CHAPTER XXIV.

COMIC ART IN "PUNCH."

One happy consequence of the new taste was the publication of _Punch_, which has been ever since the chief vehicle of caricature in England. As long as caricature was a thing of the shop-windows only, its power was restricted within narrow limits. Since the founding of _Punch_, in 1841, about two years after the conclusion of the "Pickwick Papers," caricature has become an element in periodical literature, from which it will perhaps never again be separated. And it is the pictures in this celebrated paper which have prolonged its life to this day. It owes its success chiefly to artists. There was and is an error in the scheme of the work which would have been speedily fatal to it but for the ever-welcome pictures of Richard Doyle, John Leech, John Tenniel, Du Maurier, and their companions.

One of the rarest products of the human mind is a joke so good that it remains good when the occasion that gave rise to it is past. Probably the entire weekly harvest of wit and humor gathered from the whole earth would not fill a number of _Punch_ with "good things;" and if it did, no one could enjoy so many all at once, and the surfeit would sicken and disgust. The mere sitting-down for the purpose of being funny in a certain number of lines or pages is death to the comic powers; and hence it is that a periodical to which nearly the whole humorous talent of England has contributed is sometimes dull in its reading, and we wonder if there can be in any quarter of the globe a person so bereft of the means of entertainment as to get quite through one number. Once or twice a year, however, _Punch_ originates a joke which goes round the world, and remains part of the common stock of that countless host who are indebted to their memory for their jests.

But the pictures are almost always amusing, and often delightful. The artists have the whole scene of human life, public and private, to draw from, and they are able by their pencils to vividly reproduce the occasions that gave birth to their jokes.

In looking over the long series of political caricatures by Leech and Tenniel, which now go back thirty-three years, we are struck, first of all, by the simplicity of the means which they usually employ for giving a comic aspect to the political situation. They reduce cabinet ministers and other dignitaries many degrees in the social scale, exhibiting them as footmen, as boys, as policemen, as nurses, as circus performers, so that a certain comic effect is produced, even if the joke should go no further. Of late years Mr. Tenniel has often reversed this device with fine effect by raising mundane personages to celestial rank, and investing them with a something more than a travesty of grandeur. It is remarkable how unfailing these simple devices are to amuse. Whether Mr. Leech presents us with Earl Russell as a small foot-boy covered with buttons, or Mr. Tenniel endows Queen Victoria with the majestic mien of Minerva, the public is well pleased, and desires nothing additional but a few apt words explanatory of the situation. But, simple as these devices may be, it is only a rarely gifted artist that can use them with effect. Between the sublime and the ridiculous there is a whole step; but in comic art there is but a hair's-breadth between the happy and the flat.

Lord Brougham was supposed to be courting the conservatives when Leech began to caricature. The superserviceable zeal of the ex-chancellor was hit very happily in a circus scene, in which the Duke of Wellington figures as the ring-master, Brougham as the clown, and Sir Robert Peel as the rider. The clown says to the ring-master, "Now, Mr. Wellington, is there any thing I can run for to fetch--for to come--for to go--for to carry--for to bring--for to take?" etc. In another picture the same uneasy spirit, restive under his titled and pensioned nothingness, appears as "Henry asking for _more_." Again we have him dancing with the Wool-sack, which is explained by the words, "The Polka, a new Dance, introducing the old Double Shuffle." And again we see him in a tap-room, smoking a pipe, with a pot of beer on the table, looking on with complacency while Mr. Roebuck bullies an Irish member. Brougham says, "Go it, my little Roebuck! Bless his little heart! _I_ taught him to bounce like that."

Russell, Peel, Wellington, O'Connell, and Louis Philippe were other personages whom Mr. Punch often caricatured at that period of his existence, and he generally presented them in a manner that still coincides with public feeling in England, and was probably not disagreeable to the men themselves at the time. One of Leech's hits was a picture designed to ridicule certain utterances of the Prince de Joinville concerning the possible invasion of England in 1845, when some irritating conduct of the French ministry had been met by Wellington with good temper and firmness. The prince, as a boy, is "squaring off," with a great show of fight, at the duke, who stands with his hands in his pockets, not defiant, but serene and watchful. This picture is perfectly in the English taste. Leech liked to show great Britannia as infinitely able to fight, and not so very unwilling, but firmly resolved not to do so unless compelled by honor or necessity.

