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vernor-General was represented as Verres, and the eloquent Sheridan was the modern Cicero who impeaches him. The truth seems to be that both Hastings and his opponents spent money freely amongst the artists and writers of the period. Those who wish to see some proof of this, will find an interesting memorial, in the trial of" Pasquin v. Faulder," attached to Gifford's "Bæviad."

To chronicle every single work of artists so notoriously fertile and industrious as those we are contemplating, forms no part of the plan of this work; I must therefore let appear a huge hiatus, not perhaps valde deflenda, and hasten to the busiest period of the life of the principal caricaturist, James Gilray.

This was about the time of the terrible first French Revolution, when the minds of the English were kept at almost a fever-heat, by various appeals to their loyalty, their patriotism, or their fear. Mr. Cobden's recent pamphlet has shown very successfully, I think, that the French nation did not seek at that period to quarrel with, and revolutionise Great Britain. But there were no doubt violent propagandists who would have gone any length to have established their unripe doctrines of Republicanism over the world. The opinions of these, evidently a contemptible minority, were promulgated by the English ministry and aristocracy as those of the whole French nation. The aristocracy of England were fearful lest their fate might be that of those of France; and the wild and insane speeches of the injudicious partizans, but worst enemies of an ideal republic, were weapons in their hands which they well knew how

to use.

Both the ministry and the opposition seemed of one mind in regard to the new government, the Convention of France. The recent and brilliant work of Burke, "Reflections on the French Revolution," full of glittering phrases, written evidently ad captandum, made a great impression upon the young and generous minds of the English youth. Upwards of 30,000 copies were sold before the first demand was satisfied. The picture of Marie Antoinette, the pause, and theatrical apostrophe to that unfortunate Queen, made the swords of the young volunteers ready, indeed, to leap from their scabbards for her rescue. Those in power took care to cultivate

the war-spirit thus infused, and these sentiments ripened into a deep hatred of the French and of France.

In September, 1792, the French Convention elected two English members to their body. They were, Thomas Paine, and Dr. Priestley. Henceforward nothing was too bad or too abusive to be said of the English liberals. Dr. Priestley's house, in Birmingham, was attacked and burnt, and Paine fled to France. In calling this behaviour atrocious, I do not seek to defend the peculiar religious tenets of either of these men; but their political belief should have been held as sacred from mob violence, as was their religious creed. Younger and better men than they, world-famous now, drank eagerly of the same draught of liberty: Southey the deep scholar, Wordsworth the poet of nature, and Coleridge, philosopher, metaphysician, and bard; than whom possibly flourishing at one period, three greater cannot be found, had imbibed these doctrines, and were at that time ardent republicans. Yet Sayer could produce plates, representing the belief of these men as demoniacal; and Fox and North, clad in shirts and boots, but veritable sans-culottes, force obnoxious liberty down the throat of John Bull. Gilray, whose continued drunkenness had by this time produced fits of insanity, seems to have gone mad for the oc casion, and his plates, wild, bloody, and fiery, exhibit some of the worst scenes which took place in the worst days in Paris. The guillotine, the pike, the bleeding and severed head, the firebrand, and the extempore gallows (la lanterne), bloom in hideous profusion all through the series. One side of the Channel presents of course a flattering contrast to this noise and turmoil; a plate by Sayer of the 10th of December, 1792, represents the soldier and sailor as the only defence of England against the horrors of Republicanism.

Gilray, eccentric in every thing, appears for a moment to have had a gleam of sense, and published a deep satire on the alarmists, in opposition to one of Sayer's prints. It represents Pitt as working upon John Bull's fears, as in truth he did; he has John by the arm, and pretends to descry through a telescope the enemies of his country. A clever burlesque of Pitt's speech at the opening of parliament shows both his own alarm and that of his protegé.

"There,

John! there! I see them, get your arms
ready, John! there's ten thousand sans
culottes on their way, and there! the
Irish and Scotch have caught the itch,
and have began to pull off their breeches."
John is terribly alarmed, but his com-
mon sense whispers a better way than
fighting. "Where's the use of firing
now?
What can us two do against
them hundreds of millions of thousands
of monsters? had we not better try if they
won't shake hands with us and be friends"
The nation was too alarmed to take this
hint. The aristocracy and the young
farmers rushed to militia bands, felt
proud of their uniform, and clumsy
leather fire-man's helmet, and the land
bristled with bayonets, and the coasts
of Kent were white with tents. Church,
king, and laws were appealed to; a king
whose hot and ungovernable temper had
lost us America; a church, pure in doc-
trine, but corrupt and persecuting in her
practice; and laws which permitted Old
Sarum, and pocket-boroughs, and legal-
ized judicial murder for a petty theft.

Ye Britons be wise, as you're brave and humane,
You then will be happy without any Paine;
We know of no despots, we've nothing to fear,
And this new-fangled nonsense will never do here.

