CHAPTER XI

FROM CRUIKSHANK TO LEECH

In contrast with the brilliancy of the French artists, the work in England during these years, at least prior to the establishment of _Punch_, is distinctly disappointing. The one man who might have raised caricature to an even higher level than that of Gillray and Rowlandson was George Cruikshank, but he withdrew early in life from political caricature, preferring, like Hogarth, to concentrate his talent upon the dramatic aspects of contemporary social life. Yet at the outset of his career, just as he was coming of age, Cruikshank produced one cartoon that has remained famous because it anticipated by thirty years the attitude of Mill and Cobden in 1846. It was in 1815, just after the battle of Waterloo had secured an era of peace for Europe, that he produced his protest against the laws restricting the importation of grain into England. He called it "The Blessings of Peace; or, the Curse of the Corn Bill." A cargo of foreign grain has just arrived and is being offered for sale by the supercargo: "Here is the best for fifty shillings." On the shore a group of British landholders wave the foreigner away: "We won't have it at any price. We are determined to keep up our own to eighty shillings, and if the poor can't buy it at that price, why, they must starve." In the background a storehouse with tight-shut doors bulges with home-grown grain. A starving family stand watching while the foreign grain is thrown overboard, and the father says: "No, no, masters, I'll not starve, but quit my native land, where the poor are crushed by those they labor to support, and retire to one more hospitable, and where the arts of the rich do not interpose to defeat the providence of God."

After Cruikshank, until the advent of the men who made _Punch_ famous,--Richard Doyle, John Leech, John Tenniel, and their successors,--there are no cartoonists in England whose work rises above mediocrity. When the death of Canning brought Wellington and Peel into power, a series of colored prints bearing the signature H. Heath, and persistently lampooning the new ministry, enjoyed a certain vogue. They scarcely rose above the level of the penny comic valentine, which they much resembled in crudeness of color and poverty of invention. One set, entitled "Our Theatrical Celebrities," depicted the Premier as stage manager, the other members of the cabinet as leading man, première danseuse, prompter, etc. Another series depicts the same statesmen as so many thoroughbreds, to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, and describes the good points of each in the most approved language of the turf. Lot No. 1 is the Duke of Wellington, described as "the famous charger, Arthur"; Lot No. 2 is Peel, the "Good Old Cobb, Bobby," and the rest of the series continue the same vein of inane witticism. Somewhat more point is to be found in the portrayal of Wellington buried up to his neck in his own boot--one of the universal Wellington boots of the period. The cartoonist's thought, quite obviously, was that the illustrious hero of Waterloo had won his fame primarily in boots and spurs, and that as a statesman he became a very much shrunken and insignificant figure. In its underlying thought this cartoon suggests comparison with the familiar "Grandpa's Hat" cartoons of the recent Harrison administration. Very rarely Heath broke away from home politics and touched upon international questions of the day. A print showing the Premier engaged in the task of "making a rushlight," which he is just withdrawing cautiously from a large tub labeled "Greece," is an allusion to the part played by Great Britain in helping to add the modest light of Greek independence to the general illumination of civilized Europe.

Another man whose work enjoyed a long period of shop-window popularity, and who nevertheless did not always rise above the comic-valentine level, was John Doyle, who owes his memory less to his own work than to the fact that he was the father of a real master of the art, Richard Doyle. Parton, in his history of "Caricature and Other Comic Art," notes the elder Doyle's remarkable prolificness, estimating his collected prints at upward of nine hundred; and he continues: "It was a custom with English print-sellers to keep portfolios of his innocent and amusing pictures to let out by the evening to families about to engage in the arduous work of entertaining their friends at dinner. He excelled greatly in his portraits, many of which, it is said by contemporaries, are the best ever taken of the noted men of that day, and may safely be accepted as historical. Brougham, Peel, O'Connell, Hume, Russell, Palmerston, and others appear in his works as they were in their prime, with little distortion or exaggeration, the humor of the pictures being in the situation portrayed. Thus, after a debate in which allusion was made to an ancient egg anecdote, Doyle produced a caricature in which the leaders of parties were drawn as hens sitting upon eggs. The whole interest of the picture lies in the speaking likeness of the men."