In these sixty-nine volumes of _Punch_ there is much of the history of our time which words alone could not have preserved. We can trace in them the progress of ideas, of measures, and of men. The changes in public feeling are exhibited which enabled Cobden and Peel to strike from British industry the gilt fetters of protection, for _Punch_ is only another name for Public Opinion. These pictures have a particular interest for us, since we are to travel the same road in due time, and thus, at length, give Great Britain a rival in the markets of the world. Nothing could be better than Mr. Leech's picture showing Sir Robert Peel as the "Deaf Postilion." In a debate on the Corn Laws he had said, "I shall still pursue steadily that course which my conscience tells me I should take; let you and those opposite pursue what course you think right." The picture shows us a post-chaise, the body of which has become detached from the fore-wheels--a mishap which the deaf postilion does not discover, but goes trotting along as though his horses were still drawing the load. The chaise, named Protection, is occupied by Tory lords, who shout in vain to the deaf postilion. Again, we have Disraeli as a viper biting the file, Sir Robert. Leech continued his effective support of the movement until the victory was won, when he designed a monument to the victor, consisting of a pyramid of large cheap loaves of bread crowned by the name of Peel.

The Puseyite imbecility was as effectively satirized by Leech in 1849 as the ritualistic imitation has recently been by Tenniel. American slavery came in for just rebuke. As a retort to "some bunkum" in the American press in 1848, Mr. Leech drew a picture of Liberty lashing a negro, while Jonathan, with rifle on his arm, cigar in his mouth, and bottle at his side, says, "Oh, ain't we a deal better than other folks! I guess we're a most a splendid example to them thunderin' old monarchies." The language is wrong, of course; no American ever said "a deal better." English attempts at American slang are always incorrect. But the satire was deserved. Leech was far from sparing his own country. Some readers must remember the pair of pictures by Leech, in 1849, entitled "Pin-money" and "Needle-money," one exhibiting a young lady's boudoir filled with luxurious and costly objects, and the other a poor needle-woman in her garret of desolation, sewing by the light of a solitary candle upon a shirt for which she is to receive three half-pence. In a similar spirit was conceived a picture presenting two objects often seen in agricultural fairs in England--a "Prize Peasant" and a "Prize Pig:" the first rewarded for sixty years of virtuous toil by a prize of two guineas, the owner of the fat pig being recompensed by an award of three guineas.

Toward Louis Napoleon _Punch_ gradually relented. At first Mr. Leech gave just and strong expression to the world's contempt for that unparalleled charlatan; but as he became powerful, and seemed to be useful to Great Britain, _Punch_ treated him with an approach to respect. A similar change toward Mr. Disraeli is observable. Seldom during the first fifteen years of his public life was he presented in a favorable light. Upon his retirement from office in 1853, Leech satirized his malevolent attacks upon the new ministry very happily by a picture in which he appears as a crossing-sweeper spattering mud upon Lord Russell and his colleagues. "Won't give me any thing, won't you?" says the sweeper: "then take _that_!" Nor did the admirable Leech fail to mark the public sense of Disraeli's silence during the long debates upon the bill giving to English Jews some of the rights of citizenship. In his whole public career there is nothing harder to forgive than that ignoble and unnecessary abstinence. During the last few years Mr. Disraeli has won by sheer persistence a certain solidity of position in English politics, and _Punch_ pays him the respect due to a person who represents a powerful and patriotic party.

One quality of the _Punch_ caricatures is worthy of particular regard: they are rarely severe, and never scurrilous. The men for whom Mr. Leech entertained an antipathy, such as O'Connell, O'Brien, Brougham, and others, were usually treated in a manner that could not have painfully wounded their self-love. We observe even in the more incisive works of Gillray a certain boisterous good-humor that often made their satire amusing to the men satirized. Mr. Rush, American minister in London in 1818, describes a dinner party at Mr. Canning's, at which the minister exhibited to his guests albums and scrap-books of caricature in which he was himself very freely handled. Fox and Burke, we are told, visited the shop where Gillray's caricatures were sold, and while buying the last hit at themselves would bandy jests with Mrs. Humphrey, the publisher. Burke winced a little under the lash, but the robuster and larger Fox was rarely disturbed, and behaved in the shop with such winning courtesy that Mrs. Humphrey pronounced him the peerless model of a gentleman. _Punch_, likewise, does not appear to irritate the men whom he caricatures. Lord Brougham used to laugh at the exceedingly ugly countenance given him by Leech, and to say that the artist, unable to hit his likeness, was obliged to designate him by his checked trousers. Lord Russell, as we see, does not object to Leech's delineations; and Palmerston, long a favorite with the _Punch_ artists, may well have been content with their handsome treatment of him.