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The success of these song writers and caricaturists was complete. Britain strove to chastise France, but in the struggle suffered too. In turning over the crimsoned productions of mad old Gilray, we are reminded that for some time we are to undergo the saddest province of the historian, and to contemplate, like the shipwrecked wretch of Lucretius, the mad turmoil, the blood, the tears, and wounds, occasioned by that saddest of all infectious diseases, the martial fever of nations. The thousand gentle charities broken off, the sweet intercourse interrupted, the flowers of peace uprooted, the industry of the merchant thwarted, his ruined family and bankrupt state, the scholar unheard amongst this din of war, and more than all these the sharp calls of the weakest and poorest of mankind for justice, reform and progress neglected and passed by, start up and haunt these plates like ghosts. Some millions slain, and a few names broidered in glistering tinsel

upon a flaunting flag, are all we have to show for what we might have done.

The caricaturists began the attack by ridiculing Fox, Paine, and Priestley. The author of the " Rights of Man," who had been a stay-maker at Thetford, was by no means a pure or unassailable subject. Gilray brought out a print, on the 10th Dec. 1792, called "Tom Paine's Nightly Pest," which represents the English republican stretched upon his pallet of straw, dreaming of judges' wigs, and all sorts of horrors and punishments. On the 2nd of the following January, another print by the same hand, represents Paine fitting Britannia with a pair of French stays. The lady objects to the republican tight-lacing, and clings to the British oak for protection. Meanwhile, the object of these pictorial satires had, by advocating leniency to the unfortunate king, incurred the odium of his fellows, and was at Paris, thrown into a dungeon by Robespierre and his associates. In prison he wrote the most blasphemous of readers know the strange accident, which his books, the "Age of Reason." All looks almost like the interposition of Providence, which saved him from the guillotine; but neither prison nor the strange escape taught him humility or veneration, he went to America, and there lived, publishing harmless slanders against religion and his native country, till death put an end to the strange freaks of " Citizen Paine.”

"The Republican Soldier," "False Liberty rejected, or no fraternizing with the French cut-throats," and others mark the temper of the nation at the time; meanwhile Fox's affairs were getting more and more involved, and the great statesman was reduced to a condition of absolute poverty. His friends held a meeting at the Crown and Anchor, and the popularity which he still enjoyed was proved by a large subscription, by which an annuity was purchased. This Gilray ridiculed as "Blue and Buff Charity," in a print wherein Fox is receiving aid from Priestley, Horne Tooke, Michael Angelo Taylor, Earl Stanhope, and Mr. Hall, the sonin-law of that eccentric nobleman. Mr. Hall had been an apothecary in Long Acre, and is represented as ragged and poor, with a phial in his hand. Stanhope had sincerely embraced republican principles, and had married his daughter to a plebeian to prove his sincerity.

E

01

Rank, character, distinction, fame,

And noble birth forgot,

Hear Stanhope, modest Earl, proclaim
Himself a sans culotte.

Of pomp and splendid circumstance
The vanity he teaches;

And spurns, like citizen of France,
Both coronet and breeches.

But this caterpillar has another phase of existence as a chrysalis in Holland, and at last bursts into existence as a glorious butterfly in republican France. This hint is significant enough; but the people, pressed for bread and irritated with loss of work through the stoppage These ideas of freedom were enough of factories, were at last tired of war, in the then state of opinion to render did not care for glory, and little thought him obnoxious to the mob. In June of patriotism. When George the third 1794, his house was attacked and fired in went to open parliament on the 29th several places by bands of ruffians, and of October 1795, his carriage was sura gentleman or nobleman was seen to rounded by an infuriate mob, who cried, distribute money to them from his car- "Down with George, no peace, no king, riage windows; if the people could be down with him;" thewindow was smashworked up to such outrages, what won-ed, and the panel perforated by a bullet, der if they could be persuaded reform it is presumed, from an air gun, the was odious, and that economy and liberty, populace all the while crying, "Bread, were but so many synomyms for rob- bread! Peace, peace!" The arrival of bery, spoliation, and murder? The the guards rescued the King, and on the English were hurried into a war, the 1st of November, Gilray gave a burDuke of York was dispatched to Flan-lesque version of this attack, wherein ders, to co-operate with our German the ministry are attacked by Fox, Stanallies, but for a time did nothing but hope, and other Whig leaders.

Gilray In December, 1796, ISAAC CRUIK

commit a series of mistakes.
himself went over there on a sketching
tour, and has given us a plate of "The
Fatigues of the Campaign in Flanders,"
which is a picture of drunken revelry
and licentiousness. Whilst the duke
was commanding in his gallant way,
his mistress, the celebrated Mary Anne
Clarke, was selling commissions in the
army at a very reduced rate, and di-
verting the money of the nation to her
own pocket; for this the lady was
brought to the bar of the House of
Commons, a trial which Gilray has per-
petuated.

These incidents made the "swinish multitude," as Burke politely termed the lower orders of our countrymen, little satisfied with the war. New taxes made the householders equally against it, and the caricaturists, who turned their satires to profit, took advantage of what they themselves had contributed to occasion, and pictured John Bull as reduced to a state of beggary. The King was represented as the Horse of Hanover riding over the swinish multitude, in the shape of a drove of pigs, in one print; and in another as a "state caterpillar," the ring of the body composed of state offices, pensions and other sources of extravagant expenditure.

