Chapter 4

Following the order of time, which is perhaps our safest guide, "The Bengal Levée" is a large print, full of clever portraits, "made on the spot by an Amateur"; and "The Dagger Scene, or the Plot discovered," is a political print which must not be omitted. But now we find ourselves suddenly launched into the midst of the French Revolution in "French Liberty and British Slavery" (showing a starving Jacobin praising his own Government, and a fat John Bull at dinner abusing his); and "Sansculottes feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty," this latter a most inimitably clever print, whose centre is formed by John Bull, with Fox and a sympathiser administering the Bread of Liberty on the dagger's point, while Germany, Holland, and Italy are at the corners.[9] Gillray had already, as we see here, taken a strongly anti-French attitude, which he never altered, and which, no doubt, faithfully reflected the mass of English public opinion, horrified at the excesses with which Paris had in those days sullied the pure name of Liberty. I say advisedly the mass, for Charles James Fox next appears in "Dumourier dining in State at St. James's" (1793), serving up to the French General the head of Pitt upon a dish, with the British crown thrown in as an _entremet_. A very striking print of the same year shows the heroic "Charlotte Corday upon her Trial" (July 17, 1793), and a figure very like Gillray's usual rendering of Talleyrand, with two other judges, upon the bench beneath the cap of Liberty. "The Blessings of Peace and the Curses of War," with its inscription--"Such Britain was, such Flanders, Spain and Holland now is (_sic_); from such a sad reverse, O Gracious God, preserve our country!"--is an eloquent, if slightly ungrammatical, appeal (Jan. 17, 1795) to his fellow-countrymen, an appeal to which our artist must have been stirred by the horrible carnage and misery which the French armies were then inflicting upon the continent of Europe; while "John Bull ground down" (June 1, 1795) shows the guineas being extracted from that long-suffering person, despite his cries of "Murder"; and in "Blind-man's Buff, or Too Many for John Bull" (June 12, 1795) he is being handed over, with Pitt's assistance, to the kicks and plunder of the Powers of Europe.

We reach the full horrors of the Terror in Paris, and trace its effect on outside opinion, in a very clever print in my own possession entitled "Promised Horrors of the French Invasion, or Forcible Reasons for Neglecting a Regicide Peace." The print is so full of masterly detail that it almost defies description. In the centre a figure (? that of Pitt) is being flogged by Fox beneath the Tree of Liberty, planted at the Piccadilly end of St. James's Street, with three human thigh-bones at its base; beside it the French troops march up St. James's Street, leaving the Palace in smoke and flames, and invade White's Club on their right, pitching its ill-fated members on to the bayonets in the street, but are received by the members of Brookes's Club on their left with cries of welcome, and a set of heads neatly arranged upon a plate, with the motto, "Killed for the Public Good!" October 20, 1796, is the date of this magnificent cartoon of our artist, which must have found an echo in public opinion: but ships, troops, and subsidies mean taxation, and Pitt's continued demands on the Treasury are satirised in "The Nuptial Bower" (February 15, 1797) and "Political Ravishment, or The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street in Danger" (May 22, 1797).

=THE JACOBIN DRUMMER=

=_By James Gillray_ BRITANNIA BETWEEN DEATH AND THE DOCTORS=

In the year following (1798) the form of Nelson makes its appearance in the print of "The British Hero cleansing ye Mouth of ye Nile," and in "John Bull Taking a Luncheon"--off a captured French three-decker.

For now, too (November 21, 1799), the figure of Buonaparte, which was to occupy so fully Gillray's pencil, makes his entry into these caricatures in the cartoon of "Exit Liberté, a la Francois (_sic_) or, Buonaparte closing the Farce of Egalité at S. Cloud, near Paris, November 16, 1799."

Another print, however, touching the Directorate period is too important to be entirely omitted from our list. It is called "Ci-devant Occupations, or Madame Tallien and the Empress Josephine dancing naked before Barras in the Winter or 1797--a Fact." The dancers can be traced behind a veil of gauze, while Barras sits at table, very drunk, beneath an infant Bacchus wearing the Cap of Liberty, and Buonaparte watches the scene from the side in front of a pile of skulls. "Madame Tallien," we are here informed, "is a beautiful woman, tall and elegant: Josephine is smaller and thin, with bad teeth"; in which case she must be the figure nearest Buonaparte, and must have gone up in weight--in Gillray's view--before she appears in his "Handwriting on the Wall."

It would be impossible within the limits of this series to give a detailed list of all the superb series of Gillray's satires on the Napoleonic struggle. I have been fortunate enough to obtain for this work reproductions of three among the best ones; but my account may do well to commence with that delightful print (another hit at Charles James Fox) of the "Introduction of Citizen Volpone and his Suite at Paris"; might note further "The Vexation of Little Boney"; and strike a higher note in "The Handwriting upon the Wall," where, in the hour of his triumph, Buonaparte, seated at table beside an enormously stout Josephine, with gigantic and savage-looking Guards and very _décolletées_ and ringleted maids-of-honour waiting in service on them, sees with dilated eyes on the wall the warning of his doom.

=_By James Gillray_ ARMED HEROES (WILLIAM PITT AND BUONAPARTE)=

Of course the threatened invasion of England finds its echo in Gillray's prints. "French Invasion, or Buonaparte Landing," "Armed Heroes" (of which I give here a reproduction), and the "King of Brobindnag and Gulliver" all belong to this theme of the nation's peril; as does that interesting print, which I also reproduce, of "Britannia between Death and the Doctor," where the sick lady is threatened on the one side by Buonaparte as Death, the while Pitt, as chief physician, executes a war dance at the expense of his professional rivals, planting his heel very neatly in the mouth of the prostrate Charles James Fox. Napoleon's European victories find comment in the "Surrender of Ulm," and in another of my plates, "Tiddy Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Maker, drawing out a New Batch of Kings," where Talleyrand seems, very appropriately, to be the figure in the background kneading the dough (note, too, the rubbish heap). But the worst danger was past already at the time (as we know now) of that fine plate that commemorates the "Death of Admiral Lord Nelson in the Moment of Victory," published by Humphrey of St. James Street, on December 23, 1805.

Gillray, after trying various publishers--Kent, Brown, Holland of Oxford Street, Fores of Piccadilly--seems to have settled down with Humphrey, first in the Strand, then in Bond Street, and later St. James Street, whose shop-windows became famed for his prints. Joseph Grego, a known authority on our artist, relates that Fox and Burke once walked into the shop together, alarming the worthy proprietress by this sudden invasion of Gillray's favourite subjects. But Burke reassured her with a smile: "Were I to prosecute you it would be the making of your fortune; and that favour, excuse me, Mrs. Humphrey, you do not entirely merit at my hands."

We may terminate our study or Gillray's Napoleonic caricatures very appropriately with the "Spanish Bullfight," in which Buonaparte is tossed by the Spanish bull (Peninsular War of 1808) before the assembled Powers of Europe (dated July 11, 1808); and the fine print of the "Valley of the Shadow of Death" (September 24, 1808), in which the prediction of an earlier print ("The Handwriting on the Wall") seems near its fulfilment, and the Powers of Europe in grim demonic shapes surround the terrified ruler, the British lion charging him full in front, while the Russian bear takes an ugly snatch from behind at his legs.

=_By James Gillray_ BUONAPARTE AS KING-MAKER (WITH TALLEYRAND TO HELP)=

James Gillray's political caricatures are so interesting and so important, they form such a priceless commentary on the history of the time, that I have given them the priority of space over his amusing social satires, which scourge without mercy the follies of dress and fashion. "A Lady putting on her Cap" (1795), "Lady Godiva's Rout" (1796), "High Change in Bond Street" (1796), "A Modern Belle at Bath" (1796), and "A Fashionable Mamma" come into this class, as well as "Following the Fashion," "Characters in High Life," and many others. It was the epoch when English ladies' waists seem to have risen nearly to their arm-pits, and when their hair towered up correspondingly into a forest of feathers; and all the above prints--as well as the series of "Faro's Daughters," directed at the gambling craze, "The Graces in a High Wind (as seen from Nature in Kensington Gardens)," and the still more risky series of "Three Stages of a Lady's Toilet,"--depict these extreme fashions.

"Tales of Wonder," "Advantages of Wearing Muslin Dresses, dedicated to the Fashionable Ladies of Great Britain," "A Broad Hint of not Meaning to Dance," "A Company shocked at a Lady getting up to Ring the Bell," belong to a slightly later period of costume, say 1802-04.

"Dido in Despair" is evidently a satire on the beautiful Lady Hamilton, who is however represented in this print as enormously fat.[10] Gillray has evidently no sympathy or mercy for the frail and famous beauty; for here she is tumbling out of bed in nightcap and nightdress, from which a huge foot protrudes, while she waves her fat arms in despair. A flask of Maraschino is on the dressing-table near the rouge pot; on the floor lie broken antiques; and a work on _Studies of Academic Attitudes_, with scarcely academic illustrations, lies near the window, through which is seen a line of British battleships standing out to sea.

"Ah where and oh where is my gallant sailor gone? He's gone to fight the Frenchmen for George upon the throne,"--

is the motto of this print, which was published by Humphrey on February 6 of 1801. "The Bulstrode Siren" (Mrs. Billington), where she is seen warbling to the Duke of Portland, fares little better than Emma herself; and Sir William Hamilton appears, in another of Gillray's satires, as "A Conoscenti contemplating ye beauties of ye Antique." Among these last _objets d'art_ a battered "Lais" and a "Bacchante" who has lost her head seem as full of cryptic allusion as the dancing figures on a Greek vase and the Cupid with a bent arrow; while quite in Hogarth's best vein is the "Mark Antony" framed upon the wall, in a cocked hat and admiral's uniform, the "Cleopatra" with a gin bottle, and a view of Vesuvius in full eruption.

Sheridan is a frequent figure in Gillray's political caricatures; but perhaps he was never more happily treated than when he enters as Harlequin, armed with a goose quill, and assisted by John Kemble and the famous Mrs. Siddons, in "Blowing up the Pic Nics." To the same class and subject of satire belongs the "Pic Nic Orchestra" and "Dilettante Theatre"--this last a Green-room scene which seems reminiscent of Hogarth's print of a similar subject. "Two-penny Whist" and "Push-pin" are filled with contemporary portraits;[11] and the two series of "Cockney Sportsmen" (4 plates, 1800) and "Elements of Skating" (4 plates, 1805) must not be overlooked any more than such weirdly hideous creations as "Comfort to the Corns," as "Begone dull Care, I prithee," and "The Gout."

Interesting, however, though much of Gillray's social satire certainly is, it scarcely reaches the same level as his political work. He was a magnificent engraver, and was able in his best time to build up his cartoon with the smallest possible scaffolding, a few lines pencilled upon a card being enough to enable him to commence at once upon the copper; while the freedom and facility of his design is witnessed amply by all his prints--those prints which we have now studied in some measure together, though anything in the nature of a comprehensive catalogue is denied me by the space at my command. His influence, too, upon Isaac Cruikshank is to be marked, as a link in the evolution of English caricature.

In his later years James Gillray resided almost entirely with his kindly publisher, Mrs. Humphrey, of whom, as I have noted, he has left a whimsical portrait, with her faithful maid "giggling Betty," in his print of "Two-penny Whist." Mrs. Humphrey appreciated her client's genius, and at one time their mutual understanding got so far on the road to matrimony that they had already reached the door of the church (their parish church of S. James, Piccadilly) when this eccentric bridegroom remarked, "This is a foolish affair, Mrs. Humphrey. We live very comfortably together--better let well alone!"--and walked home to work on his copper plate. But even if this legend of blighted hopes be correct, the good spinster in any case devoted herself no less to the artist's comfort and welfare; and the tragedy of his later years was due to himself alone. Intemperance weakened his powers; and in the last years of his life he lapsed, from this cause probably, into a condition of mental imbecility, which contrasts sadly with those busy and successful years of his life, from 1777 to close on 1810.

He died upon the 1st of June, 1815, and was buried near the rectory of S. James, Piccadilly; within reach of the busy roar of that London whose complex multitudinous life he had lived amongst and loved and studied, and which still surges around his last resting-place in changed and ever-changing forms.

V

THE COMEDY OF LIFE

Thomas Rowlandson, the last and in some ways the greatest of the caricaturists whose work illustrates the eighteenth century, was born in London in 1756, being thus just six years younger than Bunbury, and one year older than Gillray; so that all these artists cover very much the same period, although their work has elements of the greatest diversity.

In Bunbury we have seen the really gifted amateur, who entrusted his clever sketches to other hands to be engraved, who kept in touch with social life in London and county society, and pursued his career in the army and at Court, while throughout devoting himself to art as his greatest hobby. Again, later, we have traced briefly Gillray's supreme talent, both as engraver and draughtsman, more especially in his magnificent series of contemporary political cartoons. But in Rowlandson we touch a genius as fertile, but of a different order, and, I incline to think, of a considerably wider grasp; and if I call this chapter, which I am devoting especially to his work, the "Comedy of Life"--in contrast to pictorial morals, to society or politics--it is because life in all its exuberance, all its variety and fertility, seems to stream on us from the gifted artist's pencil.

But Life contains--thanks be--not only coarse, distorted types of humanity, exaggerations of foolish fashion, and political antagonisms, but grace and beauty, even with the changing form of the time-spirit; and it is just here that Rowlandson infinitely surpasses those contemporaries whom we studied in our last chapter. His female figures have often that rich English beauty which we find in Reynolds, Hoppner, or sometimes in Morland; and his landscape has qualities of very exceptional merit. He might, we are frequently tempted to think, have been a painter worthy to take a front rank even in that magnificent English eighteenth-century school, which included Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, Hoppner, among its glories; but as we come to study his life we shall find in the _insouciance_ of his character, in the very facility of his genius, the causes which made him--not, indeed, entirely to our loss--only the greatest caricaturist of his time.

As a boy already, at Dr. Barrow's academy in Soho, he had attracted notice by his humorous sketches of his fellow pupils; and in his sixteenth year he went to Paris at the invitation of his aunt, a Mlle. Chatelier, with the object of pursuing art study in that city. He had already been admitted as a student in the Royal Academy; and his life studies in Paris are said to have possessed great merit. Paris itself at this time (about 1772-4), with Louis XV. still on the throne, must have been very fascinating to the young English lad, living with a relative who treated him with affection and generosity, in the first consciousness too of his genius, in the midst of a most brilliant capital, and with every prospect of fortune waiting for him. These years left, without doubt, an indelible impression on his mind. Mr. Grego, an authority on this artist as well as Gillray, expresses this[12] very happily when he says: "It was the more romantic Paris of Sterne that Rowlandson first viewed, and he seems to have recognised and noted down the characteristics of the same typical personages described by 'Yorick'; their two satirical points of view were identical. It was indeed the ideal artistic centre: Fragonard, Lavrience, Eisen, St. Aubin, and the school of followers of Boucher and Lancret--elegant triflers in their way, but unequalled for dash and brilliancy--were the leading spirits as Rowlandson imbibed his first inspiration from these attractive fonts. His two years' residence in the midst of these appetising surroundings must have been the happiest of Rowlandson's career; the seeds sown amid these gayer scenes blossomed forth in later years, and influenced the artist in gradually devoting his gifts from the dull routine of portrait-painting to the indulgence of his fruitful imagination."

Whether indeed all the influence which the critic here mentions was entirely for good, is, I think myself, open to question. It is quite possible that our artist acquired at this time the taste for gambling which led him to the brink of ruin more than once in later life; and I have suggested already that had he kept to painting he might have achieved in that medium a fame far above even that which he now possesses. For on his return to London he resumed his studies at the Royal Academy Schools, and in 1775 exhibited at the Academy "Samson visited by Delilah," which he followed up by the portraits on which he was busy now in Wardour Street from 1778 to 1781. His work must have shown considerable power to be hung beside the canvases of Reynolds, Romney, and Hoppner; but at the later date of 1784 his exhibited drawings--"Vauxhall Gardens," "The Serpentine," and "An Italian Family"--show already a tendency to the lighter side of art, and between the above date and 1787 the direction of his art has changed in favour of caricature.

His imagination was as fertile as his pencil was facile. The market was easy--Fores (for whom Gillray also worked), Ackermann,[13] and others offering a ready sale for his satires; and, since we are treating of him here as a caricaturist, it is at this point that we must take his work in detail. The purely humorous prints commence as early as 1781 ("The Village Doctor," published in June of that year by Humphrey), and are followed up (November 27, same year and publisher) by "Charity Covereth a Multitude of Sins," and that unpleasing subject (published by Fores, 1783) of "The Amputation"; but it is in his political cartoons of 1784--such as "Britannia roused, or the Coalition Monster destroyed"--that we begin to recognise the distinctive touch of Thomas Rowlandson. This vigorous print shows a half-draped female figure catching Charles James Fox by the ankle and Lord North by the throat; in this print he takes the same political attitude as his contemporary Gillray, whom he resembles, though far less virulently, in his anti-French prints, while he shows less marked hostility to the reigning house.

The famous Westminster election of the same year (1784) brought Rowlandson still further into political satire, in which Charles James Fox and the beautiful Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire, are leading figures. In "The Devonshire, or the most approved manner of securing votes," the lovely duchess is bestowing a warm embrace on a voter, in the shape of a fat butcher, while another lady, perhaps the Duchess of Gordon, looks on approvingly with the words "Huzza! Fox for ever!" In the "Lords of the Bedchamber," Georgina, seated in her _boudoir_ beneath Reynolds' portrait of her duke, is entertaining to tea two privileged visitors, Fox and his leading supporter, Sam House--"brave, bald-headed Sam" as he was then called. The enthusiastic support which her Grace gave to Fox's candidature gave an opening which was used--often too freely--by the caricaturists. In "Wit's last stake, or the Cobbler's vote," she is seated upon Fox's knee, the while a cobbler puts a stitch into her shoe, so that she may have the excuse of pouring a handful of guineas into his wife's hand. In another print she appears neglecting the infant heir of the Cavendishes for a fox, dressed up in baby clothes; and upon Fox's triumphant return is made by the artist to carry him pick-a-back, and to stop at Mungo's Hotel for a drop of gin.

It is but fair to our Caricaturist to say that the fair Pittite champion, Lady Buckingham, is treated no less mercilessly; and that, even while he was aiming the most outrageous shafts of ridicule and innuendo at the Duchess, his pencil did justice to her extraordinary beauty and charm, both in the prints above mentioned, and in a "Procession to the Hustings after a successful Canvass," in which she leads the way in a big picture hat, and carrying a perfectly indescribable ensign with "The Man of the People" as its legend. Finally, "The Westminster Mendicant" and the "Westminster Deserter drummed out" complete this really brilliant series of election caricatures, of which I have only detailed the most interesting. In the last-named print it is "brave baldheaded" Sam House who beats the drum, while on his left is the triumphant candidate, Charles James Fox, who addresses the crowd with the time-hallowed words, "Friends and fellow citizens, I cannot find words to express my feelings, etc.," and on his right the defeated Sir Cecil Wray; while behind are the Irish chairmen who had fought (in every sense of the word) so lustily for Fox, and a procession of London maidservants, armed with mops and brooms.