During the last fifteen years Mr. Tenniel has oftenest supplied the political cartoon of _Punch_. His range is not so wide as that of Leech, but within his range he is powerful indeed. He has produced some pictures which for breadth, strength, aptness, good feeling, and finish have rarely been equaled in their kind. He gives us sometimes such an impression of his power as we fancy Michael Angelo might have done if he had amused himself by drawings reflecting upon the politics of his time. If, as the _Quarterly Review_ lately remarked, Tenniel's pictures are often something less than caricature, being wanting in the exuberant humor of his predecessors, we can also say that they are frequently much more than caricature. Mr. Tenniel was an artist of repute, and had furnished a cartoon for the Westminster Parliament-house before he became identified with _Punch_.

In common with John Leech and the ruling class of England generally, Mr. Tenniel was so unfortunate as to misinterpret the civil war in America. He was almost as much mistaken as to its nature and significance as some of our own politicians, who had not his excuse of distance from the scene. He began well, however. His "Divorce a Vinculo," published in January, 1861, when the news of the secession of South Carolina reached England, was too flattering to the North, though correct as to the attitude of the South. "Mrs. Carolina asserts her Right to 'larrup' her Nigger" was a rough statement of South Carolina's position, but we can not pretend that the Northern States objected from any interest they felt in the colored boy. On the part of the North it was simply a war for self-preservation. It was as truly such as if Scotland or Ireland, or both of them, had seceded from England in 1803, when the Peace of Amiens was broken, and the English people had taken the liberty to object. Again, Mr. Tenniel showed good feeling in admonishing Lord Palmerston, when the war had begun, to keep Great Britain neutral. "Well, Pam," says Mr. Punch to his workman, "of course I shall keep you on, but you must stick to _peace_-work." Nor could we object to the picture in May, 1861, of Mr. Lincoln's poking the fire and filling the room with particles of soot, saying, with downcast look, "What a nice White House this would be if it were not for the Blacks!"

But from that time to the end of the war all was misapprehension and perversity. In July, 1861, "Naughty Jonathan," an ill-favored little boy carrying a toy flag, addresses the majesty of Britain thus: "You _sha'n't_ interfere, mother--and you ought to be on my side--and it's a great shame--and I don't care--and you _shall_ interfere--and I won't have it." During the Mason and Slidell imbroglio the Tenniel cartoons were not "soothing" to the American mind. "Do what's right, my son," says the burly sailor, Jack Bull, to little Admiral Jonathan, "or I'll blow you out of the water." Again, we have a family dinner scene. John Bull at the head of the table, and Lord Russell the boy in waiting. _Enter_ "Captain Jonathan, F.N.," who says, "Jist looked in to see if thar's any rebels he-arr." Upon which Mr. Bull remarks, "Oh, indeed! John, look after the plate-basket, and then fetch a policeman." This was in allusion to a supposed claim on the part of Mr. Seward of a right to search ships for rebel passengers. Then we have Mr. Lincoln as a "coon" in a tree, and Colonel Bull aiming his blunderbuss at him. "Air you in earnest, colonel?" asks the coon. "I am," replies the mighty Bull. "Don't fire," says the coon; "I'll come down." And accordingly Mason and Slidell were speedily released. In a similar spirit most of the events of the war were treated; and when the war had ended, there was still shown in _Punch_, as in the English press generally, the same curious, inexplicable, and total ignorance of the feelings of the American people. What an inconceivable perversity it was to attribute Mr. Sumner's statement of the damage done to the United States by the alliance which existed for four years between the owners of England and the masters of the South to a Yankee grab for excessive damages! In all the long catalogue of national misunderstandings there is none more remarkable than this. Mr. Tenniel from the first derided the idea that any particular damage had been done by the _Alabama_ and her consorts: certainly there was no damage, he thought, upon which a "claim" could be founded. "Claim for damages against _me_?" cries big Britannia, in one of his pictures of October, 1865. "Nonsense, Columbia; don't be mean over money matters."

All this has now become merely interesting as a curiosity of misinterpretation. The American people know something of England through her art, her literature, and press; but England has extremely imperfect means of knowing us. No American periodical, probably, circulates in Great Britain two hundred copies. We have no Dickens, no Thackeray, no George Eliot, no _Punch_, to make our best and our worst familiar in the homes of Christendom; and what little indigenous literature we have is more likely to mislead foreigners than enlighten them. Cooper's men, women, and Indians, if they ever existed, exist no more. Mr. Lowell's Yankee is extinct. Uncle Tom is now a freeman, raising his own bale of cotton. Mark Twain and Bret Harte would hardly recognize their own California. It is the literature, the art, and the science of a country which make it known to other lands; and we shall have neither of these in adequate development until much more of the work is done of smoothing off this rough continent, and educating the people that come to us, at the rate of a cityful a month, from the continent over the sea. At present it is nearly as much as we can do to find spelling-books for so many.

To most Americans the smaller pictures of Leech and others in _Punch_, which gently satirize the foibles and fashions of the time, are more interesting than the political cartoons. How different the life of the English people, as exhibited in these thousands of amusing scenes, from the life of America! We see, upon turning over a single volume, how much more the English play and laugh than we do. It is not merely that there is a large class in England who have nothing to do except to amuse themselves, but the whole people seem interested in sport, and very frequently to abandon themselves to innocent pleasures. Here is a young lady in the hunting field in full gallop, who cries gayly to her companion, "Come along, Mr. Green; I want a lead at the brook;" which makes "Mr. Green think that women have no business in hunting." England generally thinks otherwise, and Mr. Punch loves to exhibit his countrywomen "in mid-air" leaping a ditch, or bounding across a field with huntsmen and hounds about them. He does not object to a hunting parson. A churchwarden meets an "old sporting rector" on the road, and says, "Tell ye what 'tis, sir, the congregation do wish you wouldn't put that 'ere curate up in pulpit; nobody can't hear un." To which the old sporting parson on his pony replies, "Well, Blunt, the fact is, Tweedler's such a good fellow for parish work, I'm obliged to give him _a mount_ sometimes." And in the distance we see poor Tweedler trudging briskly along, umbrella in hand, upon some parish errand. Another sporting picture shows us three gentlemen at dinner, one of whom is a clergyman whose mind is so peculiarly constituted that his thoughts run a little upon the duties of his office. Perhaps he is Tweedler himself. One of the laymen, a fox-hunter, says to the other, "That was a fine forty minutes yesterday." The other replies, "Yes; didn't seem so long either." _Punch_ remarks that "the curate is puzzled, and wonders, do they refer to his lecture in the school-room?"

And what a part eating and drinking play in English life and English art! Every body appears to give dinners occasionally, and all the dealers in vegetables seem to stand ready to serve as waiters at five shillings for an evening. Food is a common topic of conversation, and it is a civility for people to show an interest in one another's alimentary pleasures. "Glad to see yer feed so beautiful, Mrs. B----," remarks a portly host to a corpulent lady, his Christmas guest. "Thank yer, Mr. J----," says she, with knife and fork at rest and pointing to the ceiling; "I'm doin' lovely." Again, old Mr. Brown, entertaining young Mr. Green, says, with emphasis, "That wine, sir, has been in my cellar four-and-twenty years come last Christmas--four-and-twenty years, sir!" To which innocent Mr. Green, anxious to say something agreeable, replies, "Has it really, sir? What must it have been when it was new?" Little Emily asks her mother, "What is capital punishment?" Master Harry replies, "Why, being locked up in the pantry! _I_ should consider it so." Even at the theatres, we may infer from some of the pictures, ale and porter are handed round between the acts of the play. In one picture we see two lovers looking upon the sky; poetical Augustus says, "Look, Edith! how lovely are those fleecy cloudlets, dappled over the--" Edith (not in a spirit of burlesque) replies, "Yes, 'xactly like gravy when it's getting cold--isn't it?" Then we have two gentlemen in the enjoyment of a little dinner, one of a long series given in the absence of the family at Boulogne. The master of the house receives a telegram. He reads it, heaves a deep sigh, and says, dolefully, "It's all up!" Bachelor friend asks, "What's the matter?" Paterfamilias replies, "Telegram! She says they've arrived safe at Folkestone, and will be home about 10.30." No more little dinners. Only a wife and children for comfort. And here are two of Mr. Du Maurier's pretty children eating slices of bread too thinly spread with jam, and Ethel says, with thoughtful earnestness, "I dare say the queen and her courtiers eat a whole pot of jam every day, Harry!" There are many hundreds of pictures in _Punch_ which show a kind of solemn interest in the repair of wasted tissue never seen in this country. It is evident that the English have a deep delight in the act of taking sustenance which is to us unknown. Mr. Thackeray himself, in speaking of an Englishman's first glass of beer on returning home from a long journey in other lands, casts his eyes to heaven and gives way to something like enthusiasm.

Many pictures bring into juxtaposition extremes of civilization rarely witnessed in America. So many traps are set for ignorance in this country that a child can scarcely hope to get by them all, and escape into maturity an absolute dolt. Observe this conversation between a squire and a villager: "Hobson, they tell me you've taken your boy away from the national school. What's that for?" "'Cause the master ain't fit to teach un. He wanted to teach my boy to spell taters with a P." Here, again, is a scene in a London picture-gallery that presents a curious incongruity. A group is standing before one of the works of Ary Scheffer, and an East-ender, catalogue in hand, makes this comment upon the artist's name: "'Ary Scheffer! Hignorant fellers, these foreigners, Bill! Spells 'Enery without the Haitch!" In New York we have doubtless people that would be as incongruous as this in such a scene, but they do not visit picture-galleries. Nor have we among us a photographer who could essay to bring a smile to a sitter's face by saying, "Just look a little pleasant, miss: think of _'im_!" It is evident from many hundreds of such sketches that there are great numbers of people in England who exercise difficult callings, hold responsible positions, dress in silk and broadcloth, and are in many particulars accomplished and well equipped for the stress of city life, who are destitute of mental culture to a degree which is associated in our minds only with squalor and degradation.

The spirit of caste, which appears to be only less strong in England than in India, affords countless opportunities to English comic art. Imagine a coster-monger profusely and laboriously apologizing to a well-dressed passer-by for presuming to speak to him in order to let him know that his coat-tail is burning: "You'll excuse my addressin' of you, sir--common man in a manner of speakin'--gen'leman like you, sir--beggin' pardon for takin' the liberty, which I should never 'a thought of doin' under ordinary succumstances, sir, only you didn't seem to be aware on it, but it struck me as I see you agoin' along as you were _afire_, sir!" During the delivery of this apology combustion had continued, and Brown's coat-tail was entirely consumed, his box of fusees having ignited some seconds before the coster-monger began his discourse. A few years ago _Punch_ gave a little "Sea-side Drama" that illustrates another phase of the same universal foible. Mrs. De Tomkyns to her husband: "Ludovic dear, there's Algernon playing with a strange child! Do prevent it." "How on earth am I to prevent it?" "Tell its parents Algernon is just recovering from the scarlet fever." Mr. De Tomkyns accordingly makes this fictitious statement to the father of the obnoxious child, who replies, "It's all right, sir; so's our little girl." _Punch_ hits it fairly, too, in a pictured _tête-à-tête_ between Mr. Shoddy and Mrs. Sharp. Mr. Shoddy remarks, as he sips his coffee, that he never feels safe from the ubiquitous British snob until he is south of the Danube. To this Mrs. Sharp responds by asking, "And what do the--a--South Danubians say, Mr. Shoddy?"

The moral feeling of the _Punch_ artists is so generally sound that it is surprising to find them often taking the wrong and popular side of the "conflict of ages" between mistress and maid. But if they usually laugh with the mistress and at the maid, they occasionally laugh with the maid and at the mistress; and truly the wildest absurdity attributed to the British servant seems venial compared with the thoughtless arrogance of the typical British mistress. _Punch_ does not wholly neglect her morals. Another hundred volumes or so will doubtless bring her over to Sydney Smith's opinion, that _all_ the virtues and graces are not to be had for seven pounds per annum. It was a happy retort upon "No Irish need apply," to present an English servant-girl peremptorily leaving a place because she had discovered that the family was Irish, alleging that her friends would never forgive her if they knew she had lived in an Irish family. The picture, too, is good of a pretty servant walking home in the evening behind an elderly and ill-favored lady to "protect" her from insult. _Punch_ wishes to know who is to protect the pretty girl on her return through London streets alone. We see also from numberless pictures that the British mistress deems it her right to control the dress of the British maid. When crinoline came in, she thought it impudent in a servant to wear it; but when crinoline went out, she deemed it no less presuming in her to lay it aside.

For some years past the pictures of children and their ways by Mr. Du Maurier have been among the most pleasing efforts of comic art in England. There is not the faintest intimation in them of the malevolent or sarcastic. All good fathers, all good mothers, and all persons worthy to become such, delight in them. They are such pictures as we should naturally expect from an artist who was himself the happy father of a houseful of happy children, and who consequently looked upon all the children of the world in a fond, parental spirit. Surely no Bohemian, no hapless dweller in a boarding-house, no desolate frequenter of clubs, no one not sharing in the social life of his time, could so delightfully represent and minister to it. Du Maurier vindicates the generation that has produced Gavarni and Woodhull. He reminds us from week to week that children are the sufficient compensation of virtuous existence, worth all the rest of its honors and delights.

The recent agitation in England of questions relating to religion has not escaped the caricaturist. For two centuries or more the caricaturists of Great Britain have been hearty Protestants, though not long Puritan, and we still find them laughing at the fulminations of the testy old clergyman who lives in the Vatican. Nor have they failed to reflect upon the too evident fact that it is the contentions of clergymen in England that have blocked the way into the national school. The old-fashioned penny broadside, all alive with figures and words, has been revived by "Gegeef," to promote the secularization of the schools. In one of them all the parties to the controversy are exhibited--the candidate for the mastership of a Government school, who "believes in Colenso and geology, but don't mind teaching Genesis to oblige;" the minister who holds up the text, "One faith, one baptism," but demands that the baptism taught should be _his_ baptism; Thomas Paine, too, who points to his "Age of Reason," and says, "When you finish, _I_ shall have something to say;" the compromiser, who is willing to have Bible lessons given in the schools, provided they are given "without comment;" and, of course, the radical Bradlaugh, who demands secularization pure and simple. The same draughtsman, whose zeal is more manifest than his skill, has attempted to show, in various penny sheets, that amidst all those sectarian conflicts the one true light for the guidance of bewildered men is Science.

The only hit, however, in caricature, which these controversies have suggested is the "Soliloquy of a Rationalistic Chicken." It has had great currency in England among the clergy, many of whom have assisted in spreading it abroad; and even secularists have found it passable--as a caricature. Another recent "sensation" was the caricature by Mr. Matt Morgan, in the _Tomahawk_, which represented the Prince of Wales "_following_" the ghost of his predecessor, George IV. It had a great currency at the time, and may have served a good purpose in warning an amiable and well-disposed prince to be more careful of appearances.

During the life-time of the venerable Cruikshank comic art in England has won the consideration due to a liberal profession, and now enjoys a fair share of reward as well as honor. He found the comic artist something of a Bohemian; he leaves him a solvent and respectable householder. He may have visited Gillray at work in the little room behind his publisher's shop; and he doubtless often enjoyed the elegant hospitality of John Leech, one of the first in his branch of art to attain the solid dignity of a front-door of his own. It is mentioned to the credit of Richard Doyle, son of HB, that when he resigned his connection with _Punch_ on account of its caricatures of Wiseman and the Pope, he gave up an income of eight hundred pounds a year. There is no worthy circle in Great Britain where the presence of a Tenniel, a Leech, a Du Maurier, a Doyle, or a Cruikshank would not be felt as an honor and their society valued as a privilege. England owes them gratitude and homage. They have not been always right, but they have nearly always meant to be. Nothing malign, nothing unpatriotic, nothing impure, nothing mean, has borne their signature; and in a vast majority of instances they have led the laughter of their countrymen so that it harmonized with humanity and truth.