*Some idea of which may be formed from the few figures subjoined

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Government.
2,600 do.

1,500,

SHANK, the father of the present caricaturist, came before the world with a plate bordering upon servility to the triumphant minister. Pitt is represented as the royal extinguisher, putting out the flame of sedition. Bitter prints on the other side represent that minister as feeding (in consequence of the scarcity of bread) on gold; and others represent him as indulging in his favourite vice of the bottle. Gilray represents him as Bacchus, and his friend Dundas as Silenus.

To carry on the war new taxes were necessary, and an additional land tax was imposed. The people, smarting under their old burdens, resented this by naming Pitt Midas,' and saying, by their newspapers and caricatures, that he wished to turn everything he touched into gold; this idea is probably re-echoed by Cowper :

Ten thousand casks.

Touched by the Midas finger of the state, Bleed gold for ministers to sport away. We must pass over some years now; new taxes, new complaints, riots in the manufacturing districts, and the death of Burke, marked the passing years, and gave rise to caricatures more or less powerful. The Irish rebellion, and a perpetual and carefully stimulated fear of invasion occupied the English nation, which grew at last quiet under the continued war, and now and then hilar ious at the naval victories of Nelson,

John Bull is frequently represented as taking a "fricassee à la Nelson," composed of a course of French ships; and Buonaparte, mostly if not always in a ridiculous attitude and costume, appears disputing the world with John Bull. The Irish union, which took effect on Jan. 1, 1801, is chronicled by Gilray in a print called the "The Union Club," wherein Britannia and Hibernia, distinguished by their Shield and Harp, give each other the kiss of peace.

other; Mr. Pitt, in fact, although he puts on a bold countenance, is represented as almost sinking to the ground in his fright. In other prints, however, the conqueror of the greater part of Europe was represented as a mere pigmy compared to King George and his valiant Britons. In one, King George holds the Lilliputian hero in his hand, and looks at him with a magnifying glass; the print bears the name of "The King of Brobdignag and GulThe fashions of the day may be seen liver." Our readers will recollect that in all their elegance or monstrosity by Mr. Leech repeated the idea in Punch reference to some of the works of Gilray, some two or three years back, by rebut we can but refer to them, as they presenting the Duke of Wellington, would not be understood, unless accom- looking at General Tom Thumb dressed panied by illustrative cuts. Ballooning as Buonaparte; the print was called the figures as "Folly in a new shape" in" Giant and the Dwarf." 1785, and the rage for masquerades, and the inordinate passion for gaming which some ladies of title indulged in, such as Lady Buckinghamshire, Lady Luttrell, and Lady Archer, were severely and justly dealt with by the caricaturists. Other subjects which we meet with, thereby commemorated are, the "Infant Roscius," the management of Drury Lane, the O. P. riots, and Boydell's Shakespere Gallery. A glimpse into the passing follies of the day, is by no means the least instructive or amusing lesson which may be gathered from the pages of the caricaturists.

ROWLANDSON, an artist of eccentric power, but notorious for a vulgar and almost Dutch freedom of drawing, had made his appearance on the field of politics, in 1799, but Gilray for some years afterwards bore off the greater share of work. In 1802 the peace which took place between France and England was celebrated by that artist, as "The First Kiss these ten years" a French citizen is embracing a fair English dame, and saying, "Madame, permit me to seal on your divine lips everlasting attachment." This caricature enjoyed vast popularity, many copies were sent to France, and Buonaparte was, it is said, highly amused by it. In 1803, the first consul again declared war with England, and prepared to invade her. Gilray's print on the question represents Pitt on one side the Channel and Buonaparte on the other; the latter distinguished by his immense sword and enormous cocked hat. The print is called, "Armed Heroes," and both the personages are terribly afraid of each

From this period to his death, the great majority of the works of Gilray satirize the Emperor Napoleon; one of them, published towards the latter end of 1803, is called the " Hand-writing on the Wall," and predicts the approaching downfall of Napoleon; his empress, his sisters, and his generals are bitterly satirized by its forcible drawing, and it is said that few things annoyed the great conqueror so much as a copy of this print which was shewn to him. Pitt in opposition, the new coalition, the volunteers, and other events make up subjects of the numerous plates of the indefatigable artist. The appro ing death of Fox did not shield that great statesman from these pictorial attacks; a plate, called "Visiting the Sick," published on the 28th July, represents Fox on the bed of death, mourned over by few, and insulted by others. The 13th of September found that great man no more; he was succeeded as foreign secretafy by Lord Grey, then Lord Howick. The name of that statesman, and of Sir Francis Burdett, in the field of politics, and of the elder Cruikshank, and of Rowlandson in the field hitherto so industriously occupied by Gilray himself, brings us down to comparatively recent times.

Gilray's labours to the last turned against Napoleon, representing him as entering into the "Valley of the Shadow of Death" in his struggle with the northern powers; how truly and clearly foreseen, we need not here remark; as bound in chains to the triumphal car of Great Britