the bishop and magistrate was branded with an iron lily on the shoulders.” The records have been searched ; nothing of the kind is to be found in them ; but the picture was drawn and scattered over France. Precisely the same charge was made against Luther. That both the reformers died of infamous diseases was another of the scandals of the time. In reading these controversies, it is convenient to 'keep in mind the remark of the collector of the Calvin pictures : “ When two theologians accuse one another, both of them lie.” One of these calumnies drew from Calvin a celebrated retort. ‘‘They accuse me,” said he, “of having no chil- dren. In every land there are Christians who are my children.” Another caricature, shown on the following page, representing Calvin at the burning of Servetus, had only too much foundation in truth. The reformer was not indeed present at the burning, but he caused the arrest of the victim, drew up the charges, furnished part of the testimony that convicted him, consented to and approved his execution. Servetus was a Spanish physician, of blameless life and warm convictions, who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Catholic and Protestant equally abhorred him, and Protestant Geneva seized the opportunity to show the world its attachment to the true faith by burning a man whom Rome was also longing to burn. It was a hideous scene — a virtuous and devoted Unitarian expiring in the flames after enduring the extremest anguish for thirty minutes, and crying, from the depths of his torment, “ Jesus, thou Son of the eternal God, have mercy on me !” But it was not Calvin who burned him. It was the century. It was Calyin bkanded. (Paris.) * From “ Musee de la Caricature en France,” Paris, 1834. 84 CAKICATURE AND COMIC ART. iaiperfectly developed human nature. Man had not reached the civilization which admits, allows, welcomes, and honors disinterested conviction. It were as unjust to blame Calvin for burning Servetus as it is to hold the Roman Catholic Church of the present day responsible for the Inquisition of three centuries ago. It was Man that was guilty of all those stupid and abominable cruelties. Luther, the man of his period, honestly declared that if he were the Lord God, and saw kings, princes, bishops, and judges so little mindful of his Son, he would knock the icorld to pieces.'’^ If Calvin had not bui-ned Serve- Cai.vin at the Bukjsikg of Sekvetus. tus, Servetus might have burned Calvin, and the Pope would have been happy to burn both. One of the best caricatures — perhaps the very best — which the Reforma- tion called forth was suggested by the dissensions that arose between the fol- lowers of Luther and Calvin when both of them were in the grave. It might have amused the very persons caricatured. We can fancy Lutherans, Calvin- ists, and Catholics all laughing togetlier at the spectacle of the two reformers holding the Pope by the ear, and with their other hands fighting one another, Luther clawing at Calvin’s beard, and Calvin hurling a Bible at Luther’s head. On the same sheet in the original drawing a second picture was given, in wliich a shepherd was seen on his knees, surrounded by his flock, addressing the Lord, who is visible in the sky. Underneath is written, “ The Lord is my Shepherd ; he will never forsake me.” The work has an additional interest as showing how early the French began to excel in caricature. In the Ger- COMIC AET AND THE EEFOEMATION. 8d man and English caricatures of that period there are no existing specimens which equal this one in effective simplicity. Perhaps the all-per- vadinsT influence of Rabe- lais in that age may have made French satire more good-humored. After all efforts to discover in the works of Rabelais hidden allusions to the great per- sonages and events of his time, we must remain of the opinion that he was a fun -maker pure and sim- ple, a court -fool to his centuiy. The anecdote related of his convent life seems to give us the key both to his character and his writings. The inci- dent has often been used in comedy since Rabelais employed it. On the fes- tival of St. Francis, to whom his convent was dedicated, when the coun- try people came in, laden with votive offerings, to pray before the image of the saint, young Rabelais removed the image from its dimly lighted recess and mounted himself upon the pedestal, attired in suitable costume. Group after group of awkward rustics approached and paid their homage. Rabelais at length, overcome by the ridiculous demeanor of the worshipers, was obliged to laugh, whereupon the gaping throng cried out, A miracle ! a miracle ! Our good lord St. Fran- cis moves 1” But a cunning old friar, who knew when miracles might and might not be rationally expected in that convent, ran into the chapel and drew out the merry saint, and the brothers laid their knotted cords so vigorously across his naked shoulders that he had a lively sense of not being made of wood. That was Rabelais ! He was a natural laugh-compeller. He laughed at every thing, and set his countrymen laughing at every thing. But there were no men who oftener provoked his derision than the monks. “How is it?” asks one of his merry men, “that people exclude monks from all good 86 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. companies, calling them feast-troublers, marrers of mirth, and disturbers of all civil conversation, as bees drive away the drones from their hives?” The hero answers this question in three pages of most Rabelaisan abuse, of which only a very few lines are quotable. ‘‘Your monk,” he says, “is like a monkey in a house. He does not watch like a dog, nor plow like the ox, nor give wool like the sheep, nor carry like the horse ; he only spoils and defiles all things. Monks disquiet all their neighborhood with a tingle- tangle jangling of bells, and mumble out great store of psalms, legends, and paternosters without thinking upon or apprehending the meaning of what they say, which truly is a mocking of God.” There is no single theme to which Rabelais, the favorite of bish- ops, oftener returns than this, and his boisterous satire had its effect upon the course of events in Europe, as well as upon French art and literature. The English caricatures that have come down to us from the era of the Reformation betray far more earnestness than humor or ingenuity. There is one in the British Museum which figures in so many books, and continued to do duty for so many years, that the inroads of the worms in the wood-cut can be traced in the prints of different dates. It represents King Henry YHI. receiving a Bible from Archbishop Cranmer and Lord Cromwell. The burly monarch, seated upon his throne, takes the book from their hands, while he tramples upon Pope Clement, lying prostrate at his feet, the tiara broken and fallen off, the triple cross lying on the ground. Cardinal Pole, with the aid of another dignitary, is trying to get the Pope on his feet again. A monk is holding the Pope’s horse, and other monks stand dismayed at the spectacle. This picture was executed in 1537, but, as we learn from the catalogue, the deterioration of the block and “ the working of worms in the wood ” prove that the impression in the Museum was taken in The martyrdom of the reformers in 1555, under Queen Mary of bloody memory, furnished subjects for the satiric pen and pencil as soon as the acces- sion of Elizabeth made it safe to treat them. But there is no spirit of fun in the pictures. They are as serious and grim as the events that suggested them. In one we see a lamb suspended before an altar, which the Bishop of Winchester (Gardiner), with his wolf’s head, is beginning to devour; and on the ground lie six slain lambs, named Ilouperus, Cranmerus^ Bradfordus^ Bydlerus^ Bogerus, and Latimerus, Three reformers put a rope round Gar- diner’s neck, saying, “ TFe will not this feloue to raigne over and on the other side of him two bishops with wolves’ heads mitred, and having sheep- skins on their shoulders, are drinking from chalices. Behind Gardiner are several men attached by rings through their noses to a rope round his waist. The devil appears above, holding a scroll, on which is written, “ Youe are my verye chyldren in that youe have slayne the prog)hetes. For even I from the * “Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum,” Division L, vol. i., p. 2. Lon- don, 1870. COMIC ART AND THE REFORMATION. 87 begynnmg was a murtherery On the altar lie two books, o-ne open and the other shut. On the open book we read, Christ alone is not sufficient without our sacrificed The only window in the edifice, a small round one, is closed and barred. Many of the figures in this elaborate piece utter severe animad- version upon opponents ; but none of them is scurrilous and indecent, except the mitred wolf, who is so remarkably plain-spoken that the compiler of the catalogue was obliged to suppress several of his words. The English caricaturists of that age seem to have, felt it their duty to ex- liibit the entire case between Catholic and Protestant in each broadside, with all the litigants on both sides, terrestrial and celestial, all the points in both arguments, and sometimes the whole history of the controversy from the be- ginning. The great expanse of the picture was obscured with the number of remarks streaming from the mouths of the persons depicted, and there was often at the bottom of the engraving prose and verse enough to fill two or three of these pages. Such extensive works call to mind the sermons of the following century, when preachers endeavored on each occasion to declare, as they said, the whole counsel of God so that if one individual present had never heard the Gospel before, and should never hear it again, he would hear enough for salvation in that one discourse. Another of these martyrdom prints may claim brief notice. Two compa- nies of martyrs are seen, one composed of the bishops, and the other of less distinguished persons, between whom there is a heap of burning fagots. Nearly all the figures say something, and the space under the picture is filled with verses. Cranmer, with the Bible in his left hand, holds his right in the fire, exclaiming, ^^Burne^ unworthie right handP'' Latimer cries, Lord^ Lord, receive my spirit Philpot, pointing to a book which he holds, says, ‘‘7" will pay my voices in thee, 0 Smithfield P"^ The other characters utter their dying words. The verses are rough, but full of the resolute enthusiasm of the age : “First, Christian Cranmer, who (at first tho foild). And so subscribing to a recantation, God’s grace recouering him, hee, quick recoil’d. And made his hand ith flames make expiation. Saing, burne faint-hand, burne first, ’tis thy due merit. And dying, cryde. Lord Jesus take my spirit. “Next, lovely Latimer, godly and grave, Himselfe, Christs old tride souldier, plaine displaid. Who stoutly at the stake did him behave. And to blest Ridley (gone before) hee saide, Goe on blest brother, for I followe, neere. This day wee’le light a light, shall aye burne cleare. “Whom when religious, reverend Ridley spide, Deere heart (sayes hee) bee cheerful in y*" Lord ; 88 CAEICATURE AND COMIC ART. Who never (yet) his helpe to his denye’d, & hee will us support & strength afford, Or suage y® flame, thus, to the stake fast tide. They, constantly Christs blessed Martyres dyde. “ Blest Bradford also comming to the stake, Cheerfully tooke a faggott in his hand : Kist it, &, thus, unto a young-man spake, with him, chained, to y® stake did stand, Take courage (brother) wee shal haue this night, A blessed supper w^^ the Lord of Light. “Admir’d was Doctor Tailers faith & grace. Who under-went greate hardship spight and spleene; One, basely, threw a Faggot in his face, W*^^ made y® blood ore all bis face bee seene ; Another, baiberously beate out his braines. Whilst, at y® stake his corps was bound w'^ chaines.” In many of the English pictures of that period, the intention of the draughtsman is only made apparent by the explanatory words at the bot- tom. In one of these a friar is seen holding a chalice to a man who stretches out his hands to receive it. From the chalice a winged cockatrice is rising. There is also a man who stabs another while embracing him. The quaint words below explain the device : “ The man which standeth lyke a Prophet signifieth godliness; the Fryer, ti’eason ; the cup with the Serpent, Poyson ; the other which striketh with the sworde. Murder ; and he that is wounded is Peace.” In another of these pictures we see an ass dressed in a judge’s robes seated on the bench. Before him is the prisoner, led away by a priest and another man. At one side a friar is seen in conversation with a layman. No one could make any thing of this if the artist had not obligingly appended these words: “The Asse signifieth Wrathfull Justice; the man that is drawn away, Trutli ; those that draweth Truth by the armes, Flatterers; the Frier, Lies; and the associate with the Frier, Perjury.” In another drawing the artist shows us the Pope seated in a chair, with his foot on the face of a pros- trate man, and in his hand a drawn sword, directing an executioner who is in the act of beheading a prisoner. In the distance are three men kneeling in prayer. The explanation is this: “The Pope is Oppression; the man which killeth is Crueltie; those which are a-killing. Constant Religion ; the three kneeling, Love, Furtherance, and Truth to the Gospel.” In one of these crude productions a parson is exhibited preaching in a pulpit, from which two eccle- siastics are dragging him by the beard to the stake outside. Explanation in this instance is not so necessary, but we have it, nevertheless : “lie which preacheth in the pulpit signifieth godly zeale and a furtherer of the gospel ; and the two which are plucking him out of his place are the enemies of God’s Word, threatening by fire to consume the professors of the same; and that COMIC ART AND THE REFORMATION. 89 company which (sit) still are Nullifidians^ such as are of no religion, not re- garding any doctrine, so they may bee quiet to live after their owne willes and mindes.” Another picture shows us a figure seated on a rainbow, the world at his feet, up the sides of which a pope and a cardinal are climbing. In the middle is the devil tumbling off headlong. The world is upheld by Death, who sits by the mouth of hell. This is the explanation: “He Avhich sitteth on the raynebowe signifieth Christ, and the sworde in his hand signi- fieth his wrath against the wycked ; the round compasse, the worlde ; and those two diming, the one a pope, the other a cardinall, striving who shall be highest; and the Divell which falleth headlong downe is Lucifer, whiche through pride fel ; he whiche holdeth the world is Death, standing in the en- trance of hell to receyve all superbious livers.” In another print is represented a Roman soldier riding on a boar, and bear- ing a banner, on which is painted the Pope with his insignia. A man stabs himself and tears his hair, and behind him is a raving woman. This picture has a blunt signification : “The bore signifieth Wrath, and the man on his back Mischief; the Pope in the flag Destruction, and the flag Uncertaine Religion, turning and chaunging with every blaste of winde; the man killing himselfe, Desperation; the woman, Madness.” There are fourteen specimens in this quaint manner in the collection of the British Museum, all executed and published in the early part of the reign of Elizabeth. As art, they are naught. As part of the record of a great age, they have their value. Germany, England, and France fought the battle of the Reformation — two victors and one van- quished. From Italy in that age we have one specimen of cari- cature, but it was ex- ecuted by Titian. He drew a burlesque of the Laocoon to ridi- cule a school of art- ists in Rome, who, as he thought, extolled too highly the ancient sculptures, and, be- cause they could not succeed in coloring, insisted that correctness of form was the chief thing in art. Since Titian’s day, parodies of the Laocoon have been among the stock devices of the carica- turists of all nations. 90 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. CHAPTER IX. IN THE PURITAN PERIOD. T he annexed picture,* a favorite with the Protestants of England, Holland, and Germany for more than a century, is composed of twenty-two articles and objects, most of which are em- ployed in the Roman Catholic wor- ship. A church -bell forms the hat, which is decorated by crossed daggers and holy -water brushes. A herring serves for a nose. The mouth is an open wine-flagon. Tlie eye is a chal- ice covered by the holy wafer, and the cheek is a paten, or plate used in the communion service. The great vol- ume that forms the shoulders is the mass-book. The front of the bell-tiara is adorned by a mitred wolf devouring a lamb, and by a goose holding a rosa- ry in its bill ; the back, by a spectacled ass reading a book, and by a boar wear- ing a scholar’s cap. At the bottom of the engraving the pierced feet of Christ are seen resting upon two creatures called by the artist ^‘the Queen’s badges.” The whole figure of Christ is supposed to be behind this mass of The Papal Gokgon. (Reign of Elizabeth, 1581.) . r • • • i human inventions; for in the original these explanatory words are given, ‘‘Christ Covered.” It was by this device that Master Batman, at the beginning of the Puritan period, sought to present to the eye a summary of what the Reformation had accomplished, and what it had still to fear. Half a century before, Henry YHI. being still the Defender of the Faith, the various articles used in Master * From “Malcolm’s Caricaturing,” plate 2, and p. 23. See, also, “Catalogue of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum,” Division I., vol. ii., p. 177. IN THE PURITAN PERIOD. '91 Batman’s satirical picture were objects of religious veneration tbrougliout Great Britain. They had now become the despised but dreaded rattle-traps of a suppressed idolatry. From the field of strife one of the victors gathered the scattered arms and implements, the gorgeous ensigns and trappings of the defeated, and piled them upon the plain, a trophy and a warning. There is no revolution that does not sweep away much that is good. The reformation in religion, chiefly wrought by Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, and Calvin, was a movement of absolute necessity to the further progress of our race. The intelligence of Christendom had reached a development which was incom- patible with respect for the assumptions of the papacy, and with a belief in the fictions which the papacy had invented or adopted. The vase must have bro- ken, or the oak planted in it must have ceased to grow. ISTevertheless, those fictions had their beauty and their use. There was a good and pleasing side to that system of fables and ceremonies, which amused, absorbed, and satisfied the people of Europe for a thousand years. If we could concede that the mass of men must remain forever ignorant and very poor, we could also ad- mit that nothing was ever invented by man better calculated to make them thoughtlessly contented with a dismal lot than the Roman Catholic Church as it existed in the fifteenth century, before the faith of the people had been shaken in its pretensions. There was something in it for every faculty of human nature except the intellect. It gave play to every propensity except the propensity of one mind in a thousand to ask radical questions. It re- lieved every kind of distress except that which came of using the reason. All human interests were provided for in it except the supreme interest of human advancement. One must have been in a Catholic community, or else lived close to an im- portant Catholic church, in order to form an idea of the great part the Church once played in the lives and thoughts of its members — the endless provision it made for the entertainment of unformed minds in the way of festivals, fasts, processions, curious observances, changes of costume, and special rites. There was always something going on or coming off. There was not a day in the year nor an hour in the day which had not its ecclesiastical name and charac- ter. In our flowery observance of Easter and in our joyous celebration of Christmas we have a faint traditional residue of festivals that once made all Christendom gay and jocund. And it was all so adapted to the limited abili- ties of our race ! In an average thousand men, there is not more than one man capable of filling creditably the post of a Protestant minister, but there are a hundred who can be drilled into competent priests. Consider, for example, a procession, which was formerlj^ the great event of many of the Church festivals, gratifying equally those who witnessed and those who took part in it. In other words, it gratified keenly the whole community. And yet how entirely it was within the resources of human nature! ‘Not a child so young, not a woman so weak, not a man so old, but could assist or 92 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. enjoy it. The sick could view it from their windows, the robust could carry its burdens, the skillful could contrive its devices, and all had the feeling that they were engaged in enhancing at once the glory of God, the fame of their saint, the credit of their town, and the good of their souls. It was pleasure ; it was duty; it was masquerade; it was devotion. Some readers may remember the exaltation of soul with which Albert Diirer, the first of German artists in Luther’s age, describes the great procession at Antwerp, in 1520, in honor of what was styled the “Assumption ” of the Virgin Mary. One of the pleasing fictions adopted by the old Church was that on the 15th of August, a.d. 45, the Virgin Mary, aged seventy -five years, made a miraculous ascent into heaven. Hence the annual festival, which was celebrated throughout Europe with pomp and splendor. The passage in the diary of Diirer has a particular value, because it affords us a vivid view of the bright side of the ancient Church just before the reformers changed its gorgeous robes into the Puri- tan’s plain black gown, and substituted the long prayer and interminable ser- mon for the magnificent ceremonial and the splendid procession. Albert Diirer was in sympathy with Luther, but his heart swelled within him as he beheld, on that Sunday morning in Antwerp, the glorious pageantry that filed past for two hours in honor of the “ Mother of God’s ” translation. All the people of the city assembled about the Church of “ Our Lady,” each dressed in gayest attire, but each wearing the costume of his rank, and exhib- iting the badge of his guild or vocation. Silver trumpets of the old Fj-ankish fashion, German drums and fifes, were playing in every quarter. The trades and guilds of the city — goldsmiths, painters, masons, embroiderers, statuaries, cabinet-makers, carpenters, sailors, fishermen, butchers, curriers, weavers, bak- ers, tailors, shoe-makers, and laborers — all marched by in order, at some dis- tance apart, each preceded by its own magnificent cross. These were fol- lowed by the merchants, shop-keepers, and their clerks. The “ shooters ” came next, armed with bows, cross-bows, and firelocks, some on horseback and some on foot. The city guard followed. Then came the magistrates, nobles, and knights, all dressed in their official costume, and escorted, as our artist records, “ by a gallant troop, arrayed in a noble and splendid manner.” There were a number of women in the procession, belonging to a religious order, who gained their subsistence by labor. These, all clad in white from head to foot, agreeably relieved the splendors of the occasion. After them marched “a number of gallant persons and the canons of Our Lady’s Church, with all the clergy and scholars, followed by a grand display of characters.” Here the enthusiasm of the artist kindles, as he recalls the glories of the day: “ Twenty men carried the Virgin and Christ, most richly adorned, to the honor of God. In this part of the procession were a number of delightful things represented in a splendid manner. There were several wagons, in which were representations of ships and fortifications. Then came a troop of characters from the Prophets, in regular order, followed by others from IN THE PURITAN PERIOD. 93 the iSTew Testament, such as the Annunciation, the Wise Men of the East rid- ing great camels and other wonderful animals, and the Flight into Egypt, all very skillfully appointed. Then came a great dragon, and St. Margaret with the image of the Virgin at her girdle, exceedingly beautiful; and last, St. George and his squire. In this troop rode a number of boys and girls very handsomely arrayed in various costumes, representing so many saints. This procession, from beginning to end, was upward of two hours in passing our house, and there were so many things to be seen that I could never describe them all even in a book.” In some such hearty and picturesque manner all the great festivals of the Church were celebrated age after age, the entire people taking part in the show. There was no dissent, because there was no thought. But the re- formers preached, the Bible was translated into the modern tongues, the intel- ligence of Christendom awoke, and all that bright childish pageantry vanished from the sight of the more advanced nations. Tlie reformers discovered that there was no reason to believe that the aged Virgin Mary, on the 15th of August, A.D. 45, was borne miraculously to heaven ; and in a single generation many important communities, by using their reason even to that trifling extent, grew past enjoying the procession annually held in honor of the old tradition. All the old festivals fell under the ban. It became, at length, a sectarian punc- tilio not to abstain from labor on Christmas. The Puritan Sunday was gradu- ally evolved from the same spirit of opposition, and life became intense and serious. For it is not in a single generation, nor in ten, that the human mind, after having been bound and confined for a thousand years, learns to enjoy and safe- ly use its freedom. Luther the reformer was only a little less credulous than Luther the monk. He assisted to strike the fetters from the reason, but the prisoner only hobbled from one cell into another, larger and cleaner, but still a cell. No one can become familiar with the Puritan period without feeling that the bondage of the mind to the literal interpretation of some parts of the Old Testament was a bondage as real, though not as degrading nor as hope- less, as that under which it had lived to the papal decrees. You do not make your canary a free bird by merely opening the door of its cage. It has to ac- quire slowly, with anguish and great fear, the strength of wing, lungs, and eye, the knowledge, habits, and instincts, which its ancestors possessed before they were captured in their native islands. It is only in our own day that we are beginning really to enjoy the final result of Luther’s heroic life — a tolerant and modest freedom of thought — for it is only in our own day that the conse- quences of peculiar thinking have anywhere ceased to be injurious. If there are any who can not yet forgive the Puritans for their intolerance and narrowness, it must be they who do not know the agony of apprehension in which they passed their lives. It is the Puidtan age that could be properly called the Reign of Terror. It lasted more than a century, instead of a few 94 CAKICATUKE AND COMIC ART. months, and it was during that long period of dread and tribulation, that they acquired the passionate abhorrence of the papal system which is betrayed in the pictures and writings of the time. There was a fund of terror in their own belief, in that awful Doubt which hung over every soul, whether it was or was not one of the Elect; and, in addition to that, it seemed to them that the chief powers of earth, and all the powers of hell, were united to crush the true believers. Examine the two large caricatures, “Rome’s Monster” and “Spayne and Rome Defeated,” in the light of a mere catalogue of dates. The Field of the Cloth of Gold, which we may regard as the splendid close of the old state of things, occurred in 1520, three years after Luther nailed up his theses. Heniy Spaynb and Rome Defeated. (London and Amsterdam, 1G21.) VIII. defied the Pope in 1533 ; and twenty years after. Bloody Mary, married to Philip of Spain, was burning bishops at Smithfield. Elizabeth’s reign began in 1558, which changed, not ended, the religious, strife in England. The mas- sacre of St. Bartholomew occurred in 1572, on that 24th of August which, as Voltaire used to say, all the humane and the tolerant of our race should ob- serve as a day of humiliation and sorrow for evermore. In 1579 began the long struggle between the New and the Old, which is called the Thirty Years’ War. The Prince of Orange was assassinated in 1584, in the midst of those great events which Mr. Motley has made familiar to the reading people of both continents. Every intelligent Protestant in Europe felt that the weapon which slew the prince was aimed at his own heart. The long dread of the Queen of Scots’ machinations ended only with her death in 1587. Soon after, the IN THE PURITAN PERIOD. 95 shadow of the coming Spanish Armada crept over Great Britain, which was not dispelled till the men of England defeated and the storm scattered it in 1588. In 1605 Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot struck such terror to the Protestant mind, that it has not, in this year, 1877, wholly recovered from it, as all may know who will converse with uninstructed people in the remoter counties of Great Britain. Raleigh was beheaded in 1618. The civil war began in 1642. In 1665 the plague desolated England, and in the next year occurred the great fire of London, good Protestants not doubting that both events were traceable to the fell influence of the Beast. The accession of James II., a Roman Catholic, filled the Puritans with new alarm in 1685, and during the three anxious years of his reign their brethren, the Huguenots, were fleeing into all the Protestant lands from the hellish persecution of the priests who governed Louis XIV. Upon looking back at this period of agitation and alarm, it startles the mind to observe in the catalogue of dates this one: ‘‘ Shakspeare died 1616.” It shows us, what the ordinary records do not show, that there are people who retain their sanity and serenity in the maddest times. The rapid succession of the plays— an average of nearly two per annum — proves that there was a public for Shakspeare when all the world seemed absorbed in subjects least akin to art and humor. And how little trace we find of all those thrilling events in the plays ! He was a London actor when the Armada came ; and during the year of the Gunpowder Plot he was probably meditating the grand- est of all his themes, ‘‘ King Lear !” The picture entitled “ Spayne and Rome Defeated ”* was one of the most noted and influential broadsheets published during the Puritan period. It may properly be termed a broadsheet, since the copy of the original in the British Museum measures 20f inches by 13. The Puritans of England saw with dismay the growing cordiality between James I. and the Spanish court, and watched with just apprehension the visit of Prince Charles to Spain, and the prospect of a marriage between the heir-apparent and a Spanish princess. At this alarming crisis, 1621, the sheet was composed in England, and sent over to Holland to be engraved and printed, Holland being then, and for a hundred and fifty years after, the printing-house and type-foundry of Northern Europe. Some of the Pilgrim Fathers of Massachusetts, then residing at Ley- den, and still waiting to hear the first news of the 3Iayflower company, who had sailed the year before, may have borne a hand in the work. Pastor Rob- inson, we know, gained part of his livelihood by co-operating with brethren in England in the preparation of works designed for distribution at home. Besides being one of the most characteristic specimens of Puritan carica- ture which have been preserved, it presents to us a resume of history, as Prot- * Prom Malcolm, who copied it from the original in the British Museum. See Malcolm’s “Caricaturing,” plate 22. 96 CAKICATURE AND COMIC ART. estants interpreted it, from the time of the Spanish Armada to that of Guy Fawkes — 1588 to 1605. It appears to have been designed for circulation in Holland and Germany as well as in England, as the words and verses upon it are in English, Dutch, and Latin. The English lines are these : “In Eighty-eight, Spayne, arm’d with potent might, Against onr peacefull Land came on to fight; But windes and waves and fire in one conspire, To help the English, frustrate Spaynes desire. To second that the Pope in counsell sitts, Eor some rare stratagem they strayne their witts ; November’s 5th, by powder they decree Great Brytanes state ruinate should bee. But Hee, whose never-slumb’ring Eye did view The dire intendments of this damned crew, Did soone prevent what they did thinke most sure. Thy mercyes, Lord! for evermore endure.” This interesting sheet was devised by Samuel Ward, a Puritan preacher of Ipswich, of great zeal and celebrity, who dedicated it, in the fashion of the day, thus : “To God. In memorye of his double deliveraunce from y® invincible Navie and y® unmatche- able powder Treason, 1G05.” It was a timely reminder. As we occasionally see in our own day a public man committing the absurdity of replying in a serious strain to a caricature, so, in 1621, the Spanish embassador in Loudon, Count Gondornar, called the attention of the British Government to this engraving, complaining that it was calculated to revive the old antipathy of the English people to the Spanish monarchy. The obsequious lords of the Privy Council summoned Samuel Ward to appear before them. After examining him, they remanded him to the custod}^ of their messenger, whose house was a place of confinement for such prisoners; and there he remained. As there was yet no habeas corpus act known among men, he could only protest his innocence of any ill designs upon the Spanish monarchy, and humbly petition for release. He petitioned first the Privy Council; and they proving obdurate, he petitioned the king. He was set free at last, and he remained for twenty years a thorn in the side of tliose who dreaded “Spayne and Rome” less than they hated Puritans and Parliaments. This persecution of Samuel Ward gave his print such celebrity that several imitations or pirated editions of the work speedily appeared, of which four are preserved in the great collection of the British Museum, each differing from the original in details. Caricatures aimed directly at the Spanish embassador followed, but they are only remarkable for the explanatory words which ac- company them. In one we read that the residence of Count Gondornar in England had “hung before the eyes of many good men like a prodigious IN THE PURITAN PERIOD. 97 comet, threatening worse effects to Church and State than this other comet,” which had recently menaced both from the vault of heaven. ‘‘No ecclipse of the sunne,” continues the writer, “ could more damnifie the earth, to make it barraine and the best things abortive, than did his interposition.” We learn also that when the count left England for a visit to his own country, in 1618, “there was an uproare and assault a day or two before his departure from London by the Apprentices, who seemed greedy of such an occasion to vent their own spleenes in doing him or any of his a mischiefe.” Another picture exhibits the odious Gondomar giving an account of his conduct in England to the “ Spanishe Parliament,” in the course of which he attributes the British ab- horrence of Spain to such men as “Ward of Ipswich,” whom he describes as “light and unstayed wits,” intent on winning the airy applause of the vulgar, and to raise their desperate fortunes. Nor does he refrain from chuckling over the penalty inflicted upon that enemy of Spayne and Rome: “And I think that Ward of Ipswich escaped not safely for his lewed and profane pict- ure of ’88 and their Powder Treason, one whereof, my Lord Archbishop, I sent you in a letter, that you might see the malice of these detestable Heretiques against his Holiness and the Catholic Church.” This broadsheet being enti- tled “Vox Populi,”the writer concludes his explanation by styling the embas- sador “Fox Populi, Count Gondomar the Great.” Ward of Ipswich .continued to be heard from occasionally during the first years of the reign of Charles I. Ips- wich itself acquired a certain celebrity as a Puritan centre, and the name was given during the life-time of Samuel Ward to a town in Massachusetts, which is still thriving. One of his sermons upon drunkenness was illustrated by a picture, of which a copy is given here,* designed to show the degeneracy of man- ners that had taken place in England in his day. Mr. Chatto truly remarks that twenty years later the picture would have been more appropriate with the in- scriptions transposed. ^ The marriage of Charles I. with the From Title-page to Princess Henrietta of France, in 1625, was one of the long series of impolitic acts which the king expiated on the scaffold in 1649. It aggravated every propensity of his nature that was hos- tile to the liberties of the people. Under James I. the elite of the Puritans had fled to Holland, and a little company had sought a more permanent refuge Sermon, “Woe to Drunk- ares,” BY Samuel Ward, of Ipbwioh, 1627. From Chatto’s “Origin and History of Playing Cards,” p. 131, London, 1848. 7 98 CAEICATURE AND COMIC ART. on the coast of 'New England. During the early years of the reign of Charles, the persecution of the Puritans by his savage bishops became so cruel and so vigilant as to induce men of family and fortune, like Winthrop and his friends, accompanied by a fleet of vessels laden with virtuous and thoughtful families, to cross the ocean and settle in Massachusetts. Boston was founded when Charles I. had been cutting off the ears and slitting the noses of Puritans for five years. All that enchanting shore of New England, with its gleaming beaches, and emerald isles, and jutting capes of granite and wild roses, now so dear to summer visitors — an eternal holiday-ground and resting-place for the people of North America — began to be dotted with villages, the names of which tell us what English towns were most renowned for the Puritan spirit two hundred and fifty years ago. The satirical pictures preserved in the Brit- ish Museum which relate to events in earlier reigns number ninety-nine in all ; but those suggested by events in the reign of Charles I. are nearly seven hun- dred in number. Most of them, however, were not published until after the downfall of the king. Several of these prints are little more than portraits of the conspicuous persons of the time, with profuse accounts on the same sheet of their suffer- ings or misdeeds. One such records the heroic endurance of “ the Reverend Peter Smart, mr of Artes, minister of God’s word at Durham,” who, for preaching against popery, lost above three hundred pounds per annum, and was imprisoned eleven years in the King’s Bench. The composer adds these lines : “Peter preach downe vaine rites with flagrant harte: Thy Guerdon shall be greate, though heare thou Smart.” Another of these portrait pieces exhibits Dr. Alexander Leighton, who spoke of Queen Henrietta as “ the daughter of Hell, a Canaanite, and an idol- atresse,” and spared not Archbishop Laud and his confederates. For these offenses he was, as the draughtsman informs us, “ clapt up in Newgate for the space of 15 weekes, where he suffered great miserie and sicknes almost to death, afterward lost one of his Fares on the pillorie, had one of his nosthrills slitt clean through, was whipt with a whip of 3 Coardes knotted, had 36 lashes therewith, was fined 1000/^., and kept prisoner in the fleet 12 yeares, where he was most cruelly used a long time, being lodged day and night amongst the most desperately wiked villaines of y® whole prison.” He was also branded on the cheek with the letters S. S. — sower of sedition. Several other prints of the time record the same mark of attention paid by the “martyred” king to his Catholic wife. By-and-by, the crowned and mitred ruffians who did such deeds as these being themselves in durance. Parliament set Dr. Leighton free, and made him a grant of six thousand pounds. A caricature of the same bloody period is entitled, “Archbishop Laud din- ing on the Ears of Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton.” We see Laud seated at dinner, having an ear on the point of his knife and three more ears in the plate IN THE PURITAN PERIOD. 99 before him, the three victims of his cruelty standing about, and two armed bishops at the foot of the table. The dialogue below represents Laud as re- jecting with scorn all the dainties of his table, and declaring that nothing will content him but the ears of Lawyer Prynne and Dr. Bastwick. He cuts them off himself, and orders them to be dressed for his supper. “ Canterbury. This I doe to make you examples, That others may be more careful to please my palate. Henceforth let my servants know, that what I will, I will have done, What ere is under heaven’s Sunne.” A burst of caricature heralded the coming triumph of the Puritans in 1640, the year of the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford. Many of the pictures recorded both the sufferings and the joyful deliverance of the Puritan clergy- men. Thus we have in one of them a glowing account of the return of the three gentlemen whose ears furnished a repast for the Archbishop of Canter- bury. They had been imprisoned for many years in the Channel Islands, from which they were conveyed to Dartmouth, and thence to London, hailed with acclamations of delight and welcome in every village through which they passed. All the expenses of their long journey were paid for them, and pres- ents of value were thrust upon them as they rode by. Within a few miles of London they were met by such a concourse of vehicles, horsemen, and people that it was with great difficulty they could travel a mile in an hour. But when at length, in the evening, they reached the city, masses of enthusiastic people blocked the streets, crying, “Welcome home! welcome home !” and strew- ing flowere and rosemary before them. Thousands of the people carried torch- es, which rendered the streets lighter than the day. They were three hours in making their way through the crowd from Charing Cross to their lodgings in the city, a distance of a mile. It was during the exal- tation of the years preced- ing the civil w^ar that such pictures appeared as the one here given, urging a union between the Church of England and the Church Let not the World devide those whom Christ hath joined.” 100 CARICATUKE AND COMIC ART. of Scotland against the foe of both. This is copied from an original im- pression in the collection of the New York Historical Society. The caricaturists pursued Laud and Strafford even to the scaffold. The archbishop was the author of a work entitled Canons and Institutions Ec- clesiastical,” in which he gave expression to his extreme High-church opinions. In 1640 the victorious House of Commons canceled the canons adopted from this work, and fined the clergy who had sat in the Convocation. A caricature quickly appeared, called “Archbishop Laud firing a Cannon,” in which the can- non is represented as bursting, and its fragments endangering the clergymen standing near. Laud’s committal to the Tower was the occasion of many broadsheets, one of which exhibits him fastened to a staple in a wall, with a long string of taunting stanzas below : “Reader, I know thou canst not choose but smile To see a Bishop tide thus to a ring! Yea, such a princely prelate, that ere while Could three at once in Limbo patrum fling ; Suspend by hundreds where his worship pleased. And them that preached too oft by silence eas’d ; “ Made Laws and Canons, like a King (at least) ; Devis’d new oaths ; forc’d men to sweare to lies ! Advanc’d his lordly power ’bove all the rest. And then our Lazie Priests began to rise ; But painfull ministers, which plide their place With diligence, went downe the wind apace. “Our honest Round heads too then went to racke ; The holy sisters into corners fled ; Cobblers and Weavers preacht in Tubs for lacke Of better Pulpits ; with a sacke instead Of Pulpit-cloth, hung round in decent wise. All which the spirit did for their good devise. “Barnes, Cellers, Cole-holes, were their meeting-places, So sorely were these babes of Christ abus’d. Where he that most Church-government disgraces Is most esteem’d, and with most reverence us’d. It being their sole intent religiously To rattle against the Bishops’ dignity. “Brother, saies one, what doe you thinke, I pray, Of these proud Prelates, which so lofty are ? Truly, saies he, meere Antichrists are they. Thus as they parle, before they be aware, Perhaps a Pursuivant slips in behind. And makes ’em run like hares before the wind. “A yeere agone ’tad been a hanging matter T’ave writ (nay, spoke) a word ’gainst little Will ; IN THE PURITAN PERIOD. 101 But now the times are chang’d, men scorne to flatter ; So much the worse for Canterbury still, Por if that truth come once to rule the roast, No mar’le to see him tide up to a post. ‘ ‘ By wicked counsels faine he would have set The Scots and us together by the eares ; A Patriark’s place the Levite long’d to get, To sit bith’ Pope in one of Peter’s chaires. And having drunke so deepe of Babels cup, Was it not time, d’ee think, to chaine him up ?” In these stanzas are roughly given the leading counts of the popular indict- ment against Archbishop Laud. Other prints present him to us in the Tower with a halter round his neck ; and, again, we see him in a bird-cage, with the queen’s Catholic confessor, the two being popularly regarded as birds of a feather. In another, a stout carpenter is holding Laud’s nose to a grindstone, while the carpenter’s boy turns the handle, and the archbishop cries for mepcy : “ Such turning will soon deform my face ; Oh ! I bleed, I bleed ! and am extremely sore.” But the carpenter reminds him that the various ears that he had caused to be cut off were quite as precious to their owners as his nose is to him. A Jesuit enters with a vessel of holy water with which to wash the extremely sore nose. One broadsheet represents Laud in consultation with his physician, who ad- ministers an emetic that causes him to throw off his stomach several heavy articles which had been troubling him for years. First, the “ Tobacco Patent” comes up with a terrible wrench. As each article appears, the doctor and his patient converse upon it : Doctor. What’s this? A book? Whosoever hath bin at church may exercise lawful recrea- tions on Sunday. What’s the meaning of this ? Canterbury. ’Tis the booke for Pastimes on the Sunday, which I caused to be made. But hold ! here comes something. What is it ? '■'■Doctor. ’Tis another book. The title is, ‘Sunday no Sabbath.’ Did you cause this to be made also ? "Canterbury. No; Doctor Pocklington made it; but I licensed it. ^ "Doctor. But what’s this? A paper ’tis; if I be not mistaken, a Star-Chamber order made against Mr. Prinne, Mr. Burton, and Dr. Bastwicke. Had you any hand in this? "Canterbury. I had. I had. All England knoweth it. But, oh, here comes up something that makes my very back ake ! O that it were up once ! Now it is up, I thank Heaven ! "Doctor. ’Tis a great bundle of papers, of presentations and suspensions. These were the in- struments, my lord, wherewith you created the tongue-tied Doctors, and gave them great Benefices in the Country to preach some twice a year at the least, and in their place to hire some journey- man Curate, who will only read a Sermon in the forenoone, and in the afternoone be drunke, with his parishioners for company.” By the same painful process the archbishop is delivered of his ‘‘Book of Canons,” and finally of his mitre; upon which the doctor says, “Nay, if the miter be come, the Divell is not far off. Farewell, my good lord.” 102 CAKICATUEE AND COMIC ART. There still exist in various collections more than a hundred prints relating directly to Archbishop Laud, several of which give burlesque representations of his execution. There are some that show him asleep, and visited by the ghosts of those whom he had persecuted, each addressing him in turn, as the victims of Richard III. spoke to their destroyer on Bos worth Field. One of the print makers, however, relented at the spectacle of an old man, seventy-two years of age, brought to the block. He exhibits the archbishop speaking to the crowd from the scaffold : “ Lend me but one poore teare, when thow do’st see This wretched portraict of just miserie. I was Great Innovator, Tyran, Foe To Church and State ; all Times shall call me so. But since I’m Thunder-stricken to the Ground, Learn how to stand : insult not ore my wound.” This one poor stanza alone among the popular utterances of the time shows that any soul in England was touched by the cruel fanatic’s bloody end. During the civil war and the government of Cromwell, 1642 to 1660, nine in ten of all the satirical prints that have been preserved are on the Puritan side. A great number of them were aimed at the Welsh, whose brogue seems to have been a standing resource with the mirth-makers of that period, as the Irish is at present. The wild roystering ways of the Cavaliers, their debauchery and license, fur- nished subjects. The cruelties practiced by Prince Rupert suggested the annexed illustration, in which the author endeavored to show “ the cruell Impieties of Blood-thirsty Royalists and blasphe- mous Anti-Parliamentarians under the Command of that inhumane Prince Rupert, Digby, and the rest, wherein the barbarous Crueltie of our Civill iincivill Warres is briefly discovered.” Beneath the portrait of England’s wolf are various narra- tives of his bloody deeds. One picture exhibits the plundering habits of the mercenaries on the side of the king in Ireland. A soldier is repre- sented armed and equipped with the utensils that appertain to good forage : on his head a three- legged pot, hanging from his side a duck, a spit with a goose on it held in his left hand as a mus- “ England’s Wolfe with Eagle’s ^ dripping-pan Oil liis ami as a shield, a hay- Clawes” (Prince Kupeet), 1647 . ri.i.-ii t r • ^ • c fork m his right hand for a rest, with a string or sausages for a match, a long artichoke at his side for a sword, bottles of canary suspended from his belt, slices of toast for shoe-strings, and two black pots at his garters. This picture may have been called forth by an item in a news-let- 1 ; IN THE PURITAN PERIOD. 103 ter of 1641, wherein it was stated that such ‘‘great store of pilidges” was daily brought into Drogheda that a cow could be bought there for five shil- lings and a horse for twelve. The abortive attempt of Charles IT., after the execution of his father, to unite the Scots under his sceptre, and by their aid place himself upon the throne of England, called forth the caricature annexed, in which an old device is put to a new use. A large num- ber of verses explain the pict- ure, though they begin by de- claring : ‘ ‘ This Embleme needs no learned Ex- position ; The World knows well enough the sad condition Of regal Power and Prerogative. Dead and dethron’d in England^ now Charles II. ajsd the Sootoii Peesbytebians, 1G51. In Scotland, vibare they seeme to Come to the grinstone, Charles ; ’tls now too late To recolect, ’tis presbiterian fate. ovetie a , ^ ^ “Xmgf. Yon Covenant pretenders, must I bee If hee 1 be more obsequmus than his subject of your Tradgie Comedie ? Dad, And act according to Kirk Princi- ples, More subtile than were Delphic Ora- cles.” '■‘■Jockey. I, Jockey, turue the stone of all your plots. For none turnes faster than the turne-coat Scots. '■‘•Presbyter. We for our ends did make thee king, be sure, Not to rule us, we will not that endure. King. You deep dissemblers, I know what jmu doe. And, for revenges sake, I will dissemble too.” In the verses that follow there is to be found one of the few explicit jus- tifications of the execution of Charles I. that the lighter literature of the Com- O monwealth affords : “But Lav) and Justice at the last being done "X. On the hated Father, now they love the Son.” The poet also taunts the Scots with having fii’st stirred up the English to “doe Heroick Justice” on the late king, and then adopting the heir on condition of his giving their Church the same fell supremacy which Laud had claimed for the Church of England. The Ironsides of Cromwell soon accomplished the caricaturist’s prediction : “But this religious mock we all shall see. Will soone the downfall of their Babel be.” We find the pencil and the pen of the satirist next employed in exhibiting the young king fleeing in various ludicrous disguises before his enemies. An interesting caricature published during the civil w^ars aimed to cast 104 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. back upon the Malignants the ridicule implied in the nickname of Roundhead as applied to the Puritans. It contained figures of three ecclesiastics, “ Sound- head, Rattle-head, and Round-head.” Sound-head, a minister sound in the Puritan faith, hands a Bible to Rattle-head, a personage meant for Laud, half bishop and half Jesuit. On the other side is the genuine Round-head, a monk with shorn pate, who presents to Rattle -head a crucifix, and points to a mon- astery. Rattle -head rejects the Bible, and receives the crucifix. Over the figures is written : “ See heer, Malignants Foolerie Retorted on them properly, The Sound-head, Round-head, Rattle-head, Well placed, where best is merited.” Below are other verses in which, of course, Rattle -head and Round -head are belabored in the thorough -going, root-and-branch manner of the time. Atheist and Arminian being used as synonymous terms : “See heer, the Rattle-heads most Rotten Heart, Acting the Atheists or Arminians part.” In looking over the broadsheets of that stirring period, we are struck by the absence of the mighty Name that must have been uppermost in every mind and oftenest on every tongue — that of the Lord Protector, Oliver Crom- well. A few caricatures were executed in Holland, in which The General ” and “Oliver” and “The Protector” were weakly satirized; but as most of the plates in that age were made to serve various purposes, and were frequently altered and redated, it is not certain that any of them were circulated in England during Cromwell’s life-time. English draughtsmen produced a few pictures in which the Protector was favorably depicted dissolving the Long Parliament, but their efforts were not remarkable either with pen or pencil. The Protector may have relished, and Bunyan may have written, the verses that accompanied some of them : “Full twelve years and more these Rooks they have sat to gull and to cozen all true-hearted People ; Our Gold and our Silver has made them so fat that they lookt more big and mighty than Paul’s Steeple.” The Puritans handled the sword more skillfully than the pen, and the roy- alists were not disposed to satire during the rule of the Ironside chief. The only great writer of the Puritan age on the Puritan side was Milton, and he was one of the two or three great writers who have shown little sense of humor. LATER PURITAN CARICATURE. 105 CHAPTER X. LATER PURITAN CARICATURE. W IIAT a change came over the spirit of English art and literature at the Restoration in 1660 ! P^orty years before, when James I. was king, who loathed a Puritan, there was occasionally published a print in which Puritans were treat- ed in the manner of Hudibras. There was one of 1612 in which a crown was half cov- ered by a broad-brimmed hat, with verses reflecting upon “the aspiring, factious Puri- tan,” who presumed to “ over- looke his king.” There was one in 1636, in the reign of Charles L, aimed at “ two in- famous upstart prophets,” weavers, then in Xewgate for heresy, which contains a de- scription of a Puritan at 'church, which is entirely in the spirit of Hudibras : “ His seat in the church is where he may be most scene. 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 C^^^-okoss Khymes on Loye’s Ceosseb, 1640. (Musarum, 306.) 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 hee ^'Ui 'inis' ^ 1 - k r ■■ 1 1 1 to 106 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. meditates on the sordid pleasures of the earth ; his body being in God’s Church, when his mind is in the divel’s Chappell.” Again, in 1647, two years before the execution of Charles, an extensive and elaborate sheet appeared, in which the ignorant preachers of the day were held up to opprobrium. Each of these “ erronious, hereticall, and Mechannick spir- its” was exhibited practicing his trade, and a multitude of verses below de- scribed the heresies which such teachers promulgated. “Oxford and Cambridge make poore Preachers; Each shop affordeth better Teachers : Oh blessed Reformation!” Among the “mechannick spirits” presented in this sheet we remark “Bar- bone, the Lether- seller,” who figures in many later prints as “Barebones.” There are also “ Bulcher, a Chicken man ;” “ Henshaw, a Confectioner, alias an Infectioner ;” “ Duper, a Cowkeeper;” “Lamb, a Sope-boyler,” and a dozen more. Such pictures, however, were few and far between during the twenty years of Puritan ascendency. But when the rule of the Sound-head was at an end, and Rattle -head had once more the dispensing of preferment in Church and State, the press teemed with broadsheets reviling the Puritan heroes. The gorgeous funeral of the Protector— his body borne in state on a velvet bed, clad in royal robes, to Westminster Abbey, where a magnificent tomb rose over his remains — was still fresh in the recollection of the people of London when they saw the same body torn from its resting-place, and hung on Tyburn Hill from nine in the morning until six in the evening, and then cast into a deep pit. Thousands who saw his royal funeral looked upon his body swing- ing from the gallows. The caricatures vividly mark the change. Cromwell now appears only as tyrant, antichrist, hypocrite, monster. Charles I. is the holy martyr. His son’s flight in disguise, the hiding in the oak-tree, and other circumstances of his escape are no longer ignominious or laughable, but grace- ful and glorious. A cherished fiction appears frequently in the caricatures that no man came to a good end who had had any hand in the king’s execution, not even the ex- ecutioner nor the humblest of his assistants. On one sheet we read of a cer- tain drum-maker, named Tench, who “provided roapes, pullies, and hookes (in case the king resisted) to compel and force him down to the block.” “This roague is also haunted with a Devill, and consumes away.” There was the confession, too, of the hangman, who, being about to depart this life, declared that he had solemnly vowed not to perform his office upon the king, but had nevertheless dealt the fatal blow, trembling from head to foot. Thirty pounds had been his reward, which was paid him in half-crown pieces within an hour after the execution — the dearest money, as he told his wife, that he had ever received, for it would cost him his life, “ which propheticall words were soon LATER PURITAN CARICATURE. 107 made manifest, for it appeared that, ever since, he had been in a most sad con- dition, and lay raging and swearing, and still pointing at one thing or another which he conceived to appear visible before him.” Richard Cromwell was let off as easily by the caricaturist as he was by the king. He is depicted as the meek knight,” the mild incapable, hardly worth a parting kick. In one very good picture he is a cooper hammering away with a mallet at a cask, from which a number of owls escape, most of which, as they take their flight, cry out, ^^King P’’ Richard protests that he knows nothing of this trade of cooper, for the more he hammers, the more the barrel SnROVE-TIT)E IN AeM8 AGAINST LeNT, A.T>. 1660. breaks up. Elizabeth, the wife of the Protector, figured in a ludicrous manner upon the cover of a cookery-book published in the reign of Charles II., the preface of which contained anecdotes of the kitchen over which she had pre- sided. Among other indications of change in the public feeling, we notice a few pictures conceived in the pure spirit of gayety, designed to afford pleasure to every one, and pain to no one. Two of these are given here — Shrove-tide and Lent tilting at one another — which were thought amazingly ingenious and comic two hundred years ago. They are quite in the taste of the period that 108 CAEICATUKE AND COMIC ART. produced them. Shrove- tide, in the calendar of Rome, is the Tuesday be- fore Lent, a day on which many people gave them- selves up to revelry and feasting, in anticipation of the forty days’ fast. Shrove-tide accordingly is mounted on a fat ox, and his sword is sheathed in a pig and piece of meat, with capons and bottles of wine about his body^ His flag, as we learn from the explanatory verses, is “ a cooke’s foule apron fix’d to a broome,” and his helmet “ a brasse pot.” Lent, on the contrary^ flings to the breeze a fish- ing-net, carries an angling-rod for a weapon, and wears upon his head a boyl- ing kettle.” Thus accoutred, these mortal foes approach one another, and Lent lifts up his voice and proclaims his intention : “ I now am come to mundifie and cleare The base abuses of this last past yeare : Thou puff-pauncb’d monster (Shrovetyde), thou art he That were ordain’d the latter end to be Of forty-five weekes’ gluttony, now past, Which I in seaven weekes come to cleanse at last : Your feasting I will turn to fasting dyet ; Your cookes shall have some leasure to be quiet ; Your masques, pomps, playes, and all your vaine expence, I’ll change to sorrow, and to penitence. ” Shrove-tide replies valiantly to these brave words: “What art thou, thou leane-jawde anottamie. All spirit (for I no flesh upon thee spie) ; Thou bragging peece of ayre and smoke, that prat’st. And all good-fellowship and friendship hat’st; You’le turn our feasts to fasts ! when, can you tell ? Against your spight, we are provided well. Thou sayst thou’lt ease the cookes! — the cookes could wish Thee boyl’d or broyl’d with all thy frothy fish ; For one fish-dinner takes more paines and cost Than three of flesh, bak’d, roast, or boyl’d, almost.” Lent tilting at Shrove-tide, a.d. 1660. LATER PURITAN CARICATURE. 109 This \ye are compelled to regard as about the best fun our ancestors of 1660 were capable of achieving with pencil and pen. Nor can we claim much for their pictures which aim to satirize the vices. The joy of the English people at the restoration of the monarchy, which seemed at first to be as universal as it was enthusiastic, was of short dura- tion. The Stuarts were the Bourbons of England, incapable of being taught by adversity. Within two years Charles II. alarmed Protestant England by marrying a Portuguese princess. The great plague of 1665, that destroyed in London alone sixty-eight thousand persons, was followed in the very next year by the great fire of London, which consumed thirteen thousand two hun- dred houses. At a moment when the public mind was reduced to the most abject credulity by such events as these, the scoundrel Titus Oates appeared, declaring that the dread calamities which had afflicted England, and others then imminent, were only parts of an awful Popish Plot^ which aimed at the destruction of the king and the restoration of the Catholic religion. A short time after, 1678, Sir Edmundsbury Godfrey, the magistrate before whom Titus Oates made his deposition, was found dead in a field near London, the victim probably of some fanatic assassin of the Catholic party. The kingdom was thrown into an ecstacy of terror, from which, as before observed, it has not to this day wholly recovered. Terror may lurk in the blood of a race ages after the removal of its cause, as we find our sensitive horses shying from low-lying objects at the road-side, though a thou- sand generations may have peacefully labored and died since their ancestors crouched from the spring of a veritable wild beast. The broadsheets of that year, 1678, and of the troublous years following, even until William of Or- ange was seated on the throne of En- Tiie Queen op James II. and Father Petre. “ It is a foolish sheep that makes the wolf her con- fessor.” (1685.) gland, in 1690, have, we may almost say, but one topic — the Popish Plot. The spirit of that period lives in those sheets. It had been a custom in England to celebrate the l7th of November, the day, as one sheet has it, on which the unfortunate Queen Mary died, and “ that Glorious Sun, Queen Elizabeth, of happy memory, arose in the English horizon, and thereby dispelled those thick fogs and mists of Romish blindness, and re- stored to these kingdoms their just Rights both as men and Christians.” The next recurrence of this anniversary after the murder of Godfrey was seized by 110 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. the Protestants of London to arrange a procession which was itself a striking caricature. A pictorial representation of the procession is manifestly impossi- ble here, but we can copy the list of objects as given on a broadsheet issued a few days after the event. This device of a procession, borrowed from Catho- lic times, was continually employed to promulgate and emphasize Protestant ideas down to a recent period, and has been used for political objects in our own day. How changed the thoughts of men since Albert Diirer witnessed the grand and gay procession at Antwerp, in honor of the Virgin’s Assump- tion, one hundred and fifty-nine years before! The I7th of November, 1679, was ushered in, at three o’clock in the morning, by a burst of bell-ringing all over London. The broadsheet thus quaintly describes the procession : ‘‘About Five o’clock in the Evening, all things being in readiness, the Sol- emn Procession began, in the following Order: I. Marched six Whifiers to clear the way, in Pioneers Caps and Red Waistcoats (and carrying torches). II. A Bellman Ringing, who, with a Loud and Dolesom Voice cried all the way, Remember Justice Godfrey. III. A Dead Body representing Sir Ed- mundbury Godfrey, in the Habit he usually wore, the Cravat wherewith he was murdered about his Neck, with spots of Blood on his Wrists, Shirt, and white Gloves that were on his hands, his Face pale and wan, riding on a White Horse, and one of his Murderers behind him to keep him from falling, repre- senting the manner how he was carried from Somerset House to Primrose Hill. IV. A Priest in a Surplice, with a Cope Embroidered with Dead mens Bones, Skeletons, Skills, &c., giving pardons very freely to those who would murder Protestants, and proclaiming it Meritorious. V. A Priest alone, in Black, with a large Silver Cross. VI. Four Carmelite Friers in White and Black Habits. VH. Four Grey Friars in their proper Habits. VHI. Six Jesuits with Bloody Daggers. IX. A Consort of Wind-musick, call’d the Waits. X. Four Popish Bishops in Purple and Lawn Sleeves, with Golden Crosses on their Breasts. XI. Four other Popish Bishops in their Pontificalibus, with Surplices, Rich Embroydered Copes, and Golden Miters on their Heads. XH. Six Cardinals in Scarlet Robes and Red Caps. XIII. The Popes Chief Physitian with Jes- uites Powder in one hand, and a in the other. XIV. Two Priests in Sur- plices, with two Golden Crosses. Lastly, the Pope in a Lofty Glorious Pag- eant, representing a Chair of State, covered with Scarlet, the Chair richly em- broydered, fringed, and bedeckt with Golden Balls and Crosses ; at his feet a Cushion of State, two Boys in Surplices, with white Silk Banners and Red Crosses, and Bloody Daggers for Murdering Heritical Kings and Princes, painted on them, with an Incense-pot before them, sate on each side censing his Holiness, who was arrayed in a rich Scarlet Gown, Lined through with Ermin, and adorned with Gold and Silver Lace, on his Head a Triple Crown of Gold, and a Glorious Collar of Gold and precious stones, St. Peters Keys, a number of Beads, Agnus Dei’s and other Catholick Trumpery ; at his Back stood his Holiness’s Privy Councellor, the Devil, frequently caressing, hugging, LATER PURITAN CARICATURE. Ill and whispering, and oft-times instructing him aloud, to destroy His Majesty, to forge a Protestant Plot, and to fire the City again ; to which purpose he held an Infernal Torch in his hand. The whole Procession was attended with 150 Flambeaus and Torches by order; but so many more came in Voluntiers as made up some thousands. Never were the Balconies, Windows and Houses more numerously filled, nor the Streets closer throng’d with multitudes of Peo- ple, all expressing their abhorrence of Popery with continual Shouts and Ac- clamations.” With slow and solemn step the procession marched to Temple Bar, then just rebuilt, and there it halted, while a dialogue in verse was sung in parts by one who represented the English Cardinal Howard, and one the people of England.” We can imagine the manner in which the crowd would come thundering in with “Now God preserve Great Charles our King, And eke all honest men ; And Tray tors all to justice bring, Amen! Amen I Amen!” Fire -works succeeded the song, after which “his Holiness was decently tumbled from all his grandeur into the impartial flames,” while the people gave so prodigious a shout that it was heard “far beyond Somerset House.” For many years a similar pageant was given in London on the same day. As an additional illustration of the feeling which then prevailed in Puritan circles, I will copy the rude and doleful rhymes which accompany a popular print of 1680 , called “The Dreadful Apparition; or, the Pope haunted with Ghosts.” Coleman, Whitebread, and Harcourt, who figure among the ghosts, had been recently executed as “ popish plotters.” The picture shows the Pope in bed, to whom the devil conducts Coleman, and an angel leads the spirit of Sir Edmundsbury Godfrey. Whitebread and Harcourt are in shrouds. A bishop, a cardinal, and other figures are seen. A label issuing from the mouth of each of the persons represented contains the rhymes which follow: THE POPE IN BED. Away I Away ! am not I Pope of Rome, torment me not before my time is Come." THE DEVIL, IN THE FORM OP A DRAGON. ’‘‘‘Your Sevt S’"! Ned Coleman doth appeare he'll tell you all, therefore I brought him here," Coleman’s ghost. “ S'^ you are Cause of my Continuall paine, My Soul is Lost, for your Ambitious gaine." Godfrey’s ghost, introduced by . “ Repent great and be for ever blest, in Heaven with me that happy place of rest." 112 CAEICATURE AND COMIC AET. ANGEL, IN A “ROMAN SHAPE.” “0 Chariety ! who mercy craves for those: With Bluddy hands that ware his Cruell foes." whitebread’s ghost, with a sword through the body. “/ am perplexed with perpetuall fright ; but who is this apeares this dreadful night." harcourt’s ghost, with a sword through the body. ^^'Tis Godfrey's Ghost I wish all things be well that we may have our Pope of Rome in hell." A BISHOP. “ Let us depart and Shun their cruell fate^ and all repent before it is to late." CARDINAL. “ Come let us fiie with all the Speed we may, Ye Devil els will take us all away." Below the picture are the verses subjoined : NUNCIO. “ Horrors and Death ! what dismal Sights Invade His Nightly Slumbers, who in Blood does Trade. The Ghostly Apparitions of the Dead ; The Bless' d by Angels ; Damn'd by Demons Lead ; ’Tis sure, Romes Conclave must Amazed stand. When Souls Complaining, thus against them band; Who All but One to please Ambitious Eome, Have Gain’d Damnation for Their Final Doom. Hear how They Curse Him all, but He who fell Great Brittains Sacrifice by Imps of Hell ; Who shew’d Their Bloody Vengeance in the Strife, To Murther Him, who Business had for Life." POPE. ^ How do my Eye-Balls Roul, and Blood run back. What Tortures at this sight my Conscience Rack; Oh ! Mountains now fall on me, some Deep Cave Pitty me once, and prove my speedy Grave. Involv'd in Darkness, /rom the Seated Light, Let Me abscond in Everlasting Night. Torment me not ; you Shades, before my time, I do confess, your Downfalls was my Crime ; To Satiate my Ambition and Eevenge, I push'd you on to this Immortal Change. But Ah! fresh Horrors, Ah! my Power's grown weak. What art thou Fiend? fro?n whence ? or where ? O Speak; LATER PURITAN CARICATURE. 113 That in this Frightful Form^ a Dragon’s hew Presents One Sainted^ to my Trembling View ?" FIEND. “By Hells Grim King’s Command, on whom I wait, I’ve brought your Saint his Story to relate ; Who from the black Tartarian-Vive. below, So long beg’d Absence as to let you know His Torments, and the Horrid Cheat condole, You fix’d on him to Rob him of his Soul.” POPE. “ O spare my Ears^ I'll no such Horrors hear COLEMAN. “You must, and know your own Damnation’s near: You must ere long be Plung'd in Grizly Flame, Which I shall laugh to see, tho, rack’d with pain Thou Grand Deceiver of the Nations All, Contriver of my Wretched Fate and Fall: Thou who didst push me on to Murther Kings Persuading me for it on Angels Wings I should Transcend the Clouds, be ever Blest, And be of Al that Heav’n cou’d yield, possest, V But these I mist, got Torment without Rest: ) For whilst on Earth I stand, a Hell within Distracts my Conscience, pale with horrid Sin : Instead of Mortals Pardon, One on High, I must your Everlasting Martyr Fry ; Whilst Name of Saint I bear on Earth, below It stirs the flames, and much Augments my Woe." POPE. Horrors ! 'tis Dismal, I can hear no more, O ! Hell and Furies, how I have lost my Pow'r. ” SIR E. GODFREY. “See Sir this Crimson Stain, this baleful Wound See Murther’d me, with Joys Eternal Crown’d ; Though by the Darkest Deed of Night I fell. Which shook Three Kingdoms, and Astonish'd Hell : Yet rap’d above the Skyes to Mansion bright. There to Converse with Everlasting Light ; Thence got I leave to View thy Wretched Face, And find my Death thy Hell-born Plots did race, And next to the Almighty Arm did Save Great Albion's Glory from its yawning Grave ; From Sacred Bliss my Swift- Soul did glide, Conducted Hither by my Angel-Guide, To let thee know thy Sands were almost run. And that thy Thread of Life is well-nigh Spun ; 8 114 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. Repent you then, Wash off the Bloody Stain, Or You'll be Doom’d to Everlasting Pain." ANGEL. “Come Worthy of Seraphick Joys Above, Worthy Our Converse, and Our Sacred Love; Who hast Implor’d the Great Jehove for One Who Shed thy Blood, to Snatch thy Princes Throne In this thy Saviour s Great Examples shown : Come let Vs hence, and leave Him to his Fate, When Divine Vengeance shall the Business State.” POPE. “ Chill Horror seizes me, I cannot flye ; Oh Ghastly ! yet more Apparitions nigh ?" WHITEBREAD. “ Thus wandering through the Gloomy Shades, at last I’ve found Thee, Traytor, that my Joys did Blast, Whose Darn'd Jnjunctions, Dire Damnation Seal’d, And Torments that were never yet Reveal’d : Mirrihords of Plagues, Chains, Racks, Tempestuous Fire, Sulpherian Lakes that Burn and ner Expire, Deformed Demons, Uglier far than Hell, The Half what We Endure, no Tongue can Tell ; This for a Bishoprick I Undergo, But Now would give Earth's Empire wer't not so." POPE. ^’‘Retire, Good Ghosts, or I shall Dye with Fear." HARCOURT. “Nay stay Sir, first You must my Story Hear: How could you thus Delude your Bosome-Friend? Your Foes to Heaven, and Vs to Hell thus send ; Damnation seize You for’t; ere long You’ll be Plung’d Headlong into vast Eternity ; There for to Howl, whilst We some Comfort gain, \ To see You welter in an endless Pain, ( And without justly there Complain.” ) POPE. '•'•Ho ! Cardinals and Bishops, haste with speed, Bell, Book, and Ci\\\(Ae fetch, let me he free'd : Ah! 'tis too late, by Fear Intranc’d I lye." BISHOP. “ Heard you that Groan ? with speed from hence let’s flye.” CARDINAL. “ The Fiend has got Him, doubtless, lets away, And in this Ghastly place no longer stay.” LATER PURITAN CARICATURE. 115 “Dread Horrors seize me, Fly, for Mercy call, Least Divine Vengeance over-whelm Vs all.'' It was ill this crude and lucid way that the forerunners of Gillray, N’ast, Tenniel, and Leech satirized the murderous follies of their age. A volume larger than this would not contain the verse and prose that covered the broadsheets in the same style which appeared in London during the reign of Charles II. This specimen, however, suffices for any reader who is not making a special study of the period. To students and historians the col- lection of these prints in the British Museum is beyond price ; for they show “ the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure.” Perhaps no other single source of information respecting that period is more valuable. From the accession of William and Mary we notice a change in the sub- jects treated by caricaturists. If religion continued for a time to be the prin- cipal theme, there was more variety in its treatment. Sects became more distinct ; the Quakers arose ; the divergence between the doctrines of Luther and Calvin was more marked, and gave rise to much discussion; High Church and Low Church renewed their endless contest ; the Baptists became an im- portant denomination ; deism began to be the whispered, and became soon the vaunted faith of men, of the world ; even the voice of the Jew was occasionally heard, timidly asking for a small share of his natural rights. It is interesting to note in the popular broadsheets and satirical pictures how quickly the hu- man mind began to exert its powers when an overshadowing and immedi- ate fear of pope and king in league against liberty had been removed by the flight of James II. and the happy accession of William III. Political caricature rapidly assumed prominence, though, as long as Louis Xiy. remained on the throne of France, the chief aim of politics was to create safeguards against the possible return of the Catholic Stuarts. The acces- sion of Queen Anne, the career of Bolingbroke and Harley, the splendid exploits of Marlborough, the early con- flicts of Whig and Tory, the attempts of the Pretenders, the peaceful acces- French c Auic.vTURK Of Corpulent General Galas, sion of George I.— all these are exhib- ^ less, ited in broadsheets and satirical prints still preserved in more than one col- 116 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. lection. Louis XIV., his pomps and his vanities, his misfortunes and his mis- tresses, furnished subjects for hundreds of caricatures both in England and Holland. It was on a Dutch caricature of 1695 that the famous retort oc- curs of the Due de Luxembourg to an exclamation of the Prince of Orange. The prince impatiently said, after a defeat, “ Shall I, then, never be able to beat that hunchback?” Luxembourg replied to the person reporting this, ‘HIow does he know that my back is hunched? He has never seen it.” In- terspersed with political satires, we observe an increasing number upon social and literary subjects. The transactions of learned societies were now impor- A Quaker Meeting, 1710 — Aminidel exhorting Friknds to support Sagiievereul. tant enough to be caricatured, and the public was entertained with burlesque discourses, illustrated, upon “ The Invention of Samplers,” “ The Migration of Cuckoos,” ‘‘The Eunuch’s Child,” “A Xew Method of teaching Learned Men how to write Unintelligibly.” There was an essay, also, “proving by argu- ments philosophical that Millers, though falsely so reputed, yet in reality are not thieves, with an intervening argument that Taylors likewise are not so.” A strange episode in the conflict between Whig and Tory was the career of Sacheverell, a clergyman who preached such extreme doctrines concerning LATER PURITAN CARICATURE. 117 royal and ecclesiastical prerogative that he was formally censured by a Whig Parliament, and thus lifted into a preposterous importance. During his tri- umphal tour, which Dr. Johnson remembered as one of the events of his ear- liest childhood, he was escorted by voluntary guards that numbered from one thousand to four thousand mounted men, wearing the Tory badges of white knots edged with gold, and in their hats three leaves of gilt laurel. The pict- ure of the Quaker meeting reflects upon the alliance alleged to have existed between the high Tories and the Quakers, both having an interest in the re- moval of disabilities, and hence making common cause. A curious relic of this brief delirium is a paragraph in the Grub Street Journal of 1736, which records the death of Dame Box, a woman so zealous for the Church that when Sacheverell was relieved of censure she clothed herself in white, kept the clothes all her life, and was buried in them. As long as Dr. Sacheverell lived she went to London once a yeai*, and carried a present of a dozen larks to that high-flying priest.” The flight of the Huguenots from France, in 1685 and 1686, enriched Hol- land, England, and the American colonies with the elite of the French people. Holland being nearest to France, and honored above all lands for nearly a century as the refuge of people persecuted for opinions’ sake, received at first the greatest number, especially of the class who could live by intellectual pur- suits. The rarest of all rarities in the way of caricature, “ the diamond of the pictorial library,” is a series of burlesque portraits, produced in Holland in 1686, of the twenty-four persons most guilty of procuring the revocation of the wise edict of Henry IV., which secured to French Protestants the right to practice their religion. The work was entitled “La Procession Monacale conduite par Louis XIV. pour la Conversion des Protestans de son Royaume.” The king, accordingly, leads the way, his face a sun in a monk’s cowl, in allu- sion to his adoption of the sun as a device. Madame De Maintenon, his mar- ried mistress, hideously caricatured, follows. Pere la Chaise, and all the eccle- siastics near the court who were reputed to have urged on the ignorant old king to this superlative folly, had their place in the procession. Several of the faces are executed with a freedom and power not common in any age, but at that period only possible to a French hand. Two specimens are given on the following page. Louis XIV., as the caricature collections alone would suffice to show, was the conspicuous man of that painful period. The caricaturists avenged human nature. Xo man of the time called forth so many efforts of the satiric pencil, nor was there ever a person better adapted to the satirist’s purpose, for'^he fur- nished precisely those contrasts which satire can exhibit most effectively. He stood five feet four in his stockings, but his shoe- maker put four inches of leather under his heels, and his wig -maker six inches of other people’s hair upon his head, which gave him an imposing altitude. The beginning of his reign was prosperous enough to give some slight excuse for the most richly 118 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. developed arrogance seen in the world since Xerxes lashed the Hellespont, but the last third of his reign was a collapse that could easily be made to seem ludicrous. There were very obvious contrasts in those years between the splendors of his barbaric court and the disgraceful defeats of his armies, be- tween the opinion he cherished of himself and the contempt in which he was held abroad, between the adulations of his courtiers and the execrations of France, between the mass-attending and the morals of the court. The caricaturists made the most of these points. Every town that he lost, every victory that Marlborough won, gave them an opportunity which Aiicunisuor of Paths— A Better Friend to La- Arcuhishop of Ruftms — Mitred Ass. (Holland, DIES THAN TO THE Poi’E. (Holluiid, 1686. By 1686. After the Expulsion of the Huguenots.) an Exiled Huguenot.) they improved. We have him as a huge yellow sun, each ray of which bears an inscription referring to some defeat, folly, or shame. We have him as a jay, covered with stolen plumage, which his enemies are plucking from him, each feather inscribed with the name of a lost city or fortress. We have him as the Crier of Versailles, crying the ships lost in the battle of La Hogue, and offering rewards for their recovery. He figures as the Gallic cock flying before that wise victorious fox of England, William HI., and as a pompous drummer leading his army, and attended by his ladies and courtiers. He is an old French Apollo driving the sun, in wig and spectacles. He is a tiger on trial before the other beasts for his cruel depredations. He is shorn and fooled by Maintenon ; he is bridled by Queen Anne. He is shown drinking a goblet of human blood. We see him in the stocks with his confederate, the Pope, and the devil standing behind, knocking their heads together. He is a sick man vomiting up towns. He is a sawyer, who, with the help of the King of Spain, saws the globe in two, Maintenon sitting aloft assisting the severance. As long as he lived the caricaturists continued to assail him ; and when he died, in 1715 , he left behind him a France so demoralized and im- poverished that he still kept the satirists busy. LATER PURITAN CARICATURE. •119 Even in onr own time Louis XIV. has suggested one of the best carica- tures ever drawn, and it is accompanied by an explanatory essay almost unique among prose satires for bitter wit and blasting truth. The same hand wielded both the pen and the pencil, and it was the wonderful hand of Thack- eray. “You see at once,” he says, in explanation of the picture, “that majes- ty is made out of the wig, the high-heeled shoes, and cloak, all jimrs-de-lis be- spangled Thus do barbers and cobblers make the gods that we wor- ship.” 120 CARICATUEE AND COMIC AKT. CHAPTER XI. PKECEDING HOGAETH. I T was the bubble mania of 1719 and 1720, brought upon Europe by John Law, which completed the secularization ” of caricature. Art, as well as literature, learning, and science, was subservient to religion during the Middle Ages, and drew its chief nourishment from Mother Church. Since the Refor- mation they have all been obliged to pass through a painful process of wean- ing, and each in turn to try for an independent existence. The bubble frenzy, besides giving an impulse to the caricaturist’s art it had not before received, withdrew attention from Actieu.se NACHT-VIND-ZangermetayaTover Slons “Shakes! Shakes! Shakes!” The Night Share-ciier and his Magic Lantern. A Caricature of John Law and his Bubble Schemes. (Amsterdam, 1T20.) ecclesiastical subjects, and supplied abundant material drawn from sources pure- ly mundane. Above all, the pictures which that mania called forth assisted to form the great satiric artist of his time and country, William Hogarth. He was a Lon- don apprentice carving coats of arms on silver plate when the early symp- toms of the mania appear- ed ; and he was still a very young man, an engraver, feeling his way to the ca- reer that awaited him, when the broadsheets sat- irizing John Law began to be adapted ” from Dutch originals, and shown in the shop -windows of London. Doubtless he inspected the picture of the “Night PKECEDING HOGAKTH. 121 Share-crier,” opposite, and noticed the cock’s feather in his hat (indicating the French origin of the delusion), and the windmill upon the top of his staff. The Dutch pictures were full of that detail and by-play of which Hogarth was such a master in later years. Visitors to New York who saw tumultuous Wall Street during the worst of our inflation period, and, following the crowd up-town, entered the Gold- room, where the wild speculation of the day was continued till midnight, may have flattered themselves that they were looking upon scenes never before ex- hibited in this world. What a strange intensity of excitement there was in those surging masses of young men ! What fierce outcries ! What a melan- choly waste of youthful energies, so much needed elsewhere ! But there was nothing new in all this, except that we passed the crisis with less loss and less demoralization than any community ever before experienced in circumstances at all similar. When Louis XIV. died in 17 15, after his reign of seventy-two years, he left the finances of France in a condition of inconceivable disorder. For four- teen years there had been an average annual deficit of more than fourteen mill- ions of francs, to meet which the king had raised money by every paper de- vice that had then been discovered. Having previously sold all the offices for which any pretext could be invented, he next sold annuities of all kinds, for one life, for two lives, for three lives, and in perpetuity. Then he issued all known varieties of promises to pay, from rentes perpetuelles to treasury- notes of a few francs, payable on demand. But there w^as one thing he did not do — reduce the expenditure of his enormous and extravagant court. In the midst of that deficit, when his ministers were at their wits’ end to carry on the government from day to day, and half the lackeys of Paris held the depreciated royal paper, the old king ordered one more of those magnificent fetes at Fontainebleau which had, as he thought, shed such lustre on his reign. The fete would cost four millions, the treasury was empty, and treasury-notes had fallen to thirty-five. While an anxious minister was meditating the situ- ation, he chanced to see in his inner office two valets slyly scanning the papers on his desk, for the purpose, as he instantly conjectured, of getting news for the speculators. He conceived an idea. The next time those enterprising val- ets found themselves alone in the same cabinet, they were so happy as to dis- cover on the desk the outlines of a royal lottery scheme for the purpose of paying off a certain class of treasury-notes. The news was soon felt in the street. Those notes mysteriously rose in a few days from thirty-five to eiglUy- five; and while they were at that point the minister, anticipating the Fiskian era, slipped upon the market thirty millions of the same notes. The king had his fete; and when next he borrowed money of his subjects, for every twenty- five francs of coin he was obliged to give a hundred-franc note.* * “Law, son Systeme et son Epoque,” p. 2, par P. A. Cochiit, Paris, 1853. 122 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. Two years after, the foolish old king died, leaving, besides a consolidated debt of bewildering magnitude, a floating debt, then due and overdue, of seven hundred and eighty-nine millions, equivalent, as M. Cochut computes, to about twice the amount in money of to-day. Coin had vanished ; the royal paper was at twenty-flve; the treasury was void; prices were distressingly high; some provinces refused to pay taxes; trade languished; there were vast num- bers of workmen unemployed; and during the winter after the king’s death a considerable number of persons died in Paris of cold and hunger. The only prosperous people were Government contractors, farmers of the revenue, bro- kers, and speculators in the king’s paper ; and these classes mocked the misery of their fellow-citizens by an ostentatious and tasteless profusion. The natural successor of a king bigoted is a prince dissolute. The regent, Island of Madhfad. “Picture of the very famon« Island of Madhead. Situated in Share Sea, and inhabited by a multitude of all kinds of people, to which is given the general name of Shareholders.” (Amsterdam, 1720.) who had to face this state of things on behalf of his nephew, Louis XV., a child of five, had at least the virtue and good sense to reject with indignant scorn the proposition made in his council by one member to declare France bankrupt and begin a new reign by opening a clean set of books. We, too, had our single repudiator, who fared no better than his French predecessor. But the regent’s next measures were worthy of a prodigal. He called in the various kinds of public paper, and offered in exchange a new variety, called billets cVetat^ bearing interest at four per cent. But the public not responding to the call, the new bills fell to forty in twenty-four hours, and drew down PRECEDING HOGARTH. 123 all other public paper, until in a few days the royal promise to pay one hun- dred francs was worth twenty francs. The regent’s coffers did not fill. That scarred veterans could not get their pensions paid was an evil which could be borne ; but the regent had mistresses to appease ! Then he tried a system of squeezing the rich contractors and others of the vermin class who batten on a sick body-politic. As informers were to have half the product of the squeeze, an offended lackey had only to denounce his master, to get him tried on a charge of having made too much money. Woe to the plebeian who was convicted of this crime ! Besides being despoiled of his property, Paris saw him, naked to the shirt, a rope round his neck, a peni- tential candle in his handcuffed hands, tied to a dirty cart and dragged to the pillory, carrying on his back a large label, “Pluis^deker of the People.” The French pillory was a revolving platform, so that all the crowd had an equal chance to hurl mud and execration at the fixed and pallid face. Judge if there was not a making haste to compound with a government capable of such squeezing ! There was also a mounting in hot haste to get out of such a France. One lucky merchant crossed the frontier, dressed as a peasant, driv- ing a cart-load of straw, under which was a chest of gold. A train of fourteen carts loaded with barrels of wine was stopped, and in each barrel a keg of gold was found, which was emptied into the royal treasury. The universal consternation and the utter paralysis of business which re- sulted from these violent spoliations may be imagined. Six thousand persons were tried, who confessed to the possession of twelve hundred millions of francs. The number of the condemned was four thousand four hundred and ten, and the sum extorted from them was, nominally, nearly four hundred millions, of which, however, less than one hundred millions reached the treas- ury. It was easy for a rich man to compound. A person condemned to dis- gorge twelve hundred thousand francs was visited by a “great lord.” “Give me three hundred thousand francs,” said the great lord, “ and you won’t be troubled for the rest.” To which the merchant replied, “ Really, my lord, you come too late, for I have already made a bargain with madame, your wife, for a hundred and fifty thousand.” Thus the business of busy and frugal France was brought to a stand without relieving the Government. The royal coffers would not fill ; the deficit widened ; the royal paper still declined ; the poor were hungry; and,' oh, horror ! the regent’s mistresses pouted. The Govern- ment debased the coin. But that, too, proved an aggravation of the evil. Such was that ancien regime which still has its admirers; such are the consequences of placing a great nation under the rule of the greatest fool in it; and such were the circumstances which gave the Scotch adventurer, John Law, his opportunity to madden and despoil France, so often a prey to the alien. Two hundred years ago, when John Law, a rich goldsmith’s son, was a boy in Edinburgh, goldsmiths were dealers in coin as well as in plate, and hence were bankers and brokers as well as manufacturers. They borrowed, lent, ex- 124 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. changed, and assayed money, and therefore possessed whatever knowledge of finance there was current in the world. It was in his father’s counting-room that John Law acquired that taste for financial theories and combinations which distinguished him even in his youth. But the sagacious and practical goldsmith died when his son was fourteen, and left him a large inheritance in land and money. The example of Louis XIY. and Charles II. having brought the low vices into high fashion throughout Europe, it is not surprising that Law’s first notoriety should have been owing to a duel about a mistress. A man of fashion in Europe in Louis XIY.’s time was a creature gorgeously at- tired in lace and velvet, and hung about with ringlets made of horse-hair, who passed his days in showing the world how much there was in him of the goat, the monkey, and the pig. Law had the impudence to establish his mistress in a respectable lodging-house, which led to his being challenged by a gentleman who had a sister living there. Law killed his man on the field — not fairly,” as John Evelyn records — and he was convicted of murder. The king pardon- ed, but detained him in prison, from which he escaped, went to the Continent, and resumed his career, being at once a man of fashion, a gambler, and a con- noisseur in finance. He used to attend card - parties, followed by a footman carrying two bags, each containing two thousand louis-d’ors, and once during the life-time of the old king he was ordered out of Paris on the gi'ound that he understood the games he had introduced into the capital too wellP Twenty years elapsed from the time of his flight from a London prison. He was forty-four years of age, possessed nearly a million and three-quarters of francs in cash, producible on the green cloth at a day’s notice, and was the most plausible talker on finance in Europe. This last was a bad symptom, indeed, for it is well known that men who remain victors in finance, who really do extricate estates and countries from financial difficulties, are not apt to talk very effectively on the subject. Successful finance is little more than paying your debts and living within your income, neither of which affords material for striking rhetoric. Alexander Hamilton, for example, talked finance in a taking manner; but it was Albert Gallatin who quietly reduced the country’s debt. Fifteen days after the death of the old king. Law was in Paris with all that he possessed, and in a few months he was deep in the confidence of the regent. His fine person, his winning manners, his great wealth, his constant good fortune, his fluent and plausible tongue, his popular vices, might not have sufficed to give him ascendency if he had not added to these the peculiar force that is derived from sincerity. That he believed in his own system ” is shown by his risking his whole fortune in it. And it is to his credit that the first use he made of his influence was to show that the spoliations, the debas- ing of the coin, and all measures that inspired terror, and thus tightened un- duly the clutch upon capital, could not but aggravate financial distress. His system ” was delightfully simple. Bear in mind that almost every one in Paris who had any property at all held the king’s paper, worth one- PRECEDING HOGARTH. 125 quarter or one-fifth of its nominal value. Whatever project Law set on foot, whether a royal bank, a scheme for settling and trading with Louisiana, for commerce with the East Indies, or farming the revenues, any one could buy shares'in it on terms like these: one-quarter of the price in coin, and three- quarters in paper at its nominal value. The sj^stem was not immediately successful, and it was only in the teeth of powerful opposition that he could get his first venture, the bank, so much as authorized. Mark how clearly one of the council, the Due de Saint-Simon, comprehended the weakness of a despotism to which he owed his personal im- portance. “An establishment,” said he, “ of the kind proposed may be in itself good ; but it is so only in a republic, or in such a monarchy as England, where the finances are controlled absolutely by those v^ho furnish the money ^ and who furnish only as much of it as they choose, and in the way they choose. But in a light and changing government like that of France, solidity would be necessarily wanting, since a king or, in his name, a mistress, a minister, fa- vorites, and, still more, an extreme necessity, could overturn the bank, which would present a temptation at once too great and too easy.” Law, therefore, was obliged to alter his plan, and give his bank at first a board of directors not connected with the Government. Gradually the “system” made its way. The royal paper beginning to rise in value, the holders. were in good humor, and disposed to buy into other proj- ects on similar terms. The Louisiana scheme may serve as an example of Law’s method. Six years before, a great merchant of Paris, Antoine Crozat, had bought from the old king the exclusive right to trade with a vast un- known region in North America called Louisiana; but after five years of effort and loss he became discouraged, and offered to sell his right to the creator of the bank. Law, accepting the offer, speedily launched a magnificent scheme : capital one hundred millions of francs, in shares of five hundred francs, pur- chasable wholly in those new treasury -notes bearing four per cent, interest, then at a discount of seventy per cent. Maps of this illimitable virgin land were published. Pictures were exhibited, in which crowds of interesting naked savages, male and female, were seen running up to welcome arriving Frenchmen; and under the engraving a gaping Paris crowd could read, “In this land are seen mountains filled with gold, silver, copper, lead, quicksilver ; and the savages, not knowing their value, gladly exchange pieces of gold and silver for knives, iron pots, a small looking-glass, or even a little brandy.” One picture was addressed to pious souls ; for even at that early day, as at present, there was occasionally observed a curious alliance between persons engaged in the promotion of piety and those employed in the pushing of shares. This work exhibited a group of Indians kneeling before some reverend fathers of the Society of Jesus. Lender it was written, “Indian Idolaters imploring Baptism,” The excitement, once kindled, was stimulated by lying announcements of 126 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. the sailing of great fleets for Louisiana laden with merchandise and colonists ; of the arrival of vessels with freights worth ‘^millions of the establishment of a silk-factory, wherein twelve thousand women of the ISTatchez tribe were em- ployed ; of the bringing of Louisiana ingots to the Mint to be assayed; of the discovery in Arkansas of a great rock of emerald, and the dispatch of Captain Laharpe with a file of twenty -two men to take possession of the same. In 1718 Law sent engineers to Louisiana, who did something toward laying out its future capital, which he named New Orleans, in honor of his patron, the regent. The royal paper rose rapidly under this new demand. Other schemes fol- lowed, until John Law, through his various companies, seemed about to “run” the kingdom of France by contract, farming all its revenues, transacting all its commerce, and, best of all, paying all its debts ! Madness ruled the hour. The depreciated paper rose, rose, and still rose ; reached par ; went beyond par, until gold and silver were at a discount of ten per cent. The street named Quincampoix, the centre and vortex of this whirl of business, a mere lane twen- ty feet wide and a quarter of a mile long, was crowded with excited people from morning till night, and far into the night, so that the inhabitants of the PRECEDING HOGARTH. 127 quarter sent to the police a formal complaint that they could get no sleep. ^N'obles, lackeys, bishops, monks, merchants, soldiers, women, pickpockets, for- eigners, all resorted to La Hue, panting, yelling, operating, snatching papers, counting crowns,” making up a scene of noisy confusion unexampled. One man hired all the vacant houses in the street, and made a fortune by subletting offices and desk-room, even placing sentry-boxes on some of the roofs, and let- ting them at a good price. The excitement spread over France, reached Hol- land, and drew to Paris, as was estimated at the time, five hundred thousand strangers, places in the public vehicles being engaged ‘Hwo months in ad- vance,” and commanding a high premium. There were the most extraordinary acquisitions of fortune. People sud- denly enriched were called Mississippiens^ and they behaved as the victims of sudden wealth, unearned, usually do. Men who were lackeys one week kept lackeys the next. A gar^on of a wine- shop gained twenty millions. A cob- bler, who had a stall in the Rue Quincampoix made of four planks, cleared away his traps and let his boards to ladies as seats, and sold pens, paper, and ink to operators, making two hundred francs a day by both trades. Men gain- ed money by hiring out their backs as writing-desks, bending over while oper- ators wrote out their contracts and calculations. One little hunchback made a hundred and fifty thousand francs by thus serving as a piipitre ambulant (strolling desk), and. a broad-shouldered soldier gained money enough in the same way to buy his discharge and retire to the country upon a pretty farm. The general trade of the city was stimulated to such a degree that for a while the novel spectacle was presented of a community almost every member of which was prosperous beyond his hopes ; for even in the Rue Quincampoix itself, although some men gained more money than others, no one appeared to lose any thing. And all this seemed the work of one man, the great, the in- comparable “ Jean Lass,” as he was then called in Paris. It was a social dis- tinction to be able to say, have seen him!” His carriage could with dif- ficulty force its way through the rapturous, admiring crowd. Princes and nobles thronged his antechamber, a duchess publicly kissed his hand, and the regent made him controller-general of the finances. This madness lasted eight months. No one needs to be told what followed it — how a chill first came over the feverish street, a vague apprehension, not confessed, but inspiring a certain wish to “ realize.” Dread word, realize ! The tendency to realize was adroitly checked by Law, aided by operators who desired to “ unload ;” but the unloading, once suspected, converted the realizing tendency into a wild, ungovernable rush, which speedily brought ruin to thou- sands, and long prostration upon France. John Law, who in December, 1719, was the idol of Paris, ready to perish of his celebrity, escaped with difficulty from the kingdom in December, 1720, hated, despised, impoverished, to resume his career as elegant gambler in the drawing-rooms of Germany and Italy. As the “ system ” collapsed in France, it acquired vogue in England, where, 128 CAEICATURE AND COMIC ART. also, it originated in the desire to get rid of the public debt by brilliant finance instead of the homely and troublesome method of paying it. In London, be- sides the original South Sea Company which began the frenzy, there were started in the course of a few months about two hundred joint-stock schemes, many of which, as given in Anderson’s ‘‘ History of Commerce,” are of almost incredible absurdity. The sum called for by these projects was three hundred millions of pounds sterling, which was more than the value of all the land in Great Britain. Shares in Sir Richard Steele’s “fish -pool for bringing fresh fish to London ” brought one hundred and sixty pounds a share ! Men paid seventy pounds each for “ permits,” which gave them merely the privilege of subscribing to a sail-cloth manufacturing company not yet formed. There was, indeed, a great trade in “ permits ” to subscribe to companies only plan- ned. Here are a few of the schemes : for raising hemp in Pennsylvania ; “ Puckle’s machine gun settling the Bahamas ; “ wrecks to be fished for on the Irish coast;” horse and cattle insurance; “insurance and improvement of children’s fortunes;” “insurance of losses by servants;” “insurance against theft and robbery;” insuring remittances; “to make salt-water fresh;” im- porting walnut-trees from Virginia; improving the breed of horses; purchas- ing forfeited estates; making oil from sunflowers; planting mulberry-trees and raising silk- worms; extracting silver from lead; making quicksilver mal- leable; capturing pirates; “for importing a number of large jackasses from Spain in order to propagate a larger kind of mules;” trading in human hair; “ for fatting of hogs ;” “ for the encouragement of the industrious ;” perpetual motion ; making pasteboard ; furnishing funerals. There was even a company formed and shares sold for carrying out an “undertaking which shall in due time be revealed.” The word “puts,” now so familiar in Wall Street, appears in these transactions of 1720. “Puts and refusals” were sold in vast amounts. The prices paid for shares during the half year of this mania were as remarkable as the schemes themselves. South Sea shares of a hundred pounds par value reached a thousand pounds. It was a poor share that did not sell at five times its original price. As in France, so in England, the long heads, like Sir Robert Walpole and Alexander Pope, began to think of “realizing” when they had gained a thousand per cent, or so upon their ventures ; and, in a very few days, realizing, in its turn, became a mania ; and all those paper fortunes shrunk and crumpled into nothingness. So many caricatures of these events appeared in Amsterdam and London during the year 1720 that the collection in the British Museum, after the lapse of a hundred and fifty-five years, contains more than a hundred specimens. I have myself eighty, several of which include from six to twenty-four distinct designs. Like most of the caricatures of that period, they are of great size, and crowded with figures, each bearing its label of words, with a long explana- tion in verse or prose at the bottom of the sheet. As a rule, they are destitute of the point that can make a satirical picture interesting after the occasion is PRECEDING HOGARTH. 129 past. In one we see the interior of an Exchange filled with merchants running wildly about, each uttering words appropriate to the situation: “To-day 1 have gained ten thousand!” “Who has money to lend at two per cent.?” “A strait- jacket is what I shall want;” “Damned is this wind business.” This picture, which originated in Amsterdam, is called “The Wind -buyers paid in Wind,” and it contains at the bottom three columns of explanatory verse in Dutch, of which the following is the purport: “ Come, gentlemen, weavers, peasants, tailors ! Whoever has relied on wind for his profit can find his picture here. They rave like madmen. See y/te- re^{^me£Te7v ~)fiL is rn is ^fen 'vmd de, hap is by tlo ^is . John Law, Wind Monopolist. (Amsterdam, 1720.) Law loquitur. The wind is my treasure, cushion, and foundation. Master of the wind, I am master of life, and my wind mon()j)oly becomes straightway the object of idolatry. Less rapidly turn the sails of the windmill on my head than the price of shares in my foolish enterprises.” the French, the English, the Hebrew, and Jack of Bremen 1 Hear what a scream the absurd Dutch are making on the exchange of Europe 1 There is Fortune throwing down some charming washes to silly mortals, wdiile virtue, art, and intellect are despised and impoverished in the land ; shops and count- ing-houses are empty; trade is ruined. All this is Quincampoix !” The Dutch caricaturists recurred very often to the character of the 9 \ 2/itvaart CuluL \ I op vcor-raad. Schryf’TTiaar in / Op tyd rystTi / Zoos dctaZcTi, / Loose, Ooudleia^n derjie UrjaelTi, Artier 'hi'anspaT't Surplus Sulscriptie Tremie Fremic ^cei^tn. Hulhdde urtereft of del of 130 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. share business. In several of their worhs we see a puffy wind-god blowing up pockets to a great size, inflating share-bags, and wafting swiftly along vehicles with spacious sails. The bellows play a conspicuous and not always decorous part. Jean Law is exhibited as a ‘‘ wind monopolist.” In one picture he ap- pears assisting Atlas and others to bear up great globes of wind. Kites are flying and windmills revolving in several pictures. Pigeons fly away with shares in their bills. The hunchback who served as a walking desk is repeated many times. The Tower of Babel, the mad-house, the hospital, the whirligig, a garden maze, the lottery wheel, the drum, the magic lantern, the soap-bubble, the bladder, dice, the swing — whatever typifies pretense, uncertainty, or con- fusion was brought into the service. One Dutch broadsheet (sixteen inches by twenty), now before me, contains fifty-four finely executed designs, each of which burlesques a scene in Law’s career, or a device of his finance, the whole making a pack of wind cards for playing a game of wind.” Most of the Dutch pictures were “adapted” into English, and the adapters added verses which, in some instances, were better than the caricatures. A few of the shorter specimens may be worth the space they occupy, and give the reader a feeling of the situation not otherwise attainable. Of the pictures scarcely one would either bear or reward reduction, so large are they, so crowded with objects, and their style uninterestingly obsolete or boorishly in- decent. On Puckle’s Machine Gun : “A rare invention to destroy the crowd Of fools at home instead of foes abroad. Tear not, my friends, this terrible machine — They’re only wounded that have shares therein.” On the Saltpetre Company (two and sixpence a share) ; “ Buy petre stock, let me be your adviser; ’Twill make you, though not richer, much the wiser.” On the German Timber Company : “You that are rich and hasty to be poor. Buy timber export from the German shore ; For gallowses built up of foreign wood. If rightly used, will do Change Alley good.” On the Pennsylvania Company: “Come all ye saints that would for little buy Great tracts of land, and care not where they lie ; Deal with your Quaking Friends ; they’re men of light; Their spirit hates deceit and scorns to bite.” On the Ship-building Company: “To raise fresh barks must surely be amusing, When hundreds rot in docks for want of using.” PRECEDING HOGARTH. 131 On Settling the Bahamas : “ Rare, fruitful isles, where not an ass can find A verdant tuft or thistle to his mind. How, then, must those poor silly asses fare That leave their native land to settle there ?” On a South Sea Speculator imploring Alms through his Prison Bars : “Behold a poor dejected wretch, Who kept a S Sea coach of late. But now is glad to humbly catch A penny at the prison grate. “What ruined numbers daily mourn Their groundless hopes and follies past. Yet see not how the tables turn, Or where their money flies at last! “ Fools lost when the directors won. But now the poor directors lose ; And where the S Sea stock will run, Old Nick, the first projector, knows.” On a Picture of Change Alley : “Five hundred millions, notes and bonds. Our stocks are worth in value ; ' But neither lie in goods, or lands. Or money, let me tell ye. Yet though our foreign trade is lost, Of mighty wealth we vapor, When all the riches that we boast Consist in scraps of paper.” On a “ Permit “You that have money and have lost your wits. If you’d be poor, buy National Permits ; Their stock’s in fish, the fish are still in water. And for your coin you may go fish hereafter.” On a Roomful of Ladies buying Stocks of a Jew and a Gentile: “With Jews and Gentiles, undismayed. Young tender virgins mix ; Of whiskers nor of beards afraid. Nor all their cozening tricks. “Bright jewels, polished once to deck The fair one’s rising breast. Or sparkle round her ivory neck. Lie pawned in iron chest. “The gentle passions of the mind How avarice controls! E’en love does now no longer find A place in female souls.” 132 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. On a Picture of a Man laughing at an Ass browsing : “A wise man laughed to see an ass Eat thistles and neglect good grass. But had the sage beheld the folly Of late transacted in Change Alley, He might have seen worse asses there Give solid gold for empty air, And sell estates in hopes to double Their fortunes by some worthless bubble, Till of a sudden all was lost That had so many millions cost. Yet ruined fools are highly pleased To see the knaves that bit ’em squeezed, Forgetting where the money flies That cost so many tears and sighs.” On the Silk Stocking Company : ‘ ‘ Deal not in stocking shares, because, I doubt. Those that buy most will ere long go without.” HOGARTH AND HIS TIME. 133 CHAPTER XII. HOGARTH AND HIS TIME. T hese Dutch-EngUsh pictures William Hogarth, we may be sure, often in- spected as they successively courted public notice in the shops of London, as we see in his early works a character evidently derived from them. Dur- ing the bubble period of 1V20, he was an ambitious young engraver and sign- painter (at least willing to paint signs if a job offered),* much given to pencil- ing likenesses and strange attitudes upon his thumb-nail, to be transferred, on reaching home, to paper, and stored away for future use. He was one of those quick draughtsmen who will sketch you upon the spot a rough caricature of any odd person, group, or event that may have excited the mirth of the com- pany ; a young fellow somewhat undersized, with an alert, vigorous frame, a bright, speaking eye, a too quick tongue and temper, self-confident, but honest, sturdy, and downright in all his words and ways. ‘‘But I was a good pay- master even he once said, with just pride, after speaking of the days when he sometimes walked London streets without a shilling in his pocket. Hogherd was the original name of the family, which was first humanized into Hogert and Hogart, and then softened into its present form. In West- moreland, where Hogarth’s grandfather cultivated a farm — small, but his own — the first syllable of the name was pronounced like that of the domestic ani- mals which his remote ancestors may have herded. There was a vein of tal- ent in the family, an uncle of Hogarth’s having been the song-writer and satir- ist of his village, and his own father emerging from remote and most rustic Westmoreland to settle in London as a poor school-master and laborious, ill- requited compiler of school-books and proof-reader. A Latin dictionary of his making existed in manuscript after the death of the artist, and a Latin let- ter written by him is one of the curiosities in the British Museum. But he remained always a poor man, and could apprentice his boy only to an engraver of the lowest grade known to the art. But this sufficed for a lad who could scarcely touch paper with a pencil without betraying his gift, who drew capi- tal burlesques upon his nail when he was fifteen, and entertained Addison’s coffee-house with a caricature of its landlord when he was twenty-two. The earliest work by this greatest English artist of his century, which has * “Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum,” Division I., vol. ii., p. 566. 134 CAEICATURE AND COMIC ART. been preserved in the British Museum (1'720), shows the bent of his genius ns plainly as the first sketch by Boz betrays the quality of Dickens. It is called “ Design for a Shop-bill,” and was probably Hogarth’s own shop-bill, his adver- tisement to the public that he was able and willing to paint signs. In those days, the school-master not having yet gone abroad,” signs were usually pic- torial, and sometimes consisted of the popular representation of the saint hav- The Sleeping Congregation. (Hogarth.) ing special charge of the business to be recommended. In Hogarth’s shop-bill we see a tall man holding up a newly painted sign of St. Luke with his ox and book, at which a group of persons are looking, while Hogarth himself appears to be showing the sign to them as possible customers. Along the bottom of the sign is engraved W. Hogarth, Painter. In the background is seen an artist painting at an easel and a boy grinding colors. He could not even in HOGARTH AND HIS TIME. 135 this first homely essay avoid giving his work something of a narrative charac- ter. He must exhibit a story with humorous details. So in his caricature of Daniel Button, drawn to ridicule the Tory frequenters of Button’s coffee-house, lie relates an incident as well as burlesques individuals. There stands Master Button in his professional apron, with powdered wig and frilled shirt; and op- posite to him a tall, seedy, stooping scholar or poet is storming at the landlord with clinched fists, because he will not let him have a cup of coffee without the money. There is also the truly Hogarthian incident of a dog smelling suspi- ciously the poet’s coat tail. Standing about the room are persons whom tra- dition reports to have been intended as portraits of Pope, Steele, Addison, Arbuthnot, and others of Button’s famous customers. This drawing, executed with a brush, is also preserved in the British Museum. Daniel Button, as Dr. Johnson reports, had once been a servant in the family of the Countess of War- wick, and was placed in the coffee-house by Addison. A writer in the Spec- tator alludes to this haunt of the Tories : ‘‘ I was a Tory at Button’s and a Wliig at Child’s.” The South Sea delusion drew from Hogarth his first engraved caricature. Among the Dutch engravings of 1720, called forth by the schemes of John Law, there was one in which the victims were represented in a merry-go- round, riding in revolving cars or upon wooden horses, the whole kept in motion by a horse ridden by the devil. The picture presents also the usual multitude of confusing details, such as the Dutch mad -house in the distance, with a long train of vehicles going toward it. In availing himself of this de- vice the young Londoner showed much of that skill in the arrangement of groups, and that fertility in the inventioii of details, which marked his later works. His whirligig revolves higher in the air than in the Dutch picture, enabling him to show his figures clear of the crowd below, and instead of the devil on horseback giving the motion, he assigns that work more justly to the directors of the South Sea Company. Thus he has room and opportunity to impart a distinct character to most of his figures. We see perched aloft on the wooden horses about to be whirled around, a nobleman with his broad rib- bon, a shoe -black, an old woman, a wigged clergyman, and a Avoman of the town. With his usual uncompromising humor, Hogarth places these last two characters next to one another, and Avhile the clergyman ogles the woman, she chucks him under the chin. There is a world of accessories : a devil exhaling fire, standing behind a counter and cutting pieces of flesh from the body of Fortune and casting them to a hustling crowd of Catholic, Puritan, and Jew; Self-Interest breaking Honesty upon a wheel; a crowd of women rushing ])ell-mell into an edifice gabled with horns, and bearing the words, ‘‘ Raffling for Husbands with Lottery Fortunes in here;” Honor in the pillory flogged by Villainy ; an ape wearing a sword and cap. The scene chosen by the art- ist for these remarkable events is the open space in which tlie monument stands, then fresh and new, which commemorates the Great Fire; but he slyly 136 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. changes the inscription thus : “ This Monument was erected in Memory of the Destruction of this City by the South Sea in 1'720.” Hogarth, engraver and sign-painter though he may have been, was all him- self in this amusing and effective piece. If the Dutch picture and Hogarth’s could be placed here side by side, the reader would have before him an inter- esting example of the honest plagiarism of genius, which does not borrow gold and merely alter the stamp, but converts a piece of crude ore into a Toledo blade. Unfortunately, both pictures are too large and crowded to admit of effective reduction. In this, his first published work, the audacious artist availed himself of an expedient which heightened the effect of most of his later pictures. He intro- duced portraits of living persons. Conspicuous in the foreground of the South Sea caricature, among other personages now unknown, is the diminutive figure of Alexander Pope, who was one of the few lucky speculators of the year 1720. At least, he withdrew in time to save half the sum which he once thought he had made. The gloating rake in the first picture of the Harlot’s Progress ” is that typical reprobate of eighteenth-century romances, Colonel Francis Char- teris, upon whom Arbuthnot wrote the celebrated epitaph, which, it is to be hoped, is itself a caricature : “ Here continueth to rot the body of Francis Chartkris, who, with an inflexible constancy and INIMITABLE UNIFORMITY of life, PERSISTED, in spite of age and infirmities, in the practice of every human vice, excepting prodigality and hypocrisy. His insatiable avarice exempted him from the first; his matchless impudence from the second. Oil, indignant reader ! think not his life useless to mankind ; Providence connived at his execrable designs to give to after-ages a conspicuous proof and example of how small estimation is exorbitant wealth in the sight of God, by His bestowing it on the most unworthy of all mortals.” Hogarth was as much a humorist in his life as he was in his works. The invitation to Mr. King to eta beta py^ given on the next page, was one of many similar sportive efforts of his pencil. He once boasted that he could draw a sergeant carrying his pike, entering an ale-house, followed by his dog, all in three strokes. He produced the following, also given on next page : He explained the drawing thus: A is the perspective line of the door; B, the end of the sergeant’s pike, who has gone in ; C, the end of the dog’s tail. HOGARTH AND HIS TIME. 137 B Hogarth’s Invitation Card. Nor was he too nice in his choice of subjects for way -side treatment. One of his fellow-apprentices used to relate an anecdote of the time when they were accustomed to make the usual Sunday ex- cursion into the country, Hogarth being fifteen years of age. In a tap-room row a man received a severe cut upon the forehead with a quart beer-pot, which brought blood, and caused him to ‘^distort his features into a most hideous grin.” Hogarth produced his pencil and instantly drew a caricature of the scene, including a most ludi- crous and striking likeness of the wounded man. There was of ne- cessity a good deal of tap-room in all humorous art and literature of that century, and he was perfectly at home in scenes of a beery cast. The “ Five Days’ Peregrination ” of Hogarth and his friends, of whicli Thackeray discoursed to us so agreeably in one of his lectures, occurred when the artist was thirty-four years of age. But it shows us the same jovial Lon- doner, whose manners and pleasures, as Mr. Thackeray remarked, though hon- est and innocent, were not very refined.” Five friends set out on foot early in the morning from their tavern haunt in Covent Garden, gayly singing the old song, ‘‘Why should we quarrel for riches?” Billingsgate was their first halting-place, where, as the appointed historian of the jaunt records, “Hogarth made the caricature of a porter, who called himself the Duke of Puddle Dock,” which “ drawing was by his grace pasted on the cellar door.” At Rochester, “ Hogarth and Scott stopped and played at hop-scotch in the colonnade under the Town-hall.” The Nag’s Head at the village of Stock sheltered them one night, when, after supper, “we adjourned to the door, drank punch, stood and sat for our pictures drawn by Hogarth.” In another village the merry blades “got a wooden chair, and placed Hogarth in it in the street, where he made the drawing, and gathered a great many men, women, and children about him to see his performance.” The same evening, over their flip, they were enter- taining the tap-room with their best songs, wdien some Harwich lobster-men came in and sung several sea- songs so agreeably that the Londoners were “quite put out of countenance.” “Our St. J'ohn^'' records the scribe of the adventure, “ would not come in competition, nor could PishoJcen save ns from disgrace.” Here, too, is a Hogarthian incident: “Hogarth called me up and told me the good-woman insisted on being paid for her bed, or having Scott before the mayor, tvhich last we did all in our power to promote^'’ And so they merrily tramped the country round, singing, drawing, copying comic epitaphs, and pelting one another with dirt, returning to London at the end 138 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. of the five days, having expended just six guineas— five shillings a day each man. His sense of hnmov appears in his serious writings. One illustration which he gives in his “Analysis of Beauty,” to show the essential and exhaustless charm of the waving line, is in the highest degree comic: “I once heard an eminent dancing-master say that the minuet had been the study of his whole life, and that he had been indefatigable in the pursuit of its beauties, yet at Time Smoking a Piotuke. last could only say, with Socrates, he hneio nothing^ adding that I was happy in my profession as a painter, in that some bounds might be set to the study of it.” In his long warfare with the picture-dealers, who starved living art in En- gland by the manufacture of “ old masters,” he employed ridicule and carica- ture with powerful effect. Plis masterly caricature of “Time smoking a Pict- ure” was well seconded by humorous letters to the press, and by many a pass- HOGARTH AND HIS TIME. 139 ing hit in bis more elaborate writings. He maintained that a painting is never so good as at the moment it leaves the artist’s bands, time having no possible effect upon it except to impair its beauty and diminish its trutli. There was penned at this period a burlesque “Bill of Monsieur Yarnish to Benjamin Bis- ter,” which is certainly Hogarthian, if it is not Hogarth’s, and might well serve as a companion piece to the engraving. Among the items are these : / £ s. d. To painting and canvas for a naked Mary Magdalen, in tlie undoubted style of Paul Veronese 2 2 0 To brimstone, for smoking ditto 0 2 G Paid Mrs. W' for a live model to sit for Diana bathing, by Tintoretto 0 IG 0 Paid for the hire of a layman, to copy the robes of a Cardinal, for a Yandyck... 0 5 0 Paid the female figure for sitting thirty minutes in a wet slieet, that I might give the dry manner of that master 0 10 G The Tribute- money Rendered, with all the exactness of Qiiintin Metsius, the famed blacksmith of Antwerp 2 12 G The Martyrdom of St. Winifred, with a view of Holywell Bath, by old Prank. .Ill G To a large allegorical altarpiece, consisting of men and angels, horses and river gods ; ’tis thought most happily hit off for a Rubens 5 5 0 Paid for admission into the House of Peers, to take a sketch of a great charac- ter, for a picture of Moses breaking the Tables of the Law, in the darkest manner of Rembrandt, not yet finished 0 2 G The idea of a wet sheet imparting the effect of dryness was taken from a treatise on painting, which stated that “ some of the ancient masters acquired a dry manner of painting from studying after wet drapery.” This robust and downright Briton, strong in the consciousness of original and native genius, did not object merely to the manufacture of old masters, but also to the excessive value placed upon the genuine productions of the great men of old. He could not feel it to be just or favorable to the progress of art that works representing a state of feeling long ago outgrown in England should take precedence of paintings instinct with the life of the present hour. In other words, he did not enjoy seeing one of his own paintings sell at auc- tion for fourteen guineas, and an Old Master bring a thousand. He grew warm when he denounced “the picture - jobbers from abroad,” who import- ed continually “ship-loads of dead Christs, Holy Families, Madonnas, and oth- er dismal, dark subjects, neither entertaining nor ornamental, on which they scrawl the terrible cramp names of some Italian masters, and fix upon us En- glishmen the name of universal dupes.” He imagines a scene between one of those old-master mongers and his customer. The victim says : “^Mr. Bubbleman, that grand Yenus, as you are pleased to call it, has not beauty enough for the character of an English cook-maid.’ Upon which the quack answers, with a confident air: ‘Sir, I find that you are no connoisseur ; the picture, I assure you, is in Alesso Baldminetto’s second and best manner, boldly painted, and truly sublime: the contour gracious; the air of the head in high Greek taste ; and a most divine idea it is.’ Then spitting in an ob- 140 CAKICATUKE AND COMIC ART. scare place, and rubbing it with a dirty handkerchief, takes a skip to t’other end of the room, and screams out in raptures, ‘ There’s an amazing touch ! A man should have this picture a twelvemonth in his collection before he can discover half its beauties !’ The gentleman (though naturally a judge of what is beautiful, yet ashamed to be out of the fashion by judging for himself) /lo n/r -^XLyf^ ici^r^ U/a C(/rri ^cry- trrKXy fV^ O-^ /^//un^AA 'KL yyU^-r‘cJ:' y walking in the Snow. ‘*I have often shivered at seeing a young beauty picking her way through the snow with a pale rose- colored bonnet set on the very top of her head. They never wear muffs or boots, even when they have to step to their sleighs over ice and snow. They walk in the middle of winter with their poor little toes pinched into a miniature slipper, incapable of exclud- 184 CARICATUKE AND COMIC ART. Coventry on such easy terms, and saw no great hardship in the task assigned to her. People read with surprise of Thomas Jefferson’s antipathy to the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott. He objected to them because they gave a view of the past ages utterly at variance with the tuuth as revealed in the authentic records, which he had studied from his youth up. Coming down to recent times, we still find the current anecdote and prov- erb in all lands bearing hardly upon the sex. A few kindly and appreciative sayings pass current in Scotland ; and the literatures of Germany, England, and the United States teem with the noblest and tenderest homage to the ex- '■‘■'•My dear Baron, I am in the most pressing 7ieed of Jive hundred franc P Must I put an s to franc?” “No. In the circumstances it is better not. It will prove to the Baron that, for the moment, you really are destitute of every thing — even of orthography.” — Ed. de Beaumont, Paris, 1860. cellence of women. But most of these belong to the literature of this century, and bear the names of men who may be said to have created the moral feeling of the present moment. It is interesting to notice that in one of our latest and best dictionaries of quotation, that of Mr. M. M. Ballou, of Boston, there are one hundred and eleven short passages relating to women, of which only one is dishonorable to them, and that dates back a century and a half, to the halcyon day of the British libertine — “ Every woman is at heart a rake. — Pope.” So thought all the dissolute men of Pope’s circle, as we know from their conversa- tion and letters. So thought the Due de Rochefoucauld, who said, “There are few virtuous women who are not weary of their profession;” and “Most vir- tuous women, like concealed treasures, are secure because nobody seeks after CARICATURES OF WOMEN AND MATRIMONY. 185 them.” So thought Chesterfield, who told his hopeful son that he could never go wrong in flattering a woman, for women were foolish and frail without exception : “ I never knew one in my life who had good sense, or who reason- ed and acted consequen- tially for four -and -twenty hours together.” And so must think every man who lived as men of fashion then lived. ‘‘ If I dwelt in a hospital,” said Dr. Franklin once, “I might come to think all mankind diseased.” But a man need not be a fine gentleman nor a roue, to think ill of womankind. ' “ Madame, I have the honor— ” “ Sir, he good enough to come round in front and speak to me.” ITe needs only to be com- “Madame, I really haven’t the time. I must be off in five minutes.” monplace; and hence it is -Cham, p«m, iS50. that the homely proverbs of all time bear so hardly upon women. The native land of the modern proverb is Spain, as we might guess from Sancho Panza’s exhaustless repertory ; and most of those homely disparaging sentences con- cerning women that pass cur- rent in all lands appear to have originated there. What Spain has left unsaid upon women’s foibles, Italy has supplied. Most of the fol- lowing proverbs are traceable to one of the two peninsulas of Southern Europe : “ He that takes an eel by the tail or a woman by her word may say he holds nothing.” “There is one bad wife in Spain, and every man thinks he has her.” “ He that loses his wife and a farthing hath great loss of his farthing.” “ If the mother had never “ Where are the diamonds exhibited ?” “ I haven’t the least idea ; but I let myself be guided by my wife. V/ omen get at such things by instinct.”— Guam, Paris, 1868. 186 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. been in the oven, she would not have looked for her daughter there.” “ He that marries a widow and three children marries four thieves.” “He that tells his wife news is but newly married.” “A dead wife’s the best goods in a man’s house.” “A man of straw is worth a woman of gold.” “A woman conceals what she knows not.” “As great a pity to see a woman weep as to see a goose go barefoot.” “A woman’s mind and winter’s wind change oft.” “There is no mischief in the world done but a woman is always one.” “Com- mend a wedded life, but keep thyself a bachelor.” “, Where there are women and geese, there wants no noise.” “ Neither women nor linen by candle-light.” “ Glasses and lasses are brittle ware.” “ Two daughters and a back-door are Evening Scene in the Parlok of an American BoARuiNG-HuubE. “Ladies who have uo engagements (in the evening) either mount again to the solitude of tlieir chamber, or remain in the common sitting-room, in a society cemented by no tie, endeared by no connection, which choice did not bring together, and which the slightest motive would break asunder. I remarked that the gentlemen were generally obliged to go out every evening on business ; and, I confess, the arrangement did not surprise me.” — Mrs. Troelope, Domestic Man7iers of the Amei'icans, vol. ii., p. 111. 1S30. three thieves.” “Women commend a modest man, but like him not.” “Wom- en in mischief are wiser than men.” “Women laugh when they can and weep when they will.” “Women, priests, and poultry never have enough.” Among the simple people of Iceland similar proverbs pass current: “Praise the fineness of the day when it is ended; praise a woman when she is bui-ied; praise a maiden when she is married.” “Trust not to the words of a girl; neither to those which a woman utters, for their hearts have been made like the wheel that turns round; levity was put into their bosoms.” Among the few broadsides of Elizabeth’s reign preserved in the British Museum there is one which is conceived in perfect harmony with these prov- erbs. It presents eight scenes, in all of which women figure disadvantageous- CARICATURES OF WOMEN AND MATRIMONY. 187 ly. There is a child-bed scene, in which the mother lies in state, most prepos- terously dressed and adorned, while a dozen other Avomen are idling and gos- siping about the room. Women are exhibited also at the market, at the bake- house, at the ale-house, at the river washing clothes, at church, at the bath, at the public well; but always chattering, gossiping, idling, unless they are fight- ing or flirting. Another caricature in the same collection, dated 1620, the year of the 3Iayfloioer and Plymouth Rock, contains seven scenes illustrative of the lines following : “Who mai’ieth a Wife upon a Moneday, If she will not be good upon a Twesday, Lett him go to y® wood upon a Wensday, And cutt him a cudgell upon the Thursday, And pay her soundly upon a Eryday ; And she mend not, y® divil take her a Saterday, That he may eat his meat in peace on the Sunday.” To complete the record of man’s ridicule of the sex to which he owes his happiness, I add the pictures given in this chapter, which bring that record down to date. They tell their own story. The innocent fun of English Cruik- shank and Leech contrasts agreeably with the subtle depravity indicated by some of the French caricaturists, particularly by Gavarni, who surpasses all men in the art of exaggerating the address of the class of women who regard men in the light of prey. The point of Gavarni’s satire usually lies in the words printed underneath his pictures, and the pictures generally consist of the two figures who utter those words. But the expression which he contrives to impart to his figures and faces by a few apparently careless lines is truly wonderful, and it can scarcely be transferred to another surface. He excels in the expression of a figure with the face turned away, the whole effect being given by the outline of the head three-quarters averted. There is one picture of his, given on the following page, of a woman and her lover, he sitting in a chair reading with his hat on^ indicating the extreme of familiarity, she stand- ing at the window sewing, and keeping an eye on the pavement below. He’s coming !” she says ; “ take off your hat.” In the attitude of the woman there is a mingled effect of tranquillity and vigilance that is truly remarkable. In all the range of caricature it would be difficult to find a better specimen of the art than this, or a worse. The reader may be curious to see a few more of \\\QS,Q fourheries de femmes^ as evolved from the brain of the dissolute Gavarni. It is almost impossible to transfer the work of his pencil, but here are a few of his verbal elucidations: Under a picture of a father and daughter walking arm-in-arm : ‘‘ How did you know, papa, that I loved M. Leon ?” “ Because you always spoke of M. Paul.” Two young ladies in confidential conversation: “When I think that M. Coquardeau is going to be my husband, I feel sorry for Alexander.” “And I for Coquardeau.” 188 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. “ He’s coming ! Take off your hat !”— Gavakni, Paris, 1846. Two married ladies in conversation: ‘‘Yes, my dear, my husband has been guilty of bringing that creature into my house before my very eyes, when he knows that the only man I love in the world is two hundred leagues from here.” — “Men are contemptible” {laches). Husband writing a note, and his wife standing behind him : “My dear Sir, — Caroline begs me to remind you of a certain duet, of which she is extrava- gantly fond, and which you promised to give her. Pray be so good as to dine with her to-day, and bring your music with you. For my part, I shall be deprived of the pleasure of hearing you, for I have an engagement at Versailles. Pity me, my dear sir, and believe me always your af- fectionate COQUARDEAU.” A young man in wild excitement reading a letter : “On receipt of this, mount, fly ; overtake in the Avenue de Neuilly a yellow cab, the steps down, gray horse, old coachman, 108, one lantern lighted ! Follow it. It will stop at the side door of a house at Sablonville. A man and a woman will get out. That man — he was my lover ! And that woman — she is yours!” CARICATURES OF WOMEN AND MATRLAIONY. 189 The SoHOLASTio Hen and her Cjiiokens. (Cruikshauk, 1846.) Miss Thimblebee loquitur. “ Turn your heads the other way, my dears, for here are two horridly hand- some officers coming.” Lady fainting, and a man in consternation supporting her head : “ Clara, Clara! dearest, look up! Don’t! Clara, I say! You don’t know any nice young man ! I am an ass, with my stupid jealousy. And you shall have your velvet shawl. Come, Clara ! Now then, Clara, Lady dropping two letters into the post-office. First letter : “My kind Amedee, — This evening, toward eight, at the Red Ball. Mind, now, and don’t keep waiting your Clara.” Second letter : “ My Henry, — Well-beloved, judge of my despair — I have a sore throat that is simply fright- ful. It will be impossible for me to go out this evening. They even talk of applying twenty leeches. Pity a great deal, and love always, your Clara.” In these numberless satires upon women, executed by pen and pencil, there is a certain portion of truth, for, indeed, a woman powerfully organized and fully developed, but without mental culture and devoid of the sentiment of duty, can be a creature most terrific. If the possession of wealth exempts her from labor, there are four ways in which she can appease the ennpi of a barren mind and a torpid conscience. One is deep play, which was, until within sev- enty years, the resource chiefly relied upon by women of fashion for killing the hours between dinner and bed ; one is social display, or the struggle for the leadership of a circle, an ambition perhaps more pernicious than gambling ; an- other is intrigues of love, no longer permitted in the more advanced countries, but formerly an important element in fashionable life everywhere; finally, there is the resource of excessive and ceaseless devotion, the daily mass, the weekly confession, frequent and severe fasting, abject slavery to the ritual. 190 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. Of all these, the one last named is probably the most injurious, since it tends to bring virtue itself into contempt, and repels the young from all seri- ous and elevated modes of living. Accordingly, in studying the historic fami- lies of Europe, we frequently find that the devotee and the debauchee alter- nate, each producing the other, both being expressions of the same moral and mental defect. But whether a mindless woman gambles, dresses, flirts, oi* fasts, she is a being who furnishes the satirist with legitimate material. Equal rights, equal education, equal chances of an independent career — when women have enjoyed these for so much as a single century in any coun- try, the foibles at which men have laughed for so many ages will probably no longer be remarked, for they are either the follies of ignorance or the vices re- sulting from a previous condition of servitude. Nor will men of right feeling ever regard women with the cold, critical eye of a Chesterfield or a Rochefou- cauld, but rather with something of the exalted sentiment which caused old Homer, whenever he had occasion to speak of a mother, to prefix an adjective usually applicable to goddesses and queens, which we can translate best, per- haps, by our English word revered. AMONG THE CHINESE. 191 CHAPTER XVI. AMONG THE CHINESE. E are apt to think of the Chinese as a grave people, unskilled in the lighter arts of satire and caricature; but, according to that amusing traveler, M. Hue, they are the French of Asia — “ a nation of cooks, a nation of actors” — singularly fond of the drama, gifted in pasquinade, addicted to bur- lesque, prolific in comic ideas and satirical devices. M. Hue likens the Chinese Empire to an immense fair, where you find mingled with the bustle of traffic all kinds of shows, mountebanks, actors, Cheap Jacks, thieves, gamblers, all competing continually and with vociferous uproar for the favor of the crowd. ‘‘There are theatres everywhere; the great towns are full of them; and the actors play night and day.” When the British officers went ashore, in the ret- inue of their first grand embassy, many years ago, they were astonished to see Punch in all his glory with Judy, dog, and devil, just as they had last seen him on Ascot Heath, except that he summoned his audience by gong and triangle instead of pipes and drum. The Orient knew Punch perhaps ages before En- gland saw him. In China they have a Punch conducted by a single individ- Chinebe Carioatcke of an Engetsu Foeaginq Party.* * From “The Middle Kingdom,” vol. ii,, p. 177, by S. W. Williams, New York, 1871. 192 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. ual, who is enveloped from head to foot in a gown. lie carries the little thea- tre on his head, works the wires with liis hands under the gown, executes the dialogue with his mouth concealed by the same garment, and in the intervals of performance plays on two instruments. He exhibits the theatre reduced to its simplest form, the work of the company, the band, the manager, treasurer, scene-shifter, and property-man all being done by one person. In the very nature of the Chinese, whether men or women, there is a large element of the histrionic, even those pompous and noisy funerals of theirs be- ing little more than an exhibition of private theatricals. The whole company gossip, drink tea, jest, laugh, smoke, and have all the air of a pleasant social party, until the nearest relation of the deceased informs them that the time to mourn has come. Instantly the conversation ceases and lamentation begins. The company gather round the coffin ; affecting speeches are addressed to the dead ; groans, sobs, and doleful cries are heard on every side ; tears, real tears, roll down many cheeks — all is woe and desolation. But when the signal is given to cease mourning, “ the performers,” says M. Hue, “ do not even stop to finish a sob or a groan, but they take their pipes, and, lo ! they are again those incomparable Chinese, laughing, gossiping, and drinking tea.” It need not be said that Chinese women have an ample share of this pecul- iar talent of their race, nor that they have very frequent occasion to exercise it. Nowhere, even in the East, are women more subject or more artful than in China. “ When a son is born,” as a Chinese authoress remarks, he sleeps upon a bed, he is clothed with robes, and plays with pearls ; every one obeys his princely cries. But when a girl is born, she sleeps upon the ground, is merely wrapped in a cloth, plays with a tile, and is incapable of acting either virtuously or viciously. She has nothing to think of but preparing food, mak- ing wine, and not vexing her parents.” This arrangement the authoress ap- proves^ because it prepares the girl to accept without repining the humiliations of her lot. It is a proverb in China that a young wife should be in her house but “ a shadow and an echo.” As in India, she does not eat with her husband, but waits upon him in silent devotion till he is done, and then satisfies her own appetite with inferior food. Such is the theory of her position. But if we may judge from Chinese sat- ires, women are not destitute of power in the household, and employ the arts of the oppressed with effect. Among the Chinese poems recently translated by Mr. G. C. Stent in the volume called “ The Jade Chaplet,” there are a few in the satiric vein which attest the ready adroitness of Chinese women in moments of crisis. According to an English author, “A woman takes as naturally to a lie as a rat to a hole.” The author of these popular Chinese poems was evidently of the same opinion. The specimen subjoined, which has not been previously published in the United States, shows us that there is much in common between the jokes of the two hemispheres of our mun- dane sphere. AMONG THE CHINESE. 193 “FANNING THE GRAVE. ‘^’Twas spring — the air was redolent With many a sweet and grateful scent ; The peach and plum bloomed side by side, Like blushing maid and pale-faced bride ; Coy willows stealthily were seen Opening their eyes of living green — As if to watch the sturdy strife Of nature struggling into life. “ One sunny morn a Mr. Chuang Was strolling leisurely along ; Viewing the budding flowers and trees — Sniffing the fragrance-laden breeze — Staring at those who hurried by, Each loaded with a good supply Of imitation sycee shoes. To burn — for friends defunct to use — Of dainty viands, oil, and rice, And wine to pour in sacrifice. On tombs of friends who ’neath them slept. (Twas ‘ 3d of the 3d,’ when the graves are swept.) “ Chuang sauntered on. At length, on looking round, He spied a cozy-looking burial-ground ; ‘I’ll turn in here and rest a bit,’ thought he, ‘And muse awhile on life’s uncertainty ; This quiet place just suits my pensive mood, I’ll sit and moralize in pleasant solitude.’ So, sitting down upon a grassy knoll. He sighed — when all at once upon him stole A smothered sound of sorrow and distress, As if one w'ept in very bitterness. “ Mr. Chuang, hearing this, at once got up to see. Who the sorrowing mourner could possibly be. When he saw a young woman fanning a grave. Her ‘ three-inch gold lilies ’* were bandaged up tight In the deepest of mourning — her clothes, too, \vere white. f Of all the strange things he had read of or heard. This one was by far the most strange and absurd ; He had never heard tell of one fanning a grave. “ He stood looking on at this queer scene of woe, Unobserved, but astounded, and curious to know The reason the woman was fanning the grave. He thought, in this case, the best thing he could do Was to ask her himself ; so without more ado, t White is the color worn as mourning in China. 13 * Small feet. 194 CAEICATURE AND COMIC ART, He hemmed once or twice, then bowing his head, Advanced to the woman and smilingly said, ‘ May I ask, madam, why you are fanning that grave f “The woman, on this, glancing up with surprise. Looked as though she could scarcely believe her own eyes, When she saw a man watching her fanning the grave. He was handsome, and might have been thirty or more ; The garb of a Taoist he tastefully wore ; His kind manner soon put her quite at her ease. So she answered demurely, ‘Listen, sir, if you please, And I’ll tell you the reason I’m fanning this grave. “ ‘My husband, alas! whom I now {soh, sob) mourn, A short time since (sob) to this grave (sob) was borne ; And (sob) he lies buried in this (sob, sob) grave.’ (Here she bitterly wept.) ‘Ere my (sob) husband died. He called me (sob) once more (sob, sob) to his side. And grasping my — (sob) with his dying lips said, “When I’m gone (sob, sob) promise (sob) never to wed. Till the mold is (sob) dry on the top of my graved “ ‘I come hither daily to (sob) and to weep. For the promise I gave (sob) I’ll faithfully keep, IHl not wed till the mold is (sob) dry on his grave. I don’t want to marry again (sob), I’m sure. But poverty (sob) is so hard to endure ; And, oh ! I’m so lonely, that I come (sob) to try If I cant with my fan help the mold (sob) to dry ; And that is the reason Tm fanning his graved “Hearing this, Chuang exclaimed, ‘Madam, give me the fan. I'll willingly help you as much as I can In drying the mold on your poor husband’s grave.’ She readily handed the fan up to Chuang (Who in magic was skilled — as he proved before long). For he muttered some words in a low under-tone, Flicked the fan, and the grave was as dry as a bone ; ‘ There,’ said he, ‘ the mold’s dry on the top of the grave.’ “Joy plainly was seen on the poor woman’s face. As she hastily thanked him, ere quitting the place. For helping her dry up the mold on the grave. Chuang watched her go off with a cynical sigh. Thought he, ‘ Now suppose I myself were to die. How long would my wife in her weeds mourn my fate? Would she, like this woman, have patience to wait Till the mold was well dry on her poor husband's grave'?"' There is an amusing sequel to this poem, in which Chuang is exhibited putting his wife to the test. Being a magician, endowed with miraculous AMONG THE CHINESE. 195 power, he pretends to die; and while his body is in its coffin awaiting burial, ne assumes the form of a handsome young man, and pays to his mourning wife ardent court. “In short, they made love, and the next day were wed ; She cheerfully changing her white clothes to red.* Excited by drink, they were going to bed. When Chuang clapped his hand to his brow — He groaned. She exclaimed, ‘ What ! are you dying too ? One husband I’ve lost, and got married to you ; Now you are took bad. Oh, what shall I do ? Can I help you? If so, tell me how.’ “‘Alas!’ groaned the husband, ‘I’m sadly afraid The disease that I have is beyond human aid. Oh ! the sums upon sums I the doctors have paid ! There a remedy is, to be sufe : It is this : take the brains from a living man's head — If not to be had, get, and mash up instead Those of one who no more than three days has been dead. ’Twill effect an infallible cure !’ ” The distracted widow did not hesitate. There was the coffin of her la- mented husband before her, and he had not yet been dead three days : “ She grasped the chopper savagely, her brows she firmly knit. And battered at the coffin until the lid was split. But, oh ! what mortal pen could paint her horror and her dread ? A voice within exclaimed, ^ Hollo!' and Chuang popped up his head! “ ‘ Hollo !’ again repeated he, as he sat bolt-upright : ‘ What made you smash my coffin in ? — I see, besides, you're tight ! You've dressed yourself in red, too ! What means this mummery ? Let me have the full particulars, and don’t try on flummery.’ “She had all her wits about her, though she quaked a bit with fear. Said she (the artful wretch !), ‘It seems miraculous, my dear! Some unseen power impelled me to break the coffin-lid. To see if you were still alive — which, of course, you know I did ! “ ‘/ felt sure you must be living ; so, to welcome you once more. My mourning robes I tore off, and my wedding garments wore ; Hut, were you dead, to guard against all noxious fumes, I quaffed. As a measure of precaution, a disinfecting draught !' “Said Chuang, ‘Your tale is plausible, but I think you’d better stop ; Don’t fatigue yourself by telling lies ; just let the matter drop. To test your faithfulness to me, I’ve been merely shamming dead, I'm the youth you just now married — my widow Tve just wed!' " Appended to these two poems, there is the regulation moral, in which mar- * Bed is worn on joyful occasions, such as weddings, etc. 196 CAKICATURE AND COMIC ART. vied ladies are warned not to be too sure of their constancy, nor judge severely the poor widows who make haste to console themselves. “Do your best, but avoid supercilious pride, For you never can tell what you’ll do till you’re tried.” We can not say much for the translation of these comic works. Mr. Stent is a high authority in the Chinese language and literature, but is not at home in English prosody. It is plain, however, from his translations, rough as they may be, that there is a comic vein in the Chinese character which finds expres- sion in Chinese literature. Caricature, as we might suppose, is a universal practice among them; but, owing to their crude and primitive taste in such things, their efforts are sel- dom interesting to any but themselves. In Chinese collections, we see number- less grotesque exaggerations of the human form and face, some of which are not devoid of humor and artistic merit; but the specimens given on this and the next page suffice for the pres- ent purpose. The Chinese, it appears, are fond of exhibiting their English visitors in a ridiculous light. The caricature of an English foraging party, given in the first part of this chapter, was brought home thirty years ago by a printer attached to an American mission in China. Recently a new illustration of this propensity has gone abroad. In 1874 an account appeared in the En- glish papers of the audience granted A Deaf Mandarin. (From a Figure in the British tO the foreign ministers by the Empei’- Museum.)* p .-ni • • i i r 'tt-t or of China, m which Mr. Wade, the English embassador, was represented as having been overwhelmed with awe and alarm in the presence of the august potentate, the Son of Heaven. The origin of the paragraph was explained by the Athenmmn: “ The account was absurd in the extreme, and was universally recognized as a squib, except by a writer in the columns of a weekly contemporary, who gravely undertook the task of showing, by reference to the whole of his pre- vious career, how very unlikely it was that Mr. Wade should give way to the weakness imputed to him. It now turns out that the imaginary narrative first * “ Malcolm’s Caricaturing,” plate iv., fig. 9. AMONG THE CHINESE. 191 Aftee Dinner. A Chtni:se Carioatijre. (From a Figure iu the Britibh Museum.)* appeared in the columns of JPiic/c, a comic pa- per (in English), published at Shanghai ; that it was translated into Chinese by some native wag, who palmed it off on his countrymen as a truthful account of the behavior of the English barbarian on this occasion ; and that some in- quiring foreigner, ignorant of the source from whence it came, retranslated it into English, and held it up as another instance of the way in which the Chinese pamphleteers were at- tempting to undermine our influence in China by covering our minister with contempt !” The burlesque which thus imposed upon a London editor was a creditable specimen of comic talent: “His majesty having as- cended the throne, the envoys were led to the space at its foot, when they performed the ceremony of inclining the body. They did not kneel. By the side of the steps there was placed a yellow table, and the envoys stood in rank to read out their credentials, the British having the leading place. When he had read a few sentences, he began to tremble from head to foot, and was incapable of completing the perusal. The emperor asked, ‘ Is the prince ' of your country well ?’ But he could utter no reply. The emperor again asked, ‘You have besought permission to see me time and time again. What is it you have to say ?’ But again he was unable to make an answer. The next proceeding was to hand in the credentials ; but, in doing this, he fell down on the ground time after time, and not a syllable could he articulate. Upon this Prince Kung laughed loud at him before the entire court, exclaimed ‘ Chicken - feather !’ and gave orders to have him assisted down the steps. He was unable to move of his own accord, and sat down on the floor, perspiring and panting for breath. The whole twelve shook their heads and whispered together no one knows what. When the time came for the assembly at the banquet, they still remained incapable, and dispersed in hurried confusion. Prince Kung said to them, ‘You would not believe that it is no light matter to come face to face with his majesty; but what have you got to say about it to-day ?’ ” * “Malcolm's Caiicaturing,” plate iv., fig. 3. 198 CARICATUEE AND COMIC ART. CHAPTER XVII. COMIC ART IN JAPAN. ^r^HE bright, good-tempered people of Japan are familiar with humor in Jl many forms, and know how to sport with pencil as well as with pen. Their very sermons are not devoid of the jocular. When a preacher has pointed his moral by a comical tale, he will turn to the audience in the most familiar, confidential manner, and say, “Xow, isn’t that a fanny story?” or, ‘‘ Wasn’t that delightful ?” Sometimes he will half apologize for the introduc- tion of mirth-moving anecdotes: ‘‘Xow, my sermons are not written for the learned. I address myself to farmers and tradesmen, who, hard pressed by their daily business, have no time for study Now, positively you must not laugh if I introduce a light story now and then. Levity is not my object; I only want to put things in a plain and easy manner.”* Nothing yet brought from that country is more interesting to us than the specimens given in Mr. Mitford’s book of the short, homely, humorous, sound Japanese sermons. The existence of this work is another proof of the wisdom of giving consular and diplomatic appointments to men who know how to use their eyes, their hands, and their minds. The sumptuous work upon Japan by M. Aime Humbert could scarcely have been produced if the author had not been at the head of a powerful embassy. The Japanese are a gentler and kindlier people than the Chinese; women occupy a better position among them ; and hence the allusions to the sex in their literature are less contemptuous and satirical. The preacher whose ser- mons Mr. Mitford selects for translation is what we should terra an eclectic — one who owns fealty to none of the great religions of the East, but gleans les- sons of truth and wisdom from them all. Imagine him clad in gorgeous robes of red and white, attended by an acolyte, entering a chapel — a spacious, pleas- ant apartment which opens into a garden — bowing to the sacred picture over the altar, and taking a seat at a table. Some prayers are intoned, incense is burned, offerings are received, a passage from a sacred book is read, a cup of tea is quaffed, and then the preacher rises and begins his chatty, humorous, anecdotical discourse. Whenever he makes a point, the audience utters a re- * “Tales of Old Japan,” vol. ii., p. 138, by A. W. Mitford, Secretary of the British Legation in Japan, London, 1871. COMIC AKT IN JAPAN. 199 sponsive Nimmiyo,” varying the sound so as to accord with the sentiment expressed by the sj^eaker. Indeed, it would be difficult to name one rite, or observance, or custom, or eccentricity of religion practiced among us here in the United States, the counterpart of which has not been familiar to the Japa- nese from time immemorial. They have sacred books, a peculiar cross, litur- gies, temples, acolytes, nunneries, monasteries, holy water, incense, prayers, sermons, collections, the poor-box, responses, priestly robes, the bell, a series of ceremonies strongly resembling the mass, followed by a sermon, sacred pictures, anointing, shaven crowns, sects, orders, and systems of theology. Their sermons abound in parables and similes. The preacher just men- tioned illustrates his points with amusing ingenuity. For example, in a ser- mon on the folly of putting excessive trust in wealth, strength, or any other advantage merely external or transitory, he relates a parable of a shell-fish — the sazaye — noted for the extreme hardness of its shell. One day, just after a large sazaye had been vaunting his perfect security against the dangers to which other fish were exposed, there came a great splash in the water. ‘‘ Mr. Sazaye,” continued the preacher, shut his lid as quickly as possible, kej3t quite still, and thought to himself what in the world the noise could be. Could it be a net? Could it be a fish-hook? Were the tai and the other fish caught? he wondered ; and he felt quite anxious about them. However, at any rate, he was safe. And so the time passed ; and when he thought all was over, he stealthily opened his shell, and slipped out his head and looked all round him, and there seemed to be something wrong — something with which he was not familiar. As he looked a little more carefully, lo and behold 1 there he was in a fish-monger’s shop, and with a card, marked ‘ Sixteen Cash,’ on his back. “Isn’t that a funny story?” cries the jovial preacher, smiling complacently upon the congregation. “ Poor shell-fish ! I think there are people not un- like him to be found in China and IndkC’’ This is a favorite joke with the preacher. He frequently closes a satirical passage by a similar remark. “I don’t mean to say that there are any such persons here. Oh no. Still, there are plenty of them to be found — say, for instance, in the back streets of India.” The tone of this merry instructor in righteousness when he is speaking of women is that of a tender father toward children. He assumes that “women and children ” can not understand any thing profound and philosophical. Righteousness he defines as “ the fitting,” the ought-to-be ; and he considers it “fitting” that women should be the assiduous, respectful, and ever-obedient servants of men. A parable illustrates his meaning. A great preacher of old was once the guest of a rich man of low rank, who was “particularly fond of sermons,” and had a lovely daughter of fifteen, who waited upon the preacher at dinner, and entertained him afterward upon the harp. “ Really,” said the learned preacher, “it must be a very difficult thing to educate a young lady up to such a pitch as this.” The flattered parents could not refrain from boast- ing of their daughter’s accomplishments — her drawing, painting, singing, and 200 CAEICATURE AND COMIC AET. flower - plaiting. The wily preacher, Socrates -like, rejoined : “This is some- thing quite out of the common run. Of course slie knows how to rub the shoulders and loins, and has learned the art of shampooing?” This remark offends the fond father. “ I have not fallen so low as to let my daughter learn shampooing !” The preacher blandly advises him not to put himself in a pas- sion, and proceeds to descant upon the Whole Duty of Woman, as understood in Japan. “ She must look upon her husband’s parents as her own. If her honored father-in-law or mother-in-law fall ill, her being able to plait flowers and paint pictures and make tea will be of no use in the sick-room. To sham- poo her parents -in-law, and nurse them affectionately, without employing a shampooer or servant-maid, is the right path of a daughter-in-law.” Upon hearing these words, the father sees his error, and blushes with shame ; where- upon the preacher admits that music and painting are not bad in themselves, only they must not be pursued to the exclusion of things more important, of which shampooing is one. He draw's a sad picture of a wife who has learned nothing but the graceful arts. Before the bottom of the family kettle is scorched black the husband will be sick of his bargain — a wife all untidy about the head, her apron fast- ened round her as a girdle, a baby twisted somehow into the bosom of her dress, and nothing in the house to eat but some wretched bean-soup, and that bought at a store. “What a ten-million-times miserable thing it is when par- ents, making their little girls hug a great guitar, listen with pleasure to the poor little things playing on instruments big enough for them to climb upon, and squeaking out songs in their shrill treble voices !” Such girls, if not closely watched, will be prematurely falling in love and running aw^ay to be married. These sermons are so curiously different from any thing which we are ac- customed to think of as sermons that I am tempted to extract the conclusion of one of them. The text is a passage from “ Moshi,” which touches upon the folly of men in being more ashamed of a bodily defect than of a moral fault. Mark how the merry Japanese preacher “ improves ” the subject: “ What mistaken and bewildered creatures men are ! What says the old song? ‘Hidden far among the mountains, the tree which seems to be rotten, if its core be yet alive, may be made to bear flowers.’ What signifies it if the hand or the foot be deformed ? The heart is the important thing. If the heart be awry, what though your skin be fair, your nose aquiline, your hair beautiful? All these strike the eye alone, and are utterly useless. It is as if you were to put horse-dung into a gold-lacquer luncheon-box. This is what is called a fair outside, deceptive appearance. “ There’s the scullery-maid been washing out the pots at the kitchen-sink, and the scullion, Chokichi, comes up and says to her, ‘You’ve got a lot of charcoal smut sticking to your nose,’ and points out to her the ugly spot. The scullery-maid is delighted to be told of this, and answers, ‘ Really ! where- COMIC ART IN JAPAN. 201 abouts is it?’ Then she twists a tow^el round her finger, and, 'Dending her head till mouth and forehead are almost on a level, she squints at her nose, and twiddles away with her fingers as if she were the famous Goto at work carv- ing the ornaments of a sword-handle. ‘I say. Master Chokichi, is it off yet?’ ‘Not a bit of it. You’ve smeared it all over your cheeks now\’ ‘Oh dear! oh dear ! wdiere can it be ?’ And so she uses the w’ater-basin as a looking- glass, and washes her face clean ; then she says to herself, ‘ What a dear boy Chokichi is !’ and thinks it necessary, out of gratitude, to give him relishes with his supper by the ladleful, and thanks him over and over again. But if this same Chokichi were to come up to her and say, ‘ Now, really, how lazy you are ! I wish you could manage to be rather less of a shrew,’ what do you think the scullery-maid would answer then? Reflect for a moment. ‘Drat the boy’s impudence ! If I were of a bad heart or an angular disposition, should I be here helping him? You go and be hanged! You see if I take the trouble to wash your dirty bedclothes for you any more.’ And she gets to be a perfect devil, less only the horns. “There are other people besides the poor scullery-maid who are in the same w^ay. ‘Excuse me, Mr. Gundabei, but the embroidered crest on your dress of ceremony seems to be a little on one side.’ Mr. Gundabei proceeds to adjust his dress with great precision. ‘Thank you, sir. I am ten million times obliged to you for your care. If ever there should be any matter in which I can be of service to you, I beg that you will do me the favor of letting me know;’ and, with a beaming face, he expresses his gratitude. Now^ for the other side of the picture : ‘ Really, Mr. Gundabei, you are very foolish ; you don’t seem to understand at all. I beg you to be of a frank and honest heart: it really makes me quite sad to see a man’s heart warped in this way.’ What is his answer? He turns his sword in his girdle ready to draw, and plays the devil’s tattoo upon the hilt. It looks as if it must end in a fight soon. “In fact, if you help a man in any thing which has to do with a fault of the body, he takes it very kindly, and sets about mending matters. If any one helps another to rectify a fault of the heart, he has to deal with a man in the dark, who flies in a rage, and does not care to amend. How out of tune all this is ! And yet there are men who are bewildered up to this point. Nor is this a special and extraordinary failing. This mistaken perception of the great and the small, of color and of substance, is common to us all — to you and to me. “Please give me your attention. The form strikes the eye; but the heart strikes not the eye. Therefore, that the heart should be distorted and turned awry causes no pain. This all results from the want of sound judgment; and that is why we can not afford to be careless. “ The master of a certain house calls his servant Chokichi, who sits dozing in the kitchen. ‘Here, Chokichi! The guests are all gone. Come and clear away the wine and fish in the back room.’ “ Chokichi rubs his eyes, and, with a sulky answer, goes into the back room. 202 CARICATUEE AND COJMIC ART. and, looking about him, sees all the nice things paraded on the trays and in the bowls. It’s wonderful how his drowsiness passes away: no need for any one to hurry him now. His eyes glare with greed, as he says, ‘ Halloo ! here’s a lot of tempting things! There’s only just one help of that omelet left in the tray. What a hungry lot of guests ! What’s this? It looks like fish rissoles;’ and with this he picks out one, and crams his mouth full, when, on one side, a mess of young cuttle-fish, in a Chinese porcelain bowl, catches his eyes. There the little beauties sit in a circle, like Buddhist priests in religious meditation 1 ‘ Oh, goodness ! how nice !’ and just as he is dipping his finger and thumb in, he hears his master’s footstep, and, knowing that he is doing wrong, he crams his prize into the pocket of his sleeve, and stoops down to take away the wine-kettle and cups ; and as he does this, out tumbles the cuttle-fish from his sleeve. The master sees it. ‘ What’s that ?’ “ Chokichi, pretending not to know what has happened, beats the mats, and keeps on saying, ‘ Come again the day before yesterday ; come again the day before yesterday.’ [An incantation used to invite spiders, which are con- sidered unlucky by the superstitious, to come again at the Greek Kalends.] “ But it’s no use his trying to persuade his master that the little cuttle-fish are spiders, for they are not the least like them. It’s no use hiding things — they are sure to come to light; and so it is with the heart — its purposes will out. If the heart is enraged, the dark veins stand out on the forehead ; if the heart is grieved, tears rise to the eyes ; if the heart is joyous, dimples appear in the cheeks ; if the heart is merry, the face smiles. Thus it is that the face reflects the emotions of the heart. It is not because the eyes are filled with tears that the heart is sad, nor that the veins stand out on the forehead that the heart is enraged. It is the heart which leads the way in every thing. All the important sensations of the heart are apparent in the outward appearance. In the ‘Great Learning’ of Koshi it is written, ‘The truth of what is within appears upon the surface.’ How, then, is the heart a thing which can be hid- den ? To answer when reproved, to hum tunes when scolded, show a dis- eased heart; and if this disease be not quickly taken in hand, it will become chronic, and the remedy become difficult. Perhaps the disease may be so vir- ulent that even Giba and Henjaku [two famous Indian physicians] in consulta- tion could not effect a cure. So, before the disease has gained strength, I in- vite you to the study of the moral essays entitled ‘Shingaku’ [the “Learning of the Heart”]. If you once arrive at the possession of your heart as it was originally by nature, what an admirable thing that will be ! In that case your conscience will point out to you even the slightest wrong bias or selfishness. “ While upon this subject, I may tell you a story which was related to me by a friend of mine. It is a story which the master of a certain money- changer’s shop used to be very fond of telling. An important part of a money- changer’s business is to distinguish between good and bad gold and silver. In •COMIC ART IN JAPAN. 203 the different establishments, the ways of teaching the apprentices this art vary ; however, the plan adopted by the money-changer was as follows : at first he would show them no bad silver, but would daily put before them good money only; when they had become thoroughly familiar with the sight of good money, if he stealthily put a little base coin among the good, he found that they would detect it immediately. They saw it as plainly as you see things when you throw light on a mirror. This faculty of detecting base money at a glance was the result of having learned thoroughly to understand good money. Having been taught once in this way, the apprentices would not make a mis- take about a piece of base coin during their whole lives, as I have heard. I can’t vouch* for the truth of this ; but it is very certain that the principle, ap- plied to moral instruction, is an excellent one — it is a most safe mode of study. However, I was further told that if, after having thus learned to distinguish good money, a man followed some other trade for six months or a year, and gave up handling money, he would become just like any other inexperienced person, unable to distinguish the good from the base. ‘‘ Please reflect upon this attentively. If you once render yourself famil- iar with the nature of the uncorrupted heart, from that time forth you will be immediately conscious of the slightest inclination toward bias or selfishness. And why? Because the natural heart is illumined. When a man has once learned that which is perfect, he will never consent to accept that which is im- perfect; but if, after having acquired this knowledge, he again keeps his natu- ral heart at a distance, and gradually forgets to recognize that which is perfect, he finds himself in the dark again, and that he can no longer distinguish base money from good. I beg you to take care. If a man falls into bad habits, he is no longer able to perceive the difference between the good impulses of his natural heart and the evil impulses of his corrupt heart. With this benighted heart as a starting-point, he can carry out none of his intentions, and he has to lift his shoulders, sighing and sighing again. A creature much to be pitied indeed ! Then he loses all self-reliance, so that, although it would be better for him to hold his tongue and say nothing about it, if he is in the slightest trouble or distress he goes and confesses the crookedness of his heart to ev- ery man he meets. What a wretched state for a man to be in ! For this reason, I beg you to learn thoroughly the true silver of the heart, in order that you may make no mistake about the base coin. I pray that you and I, during our whole lives, may never leave the path of true principles. “ I have an amusing story to tell you in connection with this, if you will be so good as to listen. Once upon a time, when the autumn nights were beginning to grow chilly, five or six tradesmen in easy circumstances had assembled together to have a chat; and, having got ready their picnic-box and wine-flask, went off to a tem- ple on the hills, where a friendly priest lived, that they might listen to the stags roaring. With this intention they went to call upon the priest, and borrowed 204 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. the guests’ apartments [all the temples in China and Japan have guests’ apart- ments, which may be secured for a trifle, either for a long or short period. It is false to suppose that there is any desecration of a sacred shrine in the act of using it as a hostelry: it is the custom of the country] of the monastery; and as they were waiting to hear the deer roar, some of the party began to compose poetry. One would write a verse of Chinese poetry, and another would write a verse of seventeen syllables ; and as they were passing the wine-cup the hour of sunset came, but not a deer had uttered a call ; eight o’clock came, and ten o’clock came ; still not a sound from the deer. i What can this mean ?’ said one. ‘ The deer surely ought to be roaring.’ ^‘But, in spite of their waiting, the deer would not roar. At last the friends got sleepy, and, bored with writing songs and verses, began to yawn, and gave up twaddling about the woes and troubles of life ; and as they were all silent, one of them, a man flfty years of age, stopping the circulation of the wine-cup, said : ‘‘‘Well, certainly, gentlemen, thanks to you, we have spent the evening in very pleasant conversation. However, although I am enjoying myself mightily in this way, my people at home must be getting anxious, and so I begin to think that we ought to leave off drinking.’ “ ‘ Why so ?’ said the others. “‘Well, I’ll tell you. You know that my only son is twenty-two years of age this year; and a troublesome fellow he is, too. When I’m at home, he lends a hand sulkily enough in the shop ; but as soon as he no longer sees the shadow of me, he hoists sail, and is off to some bad haunt. Although our re- lations and connections are always preaching to him, not a word has any more effect than wind blowing into a horse’s ear. When I think that I shall have to leave my property to such a fellow as that, it makes my heart grow small indeed. Although, thanks to those to whom I have succeeded, I want for nothing; still, when I think of my son, I shed tears of blood night and day.’ “And as he said this with a sigh, a man of some forty-five or forty-six years said : “‘ Yo, no. Although you make so much of your misfortunes, your son is but a little extravagant, after all. There’s no such great cause for grief there. I’ve got a very different story to tell. Of late years my shop-men, for one rea- son or another, have been running me into debt, thinking nothing of a debt of fifty or seventy ounces; and so the ledgers get all wrong. Just think of that! Here have I been keeping these fellows ever since they were little children un- able to blow their own noses, and now, as soon as they come to be a little use- ful in the shop, they begin running up debts, and are no good whatever to their master. You see, you only have to spend your money upon your own son.’ “Then another gentleman said: • “‘Well, I think that to spend money upon your shop- people is no such great hardsliip, after all. Now, I’ve been in sometliing like trouble lately. I COMIC ART IN JAPAN. 205 can’t get a penny out of my customers. One man owes me fifteen ounces; another owes me twenty-five ounces. Really that is enough to make a man feel as if his heart were worn away.’ “ When he had finished speaking, an old gentleman, who was sitting oppo- site, playing with his fan, said : ‘‘ ‘ Certainly, gentlemen, your grievances are not without cause ; still, to be perpetually asked for a little money, or to back a bill, by one’s relations or friends, and to have a lot of hangers-on dependent on one, as I have, is a worse case still.’ ‘‘ But before the old gentleman had half finished speaking, his neighbor called out : “ ‘ Ko, no ; all you gentlemen are in luxury compared to me. Please listen to what I have to suffer. My wife and my mother can’t hit it off anyhow. All day long they’re like a couple of cows butting at one another with their horns. The house is as unendurable as if it were full of smoke. I often think it would be better to send my wife back to her village; but, then, Pve got two little children. If I interfere and take my wife’s part, my mother gets low- spirited. If I scold my wife, she says that I treat her so brutally because she’s not of the same flesh and blood ; and then she hates me. The trouble and anxiety are beyond description : I’m like a post stuck up between them.’ ‘‘And so they all twaddled away in chorus, each about his own troubles. At last one of the gentlemen, recollecting himself, said : “ ‘ Well, gentlemen, certainly the deer ought to be roaring; but we’ve been so engrossed with our conversation that we don’t know whether we have missed hearing them or not.’ “ With this he pulled aside the sliding-door of the veranda and looked out, and, lo and behold ! a great big stag was standing perfectly silent in front of the garden. “ ‘ Halloo !’ said the man to the deer, ‘ what’s this? Since you’ve been there all the time, why did you not roar?’ “ Then the stag answered, with an innocent face, “ ‘ Oh, I came here to listen to the lamentations of you gentlemen.’ “ Isn’t that a funny story ? “ Old and young, men and women, rich and poor, never cease grumbling from morning till night. All this is the result of a diseased heart. In short, for the sake of a very trifling inclination or selfish pursuit, they will do any wrong in order to effect that which is impossible. This is want of judgment, and this brings all sorts of trouble upon the world. If once you gain posses- sion of a perfect heart, knowing that which is impossible to be impossible, and recognizing that that which is difficult is difficult, you will not attempt to spare yourself trouble unduly. What says the ‘Chin-Yo?’ The wise man, whether his lot be cast among rich or poor, among barbarians or in sorrow, understands his position by his own instinct. If men do not understand this, they think 206 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. that the causes of pain and pleasure are in the body. Putting the heart on one side, they earnestly strive after the comforts of the body, and launch into extravagance, the end of which is miserly parsimony. Instead of pleasure, they meet with grief of the heart, and pass their lives in weeping and wailing. In one way or another, everything in this world depends upon the heart. I implore every one of you to take heed that tears fall not to your lot.” A people capable of producing and enjoying sermons like these, so free from the solemn and the sanctimonious, would be likely to wield the humorous pencil also. Turning to the illustrated work of M. Aime Humbert, we find that the foibles of human nature are satirized by the Japanese draughtsmen in cari- Tiie Rat Rice Mekoiiants. (A Japanese Caricature, from “Japan and the Japanese,” by Aime Humbert.) catures, of which M. Humbert gives several specimens. These, however, are not executed with the clearness and precision which alone could render them effective in our eyes ; and a very large proportion of them emj^loy that most ancient and well-worn device of investing animals with the faculties of human beings. The best is one representing rats performing all the labors of a rice warehouse. Rats, as M. Humbert remarks, are in Japan the most dreaded and determined thieves of the precious rice. The picture contains every feature of the scene — the cashier making his calculations with his bead calculator ; the salesman turning over his books in order to show his customers how impos- sible it is for him to abate a single cash in the price; the shop-men carrying COMIC AKT IN JAPAN. 207 the bales; coolies bearing the straw bags of money at the end of bamboos; porters tugging away at a sack just added to the slock; and a new customer saluting the merchant. The Japanese do not confine themselves to this kind of burlesque. They take pleasure in representing a physician examining with exaggerated gravity a patient’s tongue, or peering into ailing eyes through enormous spectacles, while he lifts with extreme caution the corner of the eyelid. A quack shampooing a victim is another of their subjects. One pict- ure represents a band of blind shampooers on their travels, who, in the midst of a ford, are ’disputing what direction they shall take when they reach the opposite bank. Begging friars, mishaps of fishermen, blind men leading the blind, jealous women, household dissensions, women excessively dressed, fur- nish opportunities for the satirical pencil of the Japanese artists, w’ho also publish series of comic pictures, as we do, upon such subjects as “Little Troubles in the Great World,” “The Fat Man’s Household,” “The Thin Man’s Household.” If these efforts of the Japanese caricaturists do not often possess much power to amuse the outside world, they have one qualification that entitles them to respect — most of them are good-tempered. 208 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. CHAPTER XVIII. FRENCH CARICATURE. I T is inevitable that bad rulers should dread the satiric pencil. Caricature, powerless against an administration that is honest and competent, power- less against a public man who does his duty in his place, is nevertheless a most effective device against arrogance, double-dealing, corruption, cowardice, and iniquity. England, as the French themselves admit, is the native home of po- litical caricature; but not an instance can be named in all its history of cari- cature injuring a good man or defeating a good measure. A free pencil, too, becomes ever a gayer and a kinder pencil. The measure of freedom which France has occasionally enjoyed during the last ninety years has never lasted long enough to wear off the keen point of the satirist’s ridicule ; and collectors can tell, by the number and severity of the pictures in a port-folio, just how much freedom Frenchmen possessed when they were produced. It is curious, also, to’ note that caricatures on the wrong side of great public questions are never excellent. It is doubtful if a bad man with the wealth of an empire at his command could procure the execution of one first-rate caricature hostile to the public good. A despot can never fight this fire with fire, and has no re- source but to stamp it out. Vainly, therefore, will the most vigilant collector search iov French carica- tures of Xapoleon Bonaparte published during his reign. His government was a despotism not tempered by epigrams, and it was controlled by a despot who, though not devoid of a sense of humor, had all a Corsican’s mortal hatred of ridicule. NTo man in France was less French than Xapoleon, either in lineage or in character. His moral position in Paris was not unlike that which Othello might have held in Venice, if Othello had been base enough to betray and ex- ])el the senate which he had sworn to serve. We can imagine how the shy, proud Moor would have writhed under the pasquinades of the graceful, disso- lute Venetian wits whom he despised. So Napoleon, who never ceased to have much in him of the semi-barbarian chief (and always looked like one when he was dressed in imperial robes), shrunk with morbid apprehension from the tongue of Madame De Stael, and wrote autograph notes to Fouche calling his attention to the placards and verses of the street-corners. There is something more than ludicrous in the spectacle of this rude soldier, with a million armed men under his command, and half Europe at his feet, sitting down in rage and FRENCH CARICATURE. 209 affright to order Fouclie to send a little woman over the frontiers lest she should say something about him for the drawing-rooms of Paris to laugh at. In place of caricature, therefore, we have only alle- gorical “ glory ” in the fugi- tive pictures of his reign, few of which are worthy of re- membrance. English Gillray, on the other side of the Channel, made most ample amends. Modern caricature has not often equaled some of the best of Gillray ’s upon Napo- leon. In 1806, when the con- queror had finally lost his head, dazzled and bewildered by his own victories, and was setting up new kingdoms with a facility which began to be amusing, Gillray produced his masterpiece of the “Great French Gingerbread Baker drawing out a New Batch of Kings.” It is full of happy detail. Besides the central figure of Bonaparte himself drawing from the “New French Oven” a fresh batch of monarchs, we see Bishop Talleyrand kneading in the “ Political Kneading-trough,” into which Poland, Hanover, and Prussia have just been thrown. There is also the “Ash- hole for Broken Gingerbread,” into which Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and broad-backed Holland have been swept. On a chest of drawers stand a number of “Dough Viceroys intended for the Next Batch,” and the drawers are labeled “ Kings and Queens,” “ Crowns and Scep- tres,” “ Suns and Moons.” Gillray burlesqued almost all the history of the gingerbread colossus from the Egyptian expedition onward, but he never surpassed the gayety and aptness of this picture, which was all the more ef- fective in English eyes because gilt gingerbread made into figures of kings, queens, crowns, anchors, and princes’ feathers, is a familiar object at English fairs. Napoleon himself may have laughed at it. We know that at St. Helena he applauded English caricatures of a similar character, notably one which repre- sented George HI. as a corpulent old man standing on the English coast, hurl- ing in fury a huge beet at the head of Napoleon on the other side of the Chan- 14 210 CARICATURE AND COxMIC ART. p nel, and saying to him, “ Go and make yourself some sugar !”* We know also that while he relished the satirical pictures aimed at his enemies and rivals, he was very far from enjoying those which reflected disagreeably upon himself. “ If caricatures,” said he one day at St. Helena, “ sometimes avenge misfortune, they form a continual annoyance to power; and how many have been made upon me ! I think I have had my share of them.” Even he did not care for caricature when he was right. If it can be said that Napoleon Bonaparte conferred uj)on France one lasting good, it was beet- root sugar; but the satire aimed at that useful article does not appear to have offended him. In a newspaper of June, 1812, we read: “A caricature has been executed at Paris, in which the emperor and the King of Rome are the most prominent characters. The emperor is represented as sitting at the table in the nursery with a cup of coffee before him, into which he is squeezing beet-root. Near to him is seated the young King of Rome, voraciously sucking the beet -root. The nurse, who is steadfastly observing him, is made to say, ^SmJc, dear, suck ; your father says it is sugar.’ ” He did not care, probably, for that. It would have been far other- wise if a draughtsman had touched upon his mad inva- sion of Russia. It was not until his pow- er was gone that French sat- irists tried their pencils upon him, and then with no great success. With the downfall of Napoleon was involved the prostration of France. Hu- miliation followed humilia- tion. The spirit of French- men was broken, and their A Great Man’s Last Leap — Napoleon going on Board the En- I'eSOUl’CeS WCre exhausted. In GLisu Frigate, assisted uy tue Faithful Bertrand. (Paris, 1815.) the presence of such events as “Napoleon at St. Helena,” p. 90, by John S. C. Abbott, New York, Harper & Brothers. FRENCH CARICATURE. 211 t]ie Russian catastrophe, the march of the allies upon Paris, iSTapoleon’s banish- ment to Elba, the Hundred Days, Waterloo, the encampment of foreign armies in the public places of Paris, the flight of the emperor, and his final exile, the satirist was superseded, and burlesque itself was outdone by reality. When at last Paris was restored to herself, and peace again gav^e play to the human mind, Napoleon was covered with the majesty of what seemed a sublime mis- fortune. That peerless histrionic genius took the precaution in critical mo- ments to let the world know what character he was enacting, and accordingly, when he stepped on board the English man-of-war, he announced himself to mankind as Themistocles magnanimously seeking an asylum at the hands of the most powerful of his enemies. The good ruler is he who leaves to his successor, if not an easy task, yet one not too difficult for respectable talents. Napoleon solved none of the menacing problems. He threw no light upon the difficulties with which the modern world finds itself face to face. Every year that he reigned he only heaped up perplexity for his successors, until the mountain mass transcended all human ability, and entailed upon Frenchmen that tumultuous apprentice- ship in self-government which is yet far from ending. The first effort of the caricaturists in Paris after the Restoration was sim- ply to place the figure of a weather-cock after the names of public men who had shown particular alacrity in changing their politics with the changing dynasties. This was soon improved upon by putting weather-cocks enough to denote the precise number of times a personage had veered. Thus Talley- rand, who from being a bishop and a nobleman had become a republican, then a minister under Napoleon, and at last a supporter and servant of the Restora- tion, besides exhibiting various minor changes. Six appears to have been the favorite number. We find in a previous picture that he is represented as the man with six heads. The public men sig- nalized by this simple device were said to belong to the Order of the Weather- cock ; and it was the interest of the reactionists, who urged on the trial and execution of Ney and his comrades, to cover them with odium. To this day much of that odium clings to the name of Talleyrand. A man who keeps a cool head in the midst of madmen is indeed a most offensive person, and Tal- leyrand committed this enormity more than once in his life. So far as we can yet discern, the only “ treason ” he ever practiced toward the governments with which he was connected consisted in giving them better advice than they were capable of acting upon. The few words which he uttered on leaving ttie council-chamber, after vainly advising Marie Louise to remain in her husband’s abode and maintain the moral dignity of his administration, show how well he understood the collapse of the “ empire ” and its cause : “ It is difficult to com- prehend such weakness in such a man as the emperor. What a fall is his ! To was complimented with as many weather-cocks as the fancy of each writer suggested. Talleyrand. 212 CAKICATURE AND COMIC ART. give his name to a series of adventures^ instead of bestoioing it upon his cent- ury! When I think of that, I can not help groaning.” Then he added the words which gave liim his high place in the Order of the Weather-cock : ‘‘But now what part to take ? It does not suit every body to let himself be over- whelmed in the ruins of this edifice.” Particularly it did not suit M. de Tal- leyrand, and he was not overwhelmed, accordingly. Considering the manner in which France was governed during his career, he might well say, “I have not betrayed governments : governments have betrayed me.” It is mentioned by M. Champfleury as a thing unprecedented that this weather-cock device did not wholly lose its power to amuse the Parisians for two years. The portly person and ancient court of the king, Louis XYIII., called forth many caricatures at a later period. This king was as good-nat- ured, as well-intentioned, as honorable a Bourbon as could have been found in either hemisphere. It was not he who enriched all languages by the gift of his family name. It was not his obstinate adherence to ancient folly which caused it to be said that the Bourbons had forgotten nothing and learned nothing. Born as long before his accession as 1755, he was an accomplished and popular prince of mature age during the American Revolution and the in- tellectual ferment which followed it in France. A respectable scholar (for a prince), well versed in literature (for a pifince), a good judge of art (for a prince), of liberal politics (for a prince), and not so hopelessly ignorant of state affairs as kings and princes usually were, he watched the progress of the Rev- olution with some intelligence and, at first, with some sympathy. Both then and in 1815 he appears to have been intelligently willing to accept a constitu- tion that should have left his family on the throne by right divine. Right divine was his religion, to which he sacrificed much, and, unquestion- ably, would have sacrificed his life. When he was living in exile upon the bounty of the Emperor of Russia, he said to his nephew, on the wedding-day of that young Bourbon: “If the crown of France were of roses, I would give it to you. It is of thorns ; I keep it.” And, indeed, a turn in politics expelled him soon after, in the middle of winter, from his abode, and made him again a dependent wanderer. In 1803, too, when there could be descried no ray of hope of the restoration of the old dynasty, and Napoleon, apparently lord of the world, offered him a principality in landed wealth if he would but formally renounce the throne, he replied in a manner which a believer in divine right might think sublime : “I do not confound M. Bonaparte with those who have preceded him. His valor, his military talents, I esteem ; and I am even grateful to him for several measures of his administration, since good done to my people will ever be dear to my heart. But if he thinks to engage me to compromise my rights, he de- ceives himself. On the contrary, by the very offer he now makes me he would establish them if they could be thought of as doubtful. I do not know wliat are the designs of God with regard to my house and myself, but I know the FRENCH CARICATURE. 213 obligations imposed upon me by the rank in which it was his pleasure to cause me to be born. A Christian, I shall fulfill those obligations even to my latest breath ; a son of St. Louis, I shall know, taught by his example, how even in chains to respect myself; a successor of Francis I., I desire at least to be able to say, like him, ‘All is lost but honor !’ ” Again, in 1814, when the Emperor Alexander of Russia urged him to con- cede so much to the popular feeling as to call himself King of the French^ and to omit from his style the words par la grace de Dieu^'’ he answered : “ Di- vine right is at once a consequence of religious dogma and the law of the country. By that law for eight centuries the monarchy has been hereditary in my family. Without divine right I am but an infirm old man, long an exile from my country, and reduced to beg an asylum. But by that right, the exile is King of France.” He wrote and said these “ neat things ” himself, not by a secretary. Among his happy sayings two have remained in the memory of Frenchmen : “ Punctu- ality is the politeness of kings,” and “ Every French soldier carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsack.” He was, in short, a genial, witty, polite old gentle- man, willing to govern France constitutionally, disposed to forget and forgive, and be the good king of the whole people. But he was sixty years of age, fond of his ease, and ex- tremely desirous, as he often said, of dying in his own bed. He was surrounded by elderly persons who were big- oted to a Past which could not be resuscita- ted ; and his brother, heir presumptive to the throne, was that fatal Comte d’ Artois (Charles X.) who aggravated the violence of the Revolu- tion of 1789, and pre- cipitated that of 1830, by his total incapacity to comprehend either. Gradually the gloomy party of reaction and revenge who surround- ed the heir presumptive gained the ascendency, De L.A ViLLEVIELLE, CaMHAOEUES, D’AiGRE FeUIEEE — A PkOMENA7)E in and the good - natured the Palais Royal. (Paris, 1818.) 214 CARICATUKE AND COMIC ART. old king could only restrain its extravagance enough to accomplish his desire of dying in his own house. Sincerely religious, he was no bigot; and it was not by his wish that the court assumed more and more the sombre aspect of a Jesuit seminary. It is doubtful if there would have been one exception to the amnesty of political offenses if Louis XVIII. had been as firm as he was kind. The reader sees a proof of his good-nature in the picture on the pre- ceding page of Prince Cambaceres, who was Second Consul when Xapoleon was First Consul, and Arch-chancellor under the Empire, peacefully walking in the streets of Paris with two of his friends. This caricature has a value in preserving an excellent portrait of a personage noted for twenty years in the history of France. To the Order of the Weather-cock succeeded, in 1819, when priestly as- cendency at court was but too manifest, the Family of the Extinguishers. In the picture given below, the reader has the pleasure of viewing some of the family portraits, and in another he sees members of the family at work, re- kindling the fire and extinguishing the lights. The fire was to consume the charter of French liberty and the records of science ; the lights are the men to Family of tue Extinguishers — Carioature op the Restoration. (Paris, 1819.) whom France felt herself indebted for liberty and knowledge — Buffon, Frank- lin, D’Alembert, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Montaigne, Fenelon, Condorcet, and their friends. Above is the personified Church, with sword uplifted, menacing mankind with new St. Bartholomews and Sicilian Vespers. Underneath this elaborate and ingenious work was the refrain of Beranger’s song of 1819, en- titled ‘‘ Les Missionnaires,” which was almost enough of itself to expel the Bourbons : “Vite soufflons, soufflons, morbleu! ilteignons les lumieres Et rallumons le feu.” The historian of that period will not omit to examine the songs which the incomparable Beranger wrote during the reign of the two kings of the Resto- ration. “Le peuple, c’est ma Mi se,” the poet wrote many years after, when FRENCH CARICATURE. 215 reviewing this period. The people were his Muse. He studied the people, he adds, “ with religious care,” and always found their deepest convictions in har- mony with his own. He had been completely fascinated by the “genius of ISTa- poleon,” never suspecting that it was Napoleon’s lamentable VKint of ability which had devolved upon the respectable Louis XVHI. an impossible task. But he perceived that the task loas impossible. There were two impossibili- ties, he thought, in the way of a stable government. It was impossible for the Bourbons, while they remained Bourbons, to govern France, and it was impos- sible for France to make them any thing but Bourbons. Hence, in lending his exquisite gift to the popular cause, he had no scruples and no reserves ; and he freely poured forth those wonderful songs which became immediately part and parcel of the familiar speech of his countrymen. Alas for a Bourbon when there is a Beranger loose in his capital ! Charles X. attempted the Bourbon Tue Jesuits at Court. (Paris, 1819.) “ Quick ! Blow ! blow ! Let us put out the lights and rekindle the fires !” policy of repression, and had the poet twice imprisoned. But he could not imprison his songs, nor prevent his writing new ones in prison, which sung themselves over France in a week. Caricature, too, was severely repressed — the usual precursor of collapse in a French government. The end of the Restoration, in 1830, occurred with a sudden and spontane- ous facility, which showed, among other things, how effectively Beranger had sung from his garret and his prison. The old king in 1824 had his wish of dying in his own bed, and is said to have told his successor, with his dying breath, that he owed this privilege to the policy of tacking ship rather than allowing a contrary wind to drive her upon the rocks. He advised “ Mon- sieur ” to iiursue the same “ tacking policy.” But Monsieur was Comte d’Ar- 216 CAKICATURE AND COMIC ART. tois, that entire and perfect Bonrbon, crested by his sixty-seven years, a will- ing victim in the hands of Jesuit priests. In six years the ship of state was evidently driving full upon the rocks ; but, instead of tacking, he put on all sail, and let her drive. At a moment when France was in the last extremity of alarm for the portion of liberty which her constitution secured her, this un- happy king signed a decree which put the press under the control of the Min- ister of Police, and the rest of the people of France under Marshal Marmont. Twenty-one days after, August 16th, 1830, the king and his suite were received on board of two American vessels, the Charles Carroll and the Great Britain^ by which they were conveyed from Cherbourg to Portsmouth. “This,” said the king to his first English visitors, “is the reward of ray efforts to render France happy. I wished to make one last attempt to restore order and tran- quillity. The factions have overturned me.” Tlie old gentleman resumed his daily mass, and found much consolation for the loss of a crown in the slaughter of beasts and birds. Louis Philippe was King of the French^ by the grace of Lafayette and the acquiescence of a majority of the French people. Caricature, almost interdicted during the last years of the Restoration, pur- sued the fugitive king and his family with avenging ridicule. Gavarni, then an unknown artist of twenty-six, employed by Emile de Girardin to draw the fashion plates of his new periodical, La Mode, gave Paris, in those wild July days of 1830, the only political caricatures he ever published. One represented the king as an old-clothes man, bawling, “ Old coats ! old lace !” In another he appeared astride of a lance, in full flight, in a costume composed of a priest’s black robe and the glittering uniform of a general ; white bands at his neck, the broad red ribbon of the Legion of Honor across his breast, one arm loaded with mitres, relics, and chaplets, with the scissors of the censer on the thumb, on the other side the end of a sabre, and the meagre legs encompassed by a pair of huge jack-boots. Another picture, called the “Lost Balloon,” ex- hibited the king in the car of a balloon, with the same preposterous boots hanging down, along with the Due d’Angouleme clinging to the sides, and the duchess crushing the king by her weight. The royal banner, white, and sown with fleurs-de-lis, streamed out behind as the balloon disappeared in the clouds. These were the only political caricatures ever published by the man whom Frenchmen regard as the greatest of their recent satirical artists. He cared nothing for politics, and had the usual attachment of artists and poets to the Established Order. Having aimed these light shafts at the flying king in mere gayety of heart, because every one else was doing the same, he soon re- membered that the king was an old man, past seventy-three, as old as his own father, and flying in alarm from his home and country. He was conscience- stricken. Reading aloud one day a poem in which allusion was made to a white-haired old man going into exile with slow, reluctant steps, his voice broke, and he could scarcely utter the lines : FRENCH CARICATURE. 217 “Pas d’outrage au vieillard qui s’exile a pas lents. C’est line piete d’epargner les mines. Je n’enfoncerai pas la couronne d’epines Que la main du malheur met snr ses cheveux blancs.” As lie spoke these words the image of his old father rose vividly before his mind, and he could read no more. I felt,” said he, as if I had been struck in the face and ever after he held political caricature in horror. This feeling is one with which the reader will often find himself sympathiz- ing while examining some of the heartless and thoughtless pictures which ex- asperated the elderly piaterfamilias who was now called to preside over demor- alized France. Louis Philippe was another good-natured Louis XVIIL, minus divine right, a large family. With all the domestic virtues, somewhat too anxious to push his children on in the world, a good citizen, a good pa- triot, an unostentatious gentleman, he was totally destitute of those pictur- esque and captivating qualities which adventurers and banditti often possess, but which wise and trustworthy men seldom do. In looking back now upon that eighteen years’ struggle between this respectable father of a family and anarchy, it seems as if France should have rallied more loyally' and more con- siderately round him, and given him too the privilege, so dear to elderly gen- tlemen, of dying in his own bed. One-tenth of his virtue and one-half his in- tellect had sufficed under the old regime. But since that lamentable and fatal day when the priests wrought upon Louis XIV. to decree the expulsion of the Huguenots, who were the elite of his kingdom, France had been undergoing a course of political demoralization, which had made a constitutional government of the country almost impossible. Recent events had exaggerated the criminal class. Twenty years of intoxica- ting victory had made all moderate success, all gradual prosperity, seem tame and flat ; and the reduction of the army had set afloat great numbers of peo- ple indisposed to peaceful industry. Under the Restoration, we may almost say, political conspiracy had become a recognized profession. The new king, pledged to make the freedom of the press ‘‘a reality,” soon found himself face to face with difficulties which Bourbons had invariably met by mere repres- sion. Republicans and Legitimists were equally dissatisfied. Legitimists could only wait and plot; but Republicans could write, speak, and draw. A considerable proportion of the young, irresponsible, and adventurous talent was republican, and there was a great deal of Bohemian character available for that side. It was a time when a Louis Xapoleon could belong to a demo- cratic club. Caricature speedily marked the “citizen king” for her own. Xapoleon had employed all his subtlest tact during the last ten years of his reign in keeping alive in Fi'ench minds the base feudal feeling, so congenial to human indolence and vanity, that it is nobler to be a soldier than to rear a family and keep a shop. In his bulletins we find this false sentiment adroitly insinuated 218 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. in a himdred ways. He loved to stigmatize the English as a nation of shop- keepers. He displayed infinite art in exalting the qualities which render men willing to destroy one another without asking why, and in casting contempt on the arts and virtues by which the waste of war is repaired. The homely habits, the plain dress, the methodical ways, of Louis Philippe were, therefore, easily made to seem ridiculous. He was styled the first bourgeois of his king- dom — as he was — but the French people had been taught to regard the word as a term of contempt. Unfortunately he abandoned the policy of letting the caricaturists alone. Several French rulers have adopted the principle of not regarding satire, but not one has had the courage to adhere to it long. Sooner or later all the world will come into the “American system,” and all the world will at length discover the utter impotence of the keenest ridicule and the most persistent abuse against public men who do right and let their assailants alone. The chief harm done by the abuse of public men in free countries is in making it too difficult to expose their real faults. How would it be possible, for exam- ple, to make the people of the United States believe ill of a President in vili- fying whom ingenious men and powerful journals had exhausted themselves daily for years? Nothing short of testimony^ abundant and indisputable, such as would convince an honest jury, could procure serious attention. From Pres- ident Washington to President Grant the history of American politics is one continuous proof of Mr. Jeffer- son’s remark, that “ an admin- istration which has nothing to conceal has nothing to fear from the press.” When Louis Philippe had been a year upon the throne appeared the first number of Le Charivari^ a daily paper of four small pages, conducted by an unknown, inferior artist — Charles Philipon. Around him gathered a number of Bohemi- an draughtsmen and writers, not one of whom appears then to have shared in the social or political life of the country, or to have had the faintest con- ception of the consideration due to a fellow-citizen in a place of such extreme difficulty as the head of a governtnent. They assailed the king, his person, his policy, his family, his habits, his history, with thoughtless and merciless ridi- cule. A periodical which has undertaken to supply a cloyed, fastidious public Charles Phimpon. FRENCH CARICATURE. 219 with three liundred and sixty-five ludicrous pictures per annum must often be in desperation for subjects, and there was no resource to Philipon so obvious or so sure as the helpless family imprisoned in the splendors and etiquette of royalty. Unfortunately for modern governments, the people of Europe were for so many centuries preyed upon and oppressed by kings that vast numbers of people, even in free countries, still regard the head of a government as a kind of natural enemy, to assail whom is among the rights of a citizen. And, moreover, the king, the president, the minister, is unseen by those who hurl the barbed and poisoned javelin. They do not see him shrink and writhe. To many an anonymous coward it is a potent consideration, also, that the head of a constitutional government can not usually strike back. Mr. Thackeray, who was but nineteen when Louis Philippe came to the throne, witnessed much of the famous contest between this knot of caricatur- ists and the King of the French ; and in one of the first articles which he wrote for subsistence, after his father’s failure, he gave the world some account of it.* At a later period of his life he would probably not have regarded the king as the stronger party. He would probably not have described the con- test as one between “half a dozen poor artists on the one side, and His Majesty Louis Philippe, his august family, and the numberless placemen and support- ers of the monarchy, on the other.” Half a dozen poor artists, with an unscru- pulous publisher at their head, who gives them daily access to the eye and ear of a great capital, can array against the object of their satire and abuse the entire unthinking crowd of that capital. A firm, enlightened, and competent king would have united against these a majority of the responsible and the re- flecting. Such a king would truly have been, as Mr. Thackeray observed, “ an Ajax girded at by a Thersites.” But Louis Philippe was no Ajax. He was no hero at all. He had no splendid and no commanding traits. He was mere- ly an overfond father and well-disposed citizen of average talents. He was merely the kind of man which free communities can ordinarily get to serve them, and who will serve them passably well if the task be not made needlessly ditficult. Hence Philipon and his “ half a dozen poor artists ” were very much the stronger party — a fact which the king, in the sight and hearing of all France, confessed and proclaimed by putting them in prison. It was those prosecutions of Philipon that were fatal to the king. Besides adding emphasis, celebrity, and weight to the sallies of Le Charwari, they pre- saged the abandonment of the central principle of the movement that made him king — the freedom of utterance. The scenes in court when Philipon, or his artist, Daumier, was arraigned, were most damaging to the king’s dignity. One, incorrectly related by Thackeray, may well serve to warn future potent- ates that of all conceivable expedients for the caricaturist’s frustration, the one surest to fail is to summon him to a court of justice. * In the London and Westminster Review for April, 1839, Article II. 220 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. A favorite device of M. Philipon was to draw the king’s face in the form of a huge pear, which it did somewhat resemble. Amateur draughtsmen also chalked the royal pear upon the walls of Paris ; and the exaggerated pears with the king’s features roughly outlined which everywhere met the eye ex- cited the mocking laughter of the idle Parisian. 'No jest could have been so harmless if it had been unnoticed by the person at whom it was aimed, or no- ticed only with a smile. But the Government stooped to the imbecility of ar- raigning the author of the device. The poire actually became an object of prosecution, and the editor of ie Charwari was summoned before a jury on a charge of inciting to contempt against the person of the king by giving his face a ludicrous resemblance to one of the fruits of the earth. Philipon, when he rose to defend himself, exhibited to the jury a series of four sketches, upon which he commented. The first was a portrait of the king devoid of exagger- ation or burlesque. ‘‘This sketch,” said the draughtsman, “resembles Louis Philippe. Do you condemn it?” He then held up the second picture, which was also a very good portrait of the king; but in this one the toupet and the side-whiskers began to “flow together,” as M. Champfleury has it {s'ojiduler)^ and the whole to assume a distant resemblance to the outline of a pear. “If you condemn the first sketch,” said the imperturbable Philipon, ‘‘you must condemn this one which resembles it.” He next showed a picture in which the pear was plainly manifest, though it bore an unmistakable likeness to the king. Finally, he held up to the court a figure of a large Burgundy pear, pure and simple, saying, “If you are consistent, gentlemen, you can not acquit this sketch either, for it certainly resembles the other three.” Mr. Thackeray was mistaken in supposing that this impudent defense car- ried conviction to the minds of the jury. Philipon was condemned and fined. He avenged himself by arranging the court and jury upon a page of Ihe Cha- rwari in the form of a pear.* ITe and his artists played upon this theme hun- dreds of variations, until the Government found matter for a prosecution even in a picture of a monkey stealing a pear. The pear became at last too expen- sive a luxury for the conductor of Le Charivari^ and that fruit was “exiled from the empire of caricature.” Before Louis Philippe had been three years upon the throne there was an end of all but the pretense of maintaining the freedom of press or pencil. “The Pi-ess,” as Mr. Thackeray remarks, “ was sent to prison; and as for poor dear Caiicature, it was fairly murdered.” In Le Charwari for August 30th, 1832, we read that Jean-Baptiste Daumier, for an equally harmless caricature of the king, was arrested in the very presence of his father and mother, of whom he was the sole support, and condemned to six months’ imprisonment. It was Daumier, however, as M. Champfleury reveals, who had “ served up the pear with the greatest variety of sauces.” It was the same Daumier who after “ Ilistoiie de la Caricature Moderne,”p. 100, par Champfleury. FRENCH CARICATURE. 221 his release assailed the advocates and legal system of his country with cease- less burlesque, and made many a covert lunge at the personage who moved them to the fatal absurdity of imprisoning him. Driven by violence from the political field, to which it has been permitted to return only at long intervals and for short periods, French caricature has ranged over the scene of human foibles, and attained a varied development. Daumier and Philipon conjointly produced a series of sketches in Le Chari- vari which had signal and lasting success with the public. The play of “ Rob- ert Macaire,” after running awhile, was suppressed by the Government, the actor of the principal part having used it as a vehicle of political burlesque. Le Charivari seized the idea of satirizing the follies of the day by means of two characters of the drama — Macaire, a cool, adroit, audacious villain, and Bertrand, his comrade, stupid, servile, and timid. Philipon supplying the words and Daumier executing the pictures, they made Macaire undertake every scheme, practice, and profession which contain- ed the requisite ingredients of the com- ic and the rascally. The series extend- ed beyond ninety sketches. Macaire founds a joint-stock charity — la mo- rale en action, he explains to gaping ' ^ Bertrand, each action (share) being placed at two hundred and fifty francs, g He becomes a quack-doctor. ‘‘Don’t trifle with your complaint,” he says to % a patient, as he gives him two bottles of medicine. “ Come to see me often ; it won’t ruin you, for I make no charge for consultations. You owe me twen- ty francs for the two bottles.” The patient appearing to be startled at the magnitude of this sum. Dr. Macaire blandly says, as he bows him out, “We give two cents for returned bottles.” He becomes a private detective. A lady consults him in his office. “ Sir,” she says, “ I have had a thousand-franc note stolen.” “ Precisely, madame. Consider the business done: the thief is a friend of mine.” “But,” says the lady, “can I get my note back, and find out who took it?” “Nothing easier. Give me fifteen hundred francs for my expenses, and to-morrow the thief will return the note and send yon his card.” Every resource being exhausted, Macaire astounds the despairing Bertrand Egbert Macaire fishing for Suare-holders. (Daumier, 1S33.) 222 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. by saying, “ Come, the time for mundane things is past; let iis attend now to eternal interests. Suppose we found a religion?” “A religion!” cries Ber- trand ; “ that is not so easy.” To this Macaire replies by alluding to the re- cent proceedings of a certain Abbe Chatel, in Paris. “ One makes a pontiff of himself, hires a shop, borrows some chairs, preaches sermons upon the death of Napoleon, upon Voltaire, upon the discovery of America, upon any thing, no matter what. There’s a religion for you ; it’s no more difficult than that.” On one occasion Macaire himself is a little troubled in mind, and Bertrand remarks the unusual circumstance. ‘‘You seem anxious,” says Bertrand. “Yes,” replies Macaire, “ I am in bad humor. Those scoundrels of bond-hold- ers have bothered me to such a point that I have actually paid them a divi- dend !” “ What 1” exclaims Bertrand, aghast, “ a hona-Jide dividend ?” “Yes, positively.” “What are you going to do about it?” “I am going to get it back again.” The reader will, of course, infer that each of these pictures was a hit at some scoundrelly exploit of the day, the public knowledge of which gave effect to the caricature. In many instances the event is forgotten, but the picture retains a portion of its interest. One of Macaire’s professions was that of cramming students for their bachelor’s degree. A student enters. “There are two ways in which we can put you through,” says Macaire : “ one, to make you pass your examination by a substitute; the other, to enable you to pass it yourself.” “I prefer to pass it myself,” says the young man. “Very well. Do you know Greek?” “No.” “Latin?” “No.” “All right. You know mathematics?” “Not the least in the world.” “What do you know, then?” “Nothing at all.” “But you have two hundred francs?” “Certainly.” “Just the thing! You will get your degree next Thursday.” We may find comfort in this series, for we learn fi'oni it that in every infamy which we now deplore among ourselves we were anticipated by the French forty years ago. Macaire even goes into the mining business, at least so far as to sell shares. “We have made our million,” says the melancholy Bertrand; “but we have engaged to produce gold, and we find nothing but sand.” “No matter; utilize your capital; haven’t you got a gold mine?” “/Yes — but afterward?” “Aft- erward you will simply say to the share-holders, ‘I was mistaken; we must try again.’ You will then form a company for the utilization of the sand.” Ber- trand, still anxious, ventures to remark that there are such people as policemen in the country. “Policemen!” cries Macaire, gayly. “So much the better: they will take shares.” One of his circular letters was a masterpiece : “Sir, — I regret to say that yonr application for shares in the Consolidated European Incom- bustible Blacking Association can not be complied with, as all the shares of the C. E. I. B. A. were disposed of on the day they Avere issued. I have nevertheless registered your name, and in case a second series should be put forth I shall have the honor of immediately giving you notice. “I am, sir, etc. Robert Macaire, Director.” “Print three hundred thousand of these,” says the director, “ and poison FRENCH CARICATURE. 223 all France with them.” “ But,” says Bertrand, ‘‘ we haven’t sold a single share ; you haven’t a sou in your pocket, and — ” “ Bertrand, you are an ass. Do as I tell you.” Thus, week after week, for many a month, did Le Charivari ‘‘utilize” these impossible characters to expose and satirize the plausible scoundrelism of the period. Mr. Thackeray, who ought to be an excellent authority on any point of satirical art, praises highly the execution of these pictures by M. Dau- mier. They seem carelessly done, he remarks ; but it is the ^ careless grace of the consum- mate artist. He recommends the illustrator of “ Pickwick ” to study Daumier. When we remember that Thackeray had offered to illustrate “ Pick- wick,” his comments upon the artist Avho was preferred to himself have a certain inter- est : “ If we might venture to give a word of advice to anoth- er humorous designer [Hablot K. Browne], whose works are extensively circulated, the il- lustrator of ‘Pickwick’ and ‘ Nicholas Nickleby,’ it would be to study well those cari- catures of M. Daumier, who, though he executes very care- lessly, knows very well what he would express, indicates per- fectly the attitude and identity of the figure, and is quite aware beforehand of the effect he in- tends to produce. The one we sliould fancy to be a practiced artist taking his ease, the other a young one somewhat bewildered — a very clever one, however, who, if he would think more and exaggerate less, would add not a little to his reputation.” Possessors of the early editions of “ Pick- wick” will be tempted to think that in this criticism of Mr. Browne’s perform- ances by a disappointed rival there was an ingredient of wounded self-love. The young author, however, in another passage, gave presage of the coming Thackeray. He observes that in France ladies in difficulties who write beg- ging letters, or live by other forms of polite beggary, are wont to style them- A Husband’s Dilemma. “Yes; but if you quarrel like that with all your wife’s lovers, you will never have any friends.” — From Paris Nonsensicalities {Baliverneries Parisie7ines), hy Gavarni, 224 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. selves “ widows of the Grand Army.” They all pretended to some connection with le Grand Homme^ and all their husbands were colonels. “ This title,” says the wicked Thackeray, “ answers exactly to the clergyman’s daughter in England;” and he adds, “The difference is curious as indicating the standard of respectability.” Many caricaturists who afterward attained celebrity were early contributors to M. Philipon’s much-prosecuted periodical. Among them was “the elegant Gavarni,” who for thirty years was the favorite comic artist of Paris roues and dandies — himself a roue and dandy. At this period, according to his friend, The- ophile Gautier, he was a very handsome young man, with luxuriant blonde curls, always fashionably attired, somewhat in the English taste, neat, quiet, and pre- cise, and “ possessing in a high degree the feeling for modern elegances.” He was of a slender form, which seemed laced in, and he had the air of being carefully dressed and thoroughly appoint- ed, his feet being effeminately small and daintily clad. In short, he was a dandy of the D’Orsay and N. P. Willis period. For many years he expended the chief force of his truly exquisite talent in in- vesting vice with a charm which in real life it never possesses. Loose women, who are, as a class, very stupid, very vul- gar, most greedy of gain and pleasure, and totally devoid of every kind of in- teresting quality, he endowed with a Housekeeping. . x* u “Gracious, Dorothy, I have forgotten the meat grace and Wit, a lertlllty ot I’eSOUrce, an ^ ^ ... ^ ^ii’Y elegance of demeanor, never found “Have you, indeed? But you didn’t forget the . . biscuitfor your bird, egotist! No matter! No mat- except ill honorable WOmeil reared ill ter! If there is nothing in the house for my cat, I , ^ ^ i tt shall give her your bird, I shall!” — From Impres- honorable honies. He Was the great sions de Menage, hy Gay m-m. master of that deadly school of French satiric art which finds all virtuous life clumsy or ridiculous, and all abominable life graceful and pleasing. Albums of this kind are extant in which married men are inrariahly repre- sented as objects of contemptuous pity, and no man is graceful or interesting except the sneaking scoundrel who has designs upon the integrity of a house- hold. Open the “ Musee pour Rire,” for example. Here is a little family of husband, wife, and year-old child in bed, just awake in the morning, the wife FRENCH CARICATURE. 225 caressing the child, and the husband looking on with admiring fondness. This scene is rendered ridiculous by the simple expedient of making the wife and child hideously ugly, and the fond father half an idiot. Another picture shows the same child, with a head consisting chiefly of mouth, yelling in the middle of the night, while the parents look on, imbecile and helpless. Turn to tlie sketches of the masked ball or the midnight carouse, and all is elegant, becom- ing, and delightful. If the French caricatures of the last thirty years do really represent French social life and French moral feeling, we may safely predict that in another generation France will be a German province ; for men capable of maintaining the independence of a nation can not be produced on the Ga- varnian principles. Marriage and civilization we might almost call synonymous terms. Mar- riage was at least the greatest conquest made by primitive man over himself, and the indispensable preliminary to a higher civilization. Nor has any mode yet been discovered of rearing full-formed and efficient men capable of self-con- trol, patriotism, and high principle, except the union of both parents striving for that end with cordial resolution longer than an average life-time. It is upon this most sacred of all institutions that the French caricaturists of the Gavarni school pour ceaseless scorn and contempt. As I write these lines, my eyes fall upon one of the last numbers of a comic sheet published in Paris, on the flrst page of which there is a picture which illustrates this propensity. A dissolute-looking woman, smoking a cigarette, is conversing with a boy in but- tons who has applied for a place in her household. “How old are you?” she asks. “Eleven, madame.” “And your name?” “Joseph!” Upon this in- nocent reply the woman makes a comment which is truly comic, but very Ga- varnian : “ So young, and already he calls himself Joseph 1” Among the heaps of albums to be found in a French collection we turn with particular curiosity to those which satirize the child life of France. Ga- varni’s celebrated series of “ Enfants Terribles ” has gone round the world, and called forth child satire in many lands. The presence of children in his pict- ures does not long divert this artist from his ruling theme. One of his ter- rible children, a boy of four, prattles innocently to his mother in this strain: “Nurse is going to get up very early, now that you have come home, mamma. Goodness 1 while you were in the country she always had her breakfast in bed, and it was papa who took in the milk and lighted the fire. But wasn’t the coffee jolly sweet, though !” Another alarming boy of the same age, who is climbing up his father’s chair and wearing his father’s hat, all so merry and innocent, discourses thus to the petrified author of his being: “Who is Mr. Albert? Oh, he is a gentleman belonging to the Jardin des Plantes, who comes every day to explain the animals to mamma; a , large man with mus- taches, whom you don’t know. He didn’t come to-day until after they had shut up the monkeys. You ought to have seen how nicely mamma entertained him. Oh dear !” (discovering a bald place on papa’s pate) “ you have hardly 15 226 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. finy hair upon the top of your head, papa !” In a third picture both parents are exhibited seated side by side upon a sofa, and the terrible boy addresses Ids mother thus: Mamma, isn’t that little mustache comb which Cornelia found in your bedroom this morning for me?” Another sketch shows us fa- ther, mother, and terrible boy taking a walk in the streets of Paris. A dandy, in the likeness of Gavarni himself, goes by, with his cane in his mouth, and his face fixed so as to seem not to see them. But the boy sees him^ and bawls to his mother : Mamma ! mamma ! that Monsieur du Luxembourg ! — you know him — the one you said was such a great friend to papa — he has gone by witli- A POTTLTK3E FOR T WO— SYMPATHY ANH ECONOMY. — Fioui Impressio7is dc Menage, by Gavarni. out saluting ! I su[)j>ose the reason is, he don’t know how to behave.” An- other picture presents to view a little girl seated on a garden bench eating nuts, and talking to a young man: “The rose which you gave to mamma?” “Yes, yes.” “The one you nearly broke your neck in getting? Let me see. Oh, my cousin Nat stuck it in the tail of Matthew’s donkey. How mamma did laugh ! Got any more nuts?” The same appalling girl imparts a family secret to her tutor: “Mamma wrote to M. Prosper, and j^apa read the letter. Oh, wasn’t papa angry, thougli ! And all because she had spelled a word wrong.” A mother hearing a little girl say the catechism is a subject which FRENCH CARICATURE. 227 one would suppose was not available for the purposes of a Gavarni, but he finds even that suggestive. “ Come, now, pay attention. What must we do when we have sinned [/^ecAe] ?” To which the terrible child replies, playing unconsciously upon the word phhe (sinned), which does not differ in sound iv om peche (fished), “When we have pechef Wait a moment. Oh ! we go back to the White House with all the fish in the basket, which my nurse eats with Landerneau. He is a big soldier who has white marks upon his sleeve. iVnd I eat my share, let me tell you !” It is thus that the first caricaturist of France “utilized” the innocence of childhood when Louis Philippe was King of the French. There is a later series by Randon, entitled “ Messieurs nos Fils et Mesde- moiselles nos Filles,” which exhibits other varieties of French childhood, some of which are inconceivable to persons not of the “ Latin race.” It has been said that in America there are no longer any children ; but nowhere among us are there young human beings who could suggest even the bur- lesque of precocity such as M. Randon presents to us. We have no boys of ten who go privately to the hero of a billiard “ tournament” and request him with the politest gravity, cap in hand, to “ put him up to some points of the game for his exclusive use.” We have no boys of eight who stand with folded arms before a sobbing girl of sev- en and address her in words like these : “ Be reasonable, then, Amelia. The devil ! People can’t be always lov- ing one another.” We have no errand-boys of eight who offer their services to a young gentleman thus : “ For delivering a note on the sly, or getting a bouquet into the right hands, monsieur can trust to me. I am used to little affairs of that kind, and I am as silent as the tomb.” We have no little boys in belt and apron who say to a bearded veteran of half a dozen wars: “You Parisian “ Shoo, Fly !” “Captain, I am here to ask your permission to fight a duel.” “ What for, and with whom ?” “With Saladin, the trumpeter, who has so far forgotten himself as to call me a moucheron" (little fiy). — From Messieurs nos Fils et Mesdemoiselles nos Filles, by Randon, Paris. 228 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. don’t know your happiness. For ray part, give rae a beard as long as yours, and not a woman in the world should resist me !” We have no little boys who in the midst of a fio:ht with fists, one having a black eye and the other a bloody nose, would pause to say : ‘‘At least we don’t fight for money, like the English. It is for glory that we fight.” We have no little boys who, on starting for a ride, wave aside the admonitions of the groom by telling him that they know all about managing a horse, and what they want of him is simply to tell them where in the I^ois they will be likely to meet most “Am- azons.” No, nor in all the length and breadth of English-speaking lands can there be found a small boy who, on being lectured by his father, would place one hand upon his heart, and lift the other on high, and say, “ Papa, by all that I hold dearest, by my honor, by your ashes, by any thing you like, I swear to change my conduct !” All these things are so i-emote from our habits that the wildest artist could not conceive of them as passable caricature. The opprobrious words in use among French boys would not strike the boys of New York or London as being very exasperating. M. Randon gives us an imaginary conversation between a very small trumpeter in gorgeous uniform and a gamin of the street. Literally translated, it would read thus : “ Look out, little fiy, or you will get yourself crushed.” To which the street boy replies, “ Descend, then, species of toad : I will make you see what a little fly is!” On the other hand, if we may believe M. Randon, French boys of a very tender age consider themselves subject to the code of honor, and hold themselves in readiness to accept a challenge to mortal combat. A soldier of ten years appears in one of this series with his arm in a sling, and he ex- plains the circumstance to his military comrade of the same age: “It’s all a sham, my dear. I’ll tell you the reason in strict confidence : it is to make a certain ])erson of my acquaintance believe that I have fought for her.” The boys of France, it is evident, are nothing if not military. Most of the young veterans biases exhibited in these albums are in uniform. An interesting relic of those years when Frenchmen still enjoyed some sem- Tukee ! (From “Arithmetic Illustrated,” by Cham.) FRENCH CARICATURE. 229 blance of liberty to discuss subjects of national and European concern is Ga- varni’s series of masterly sketches burlesquing the very idea of private citizens taking an interest in public affairs. This is accomplished by the device of giving to all the men who are talking politics countenances of comic stupidity. An idiot in a blouse says to an idiot in a coat, ‘‘Poland, don’t you see, will never forgive your ingratitude !” An idiot in a night-cap says to an idiot bare-headed, with ludicrous intensity, “And when you have taken Lombardy, then what?” Nothing can exceed the skill of the draughtsman of this series, except the perversity of^the man, to whom no human activity seemed becom- ing unless its object was the lowest form of sensual pleasure. But the talent which he displayed in this album was immense. It was, if I may say so, frightful ; for there is nothing in our modern life so alarming as the power which reckless and dissolute talent has to make virtuous life seem provincial and ridiculous, vicious life graceful and metropolitan. 230 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. CHAPTER XIX. LATER FRENCH CARICATURE. D URIXG the twenty years of Louis Xapoleon, political caricature being extinguished, France was inundated with diluted Gavarni. Any wretch who drew or wrote for the penny almanacs, sweltering in his Mansard on a franc a day, could produce a certain ef- fect by representing the elegant life of his country, of which he knew nothing, to be corrupt and sensual. Pick up one of these precious works blindfold, open it at random, and you will be almost certain to light upon some penny-a-line calumny of French existence, with a suitable picture annexed. I have just done so. The “ Almanach Comique ” foi- ls 69, its twenty -eighth year, lies open before me at the page devoted to the month of August. My eye falls upon a picture of a loosely dressed woman gaz- ing fondly upon a large full purse sus- pended upon the end of a walking-stick, and underneath are the words, ^^Elle ne tarde pas d se reapprwoiser^'' She does not delay to retame herself, the verb being the one applied to wild beasts. There is even a subtle deviltry in the syl- lable re, implying that she has rebelled against her destiny, but is easily enough brought to terms by a bribe. The read- ing matter for the month consists of the following brief essay, entitled ‘^August — the Virgin How to go for a month to the sea-shore during the worst of the dog-days. Hii-e a chalet at Cabourg for madame, and a cottage on the beach of Trouville for mademoiselle. The Two Attitudes. “ With your air of romantic melancholy, you could succeed with some women. For my part, I make my conquests with drums beating and matches lighted.’’ — From Messieurs nos Fils et Mesdemoiselles nos Filles, by Randon, Paris. LATER FRENCH CARICATURE. 231 transit between those two places is accomplished per omnibus in an hour. That is very convenient. Breakfast with Mademoiselle ; dine with Madame. This double existence is very expensive, but as it is the most common^ we are compelled to examine it in order to establish a basis for the expenditures of the twelve months.” Is it not obvious that this was “ evolved ?” Does it not smell of a garlicky Mansard ? And have not all modern communities a com- mon interest in discrediting anonymous calumny? It were as unjust, doubt- less, to judge the frugal people of France by the comic annuals as the good- natured people of England by the Saturday Review. It is evident, too, that the French have a totally different conception from The Den of Lions at the Opera. (From hes Differents Publics de Paris, by Gustave Dure.) ourselves of what is fit and unfit to be uttered. They ridicule our squeamish- ness; we stand amazed at their indelicacy. Voltaire, who could read his “Pu- celle” to the Queen of Prussia, her young daughter being also present and seen to be listening, was astounded in London at the monstrous indecency of “Othello;” and English people of the same generation were aghast at the license of the Parisian stage. M. Marcelin, a popular French caricaturist of to-day, dedicates an album containing thirty pictures of what he styles Un certain Monde to his mother! We must not judge the productions of such a people by standards drawn from other than “ Latin ” sources. Among the comic artists who began their career in Louis Philippe’s time. 232 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. under the inspiration of Philipon and Daumier, was a son of the Comte de Noe, or, as we might express it. Count Noah, a peer of France when tliere were peers of France. Amedee de Noe, catching the spirit of caricature while he was still a boy (he was but thirteen when Xe Charivavi was started), soon made his pseudonym, Cham, familiar to Pai-is. Cham being French for Shem, it was a happy way of designating a son of Count Noah. From that time to the present hour Cham has continued to amuse his countrymen, pouring forth torrents of sketches, which usually have the merit of being harmless, and are generally good enough to call up a smile upon a face not too stiffly wrinkled with the cares of life. He is almost as prolific of comic ideas as George Cruik-- shank, but his pictures are now too rudely executed to serve any but the most momentary purpose. When a comic album containing sixty-one pictures by Cham is sold in Paris for about twelve cents of our currency, the artist can not bestow much time or pains upon his work. The comic almanac quoted above, containing one hundred and eighty-three pages and seventy pictures, costs the retail purchaser ten cents. Gustave Dore, now so renowned, came from Strasburg to Paris in 1845, a boy of thirteen, and made his first essays in art, three years after, as a carica- turist in the Journal pour Rire. But while he scratched trash for his dinner, he reserved his better hours for the serious pursuit of art, which, in just ten years, delivered him from a vocation in which he could never have taken pleas- ure. His great subsequent celebrity has caused the publication of several vol- umes of his comic work. It abounds in striking ideas, but the pictures were executed with headlong haste, to gratify a transient public feeling, and keep the artist’s pot boiling. His series exhibiting the Different Publics of Paris is full of pregnant suggestions, and there are happy thoughts even in his “His- toire de la Sainte Russie,” a series published during the Crimean war, though most of the work is crude and hasty beyond belief. In looking over the volumes of recent French caricature, we discover that a considerable number of English words have become domesticated in France. France having given us the words of the theatre and the restaurant, has adopt- ed in return several English words relating to out-of-door exercises: Turf, ring, steeple-chase, box (in a stable), jockey, jockey-club, betting, betting-book, handicap, race, racer, four-in-hand, mail-coach, sport, tilbury, dog-cart, tandem, pickpocket, and revolver. Rosbif, bifstek, and “choppe” have long been fa- miliar. “Milord” is no longer exclusively used to designate a sumptuous En- glishman, but is applied to any one who expends money ostentatiously. Gen- tleman, dandy, dandyism, flirt, flirtation, puff, cockney, and cocktail are words that would be recognized by most Parisians. A French writer quotes the phi-ase “hero of two-hemispheres,” appli(*d to Lafayette, as a specimen of the ^^puff'’'" superlative. “Othello” has become synonymous with “jealous man;” and the sentence, “ That is the question,” from “ Hamlet,” seems to have ac- quired currency in France. Cab, abbreviated a centui-y ago from the French LATER FRENCH CARICATURE. 233 (cabriolet), has been brought back to Paris, like the head of a fugitive decapi- tated in exile. The recent events in France, beginning with the outbreak of the war with Prussia, have elicited countless caricatures and series of caricatures. The downfall of the ‘‘Empire,” as it was called, gave the caricaturists an opportu- nity of vengeance which they improved. A citizen of FTew York possesses a collection of one tliousand satirical pictures publish- ed in Paris during the war and under the Com- mune. A people who sub- mit to a despised usurper are not likely to be mod- erate or decent in the ex- pression of their contempt when, at length, the tyrant is no longer to be feared. It was but natural that the French court should insult the remains of Lou- is XIV., to whom living it had paid honors all but divine; for it is only strength and valor that know how to be either magnanimous or dignified in the moment of deliver- ance. Many of the people of Paris, when they heard of the ridiculous termi- nation near Sedan of the odious fiction called the Empire, behaved like boys just rid of a school-mas- ter whom they have long detested and obeyed. Of course they seized the chalk and covered all the blackboards with monstrous pictures of the tyrant. The flight of his wife soon after called forth many scandalous sketches similar to those which dis- graced Paris when Marie Antoinette was in prison awaiting the execution of her husband and her own trial. Many of these burlesques, however, were fair and legitimate. The specimen given on the next page, entitled “ Partant pour la Syrie,” which appeared soon after the departure of Eugenie and her ad- visers, was a genuine hit. It was exhibited in every window, and sold wher- 234 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. ever in France the victorious Germans were not. A member of the American legation, amidst the rushing tide of exciting events and topics, chanced to save a copy, from which it is liere reduced. Among the “ albums ” of siege sketches, we come upon one executed by the veterans Cham and Daumier, the same Henri Daumier whom Louis Philippe imprisoned, and Thackeray praised, forty years ago. In this collection we see Parisian ladies, in view of the expected bombardment, bundled up in huge bags of cotton, leading lap-dogs protected in the same manner. An ugly Prussian touches off a bomb aimed at the children in the Jardin du Luxembourg. King William decorates crutches and wooden legs as ‘‘New-year’s presents for his people.” An apothecary sells a plaster “ warranted to prevent wounds, pro- vided the wearer never leaves his house.” A workman goes to church for the first time in his life, and gives as a reason for so un workman-like a proceeding that “ a man don’t have to stand in line for the blessed bread.” A volunteer LATER FRENCH CARICATURE. 235 goes on a sortie with a pillow under his waistcoat “ to show the enemy that we have plenty of provisions.” All these are by the festive Cham. Daumier does not jest. He seems to have felt that Louis Napoleon, like a child-murderer, was a person far beneath caricature — a creature only fit to be destroyed and hurried out of sight and thought forever. Amidst the dreary horrors of the siege, Henri Daumier could only think of its mean and guilty cause. One of his few pictures in this collection is a row of four vaults, the first bearing the inscription, “ Died on the Boulevard Montmartre, December 2d, 1851;” the second, Died at Cayenne;” the third, “Died at Lambessa;” the fourth, “Died at Sedan, 1870.” But even then Daumier, true to the voca- tion of a patriotic artist, dared to remind his countrymen that it was they who had reigned in the guise of the usurper. A wild female figure standing on a field of battle points with one hand to the dead, and with the other to a vase filled with ballots, on which is printed the word Oui. She cries, These hilled those P’’ During the Commune the walls of Paris were again covered with drawings and lithographs of the character which Frenchmen produce after long periods of repression : Louis Napoleon crucified between the two thieves, Bismarck and King William ; Thiers in the pillory covered and surrounded with oppro- brious inscriptions; Thiers, Favre, and M‘Mahon placidly looking down from a luxurious upper room upon a slain mother and child ghastly with blood and wounds; landlords, lean and hungry, begging for bread, while fat and rosy la- borers bask idly in the .sun; little boy Paris smashing his playthings (Trochu, Gambetta, and Rochefort) and crying for the moon ; “ Paris eating a general a day ;” Queen Victoria in consternation trying to stamp out the horrid centi- pede, Internationcd^ while “Monsieur John Boule, Esquire,” stands near with the habeas-corpus act in his hand; naked France pressing Rochefort to her bosom ; and hundreds more, describable and indescribable. It remains to give a specimen of recent French caricature of another kind. Once more, after so many proofs of its impolicy, tlie Government of France attempts to suppress such political caricature as is not agreeable to it, while freely permitting the publication of pictures flagrantly indecent. At no for- mer period, not even in Voltaire’s time, could the French press have been more carefully hedged about with laws tending to destroy its power to do good, and increase its power to do harm. The Government treats the press very much after the manner of those astute parents who forbid their children to see a comedy of Robertson or a play of Shakspeare, but make it up to them by giving them tickets to the variety show. A writer familiar with the sub- ject gives us some astounding details: “There exist at present,” he remarks, “sixty-eight laws in France, all in- tended to suppress, curtail, weaken, emasculate, and even to strangle newspa- pers ; but not one single law to foster them in their dire misfortune. If any private French gentleman wishes to establish a newspaper, he must first write 236 CARICATURE AND COMIC ART. to the Prefet de Police, on paper of a certain size and duly stamped, and give this functionary notice that he intends to establish a newspaper. His signature has, of course, to be countersigned by the Maire. But if the paper our friend wishes to establish is purely literary, lie has first to make his declaration to the police, who rake up every information that is possible about the unfortu- nate projector. After that, the Ministere de I’lnterieur institutes another searching inquiry, and these two take seven or eight months at least. When the enquete and the contre-enquUe are ended, the avis favorable of the whole Ministry is necessary before the paper can be published. Another six months to wait yet; but this is not all. Our would-be newspaper proprietor or editor possesses now the right of publishing his paper; but he has not yet the right to sell it. In order to ob- tain this, he must begin anew all his declarations and attempts, so that his purely literary paper may be sold at all the ordinary book -sellers’ shops. But if he wishes it to be sold in the streets — or, in other words, in the kiosques — he must address himself to another office ad hoc, and then the Commissaire de Police sends the answer of the Prefet de Police to the unfortunate proprietor, editor, or publisher, who by this time must be nearly at his wits’ end. But even this is not all. If the unhappy projector proposes to illustrate his paper, his labors are still far from ending. “He must,” continues the writer, “ obtain, of course, the per- mission of’ the Ministere de I’lnterieur for Paris, or of the prefects for the provinces. The Ministere asks for the opinion of the Governor of Paris, who asks, in his turn, for the opinion of the Bureau de Censure, a body of gentle- men working in the dark, and which, to the eye of the obtuse foreigner, ap- pears only established to prevent any political insinuations to be made, but to allow the filthiest drawings to be publicly exposed for sale, and the most in- decent innuendoes to be uttered on the stage or in novels. The Censure de- mands, under the penalty of seizing, forbidding, and bringing before the court, tliat every sketch or outline shall be submitted to it. When this is done, and the Censure finds nothing to criticise in it, it requires further that the draw- LATER FRENCH CARICATURE. 23V ing, when finished, be anew laid before it, and, if the drawing be colored, it must be afresh inspected after the dan- gerous paints have been smirched on. When our happy editor wishes to pub- lish the caricature or the portrait of any one, he can not do so unless he has the permission of the gentleman or lady whose likeness he wishes to pro- duce.” Such was the measure of freedom enjoyed in the French republic gov- erned by soldiers. But this elaborate system of repression can be both evaded and turned to account by the caricaturist. During the last two or three years, a writer who calls himself Touch atout has been amusing Paris by a series of satirical biographies, each preceded by a burlesque portrait. But occasionally the Censure refuses its consent to the insertion of the portrait. The son of Louis Kapoleon was one individual whom the Censure thus endeavored to protect. Observe the result. Instead of exhibiting to the people of Paris a harmless picture representing the head of the unfortunate young man mounted upon a pair of diminutive legs, Touchatout prints at the head of his biographical sketch the damaging burlesque subjoined : EEPUBLIQUE FKANOAISE. LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY, AND CENSURE. THE PUBLICATION OF THE PORTRAIT OF Velocipede IV. HAS BEEN FORBIDDEN BY THE CENSURE. IT CAN BE FOUND AT ALL THE PHOTOGRAPHERS’. I translate the burlesque biography that follows the .above. Tt may serve 238 CAEICATURE AND COMIC ART. also as a specimen of the new literary commodity of which the Parisians seem so fond, and for which a name has been invented — blague — which means amus- ingly malign gossip. “Velocipede IV. (N’apoleon -Eugene- Louis - Jean - Joseph, Prince Impe- rial, more commonly known by the name of :) born at Paris, March 16th, 1856. He is the son of Napoleon III. and of the Empress, Eugenie de Monti jo. “ Here a parenthesis. The Trombinoscope has often been accused of bru- tality. When we traced the profile of the ex-empress, the cry was that we had no consideration even for women. We replied that, in our eyes, sovereigns were no more women than were the she petroleum-throwers. To-day there will not be wanting people to say that we do not spare children ; and we shall reply, as we have often said before, that sons are not responsible for the crimes of their fathers until the day when they set up a claim to profit by them. If, during the two years that the Trombinoscope has plied his voca- tion, we have not aimed a shot at the young hero of Sarrebruck, it is precise- ly because childhood inspires respect in us. If this youth, when consulted upon his calling, had replied, ‘My desire is to be an architect or a shoe- maker,’ we should have had nothing to say. But mark: scarcely has he ceased to be a child when, on being questioned as to his choice of a trade, he answers, ‘I wish to be emperor.’ Oh, indeed ! The son of Napoleon HI. has entered upon his career; he is a child no more; and the Trombinoscope re- enters into all his rights. “We said, then, that Eugene -Napoleon was born March 16th, 1856. The doctor who received him perceived that he had upon la f esse clroite a mass of odd little red marks. Upon examining closely this phenomenon, he perceived that these marks were a representation of the bombardment of the house Sallanvrouze in December, 1851, upon the Boulevard Montmartre. All was there: the intrepid artillery of Canrobert, smashing the shop -windows and pulverizing a newspaper stand ; the nurses disemboweled upon the seats ; the bootblack on the corner having his customer’s leg carried away from between his hands, etc., etc. “The empress during her pregnancy had read Victor Hugo’s ‘Napoleon the Little,’ and had been much struck with the chapter in which the coup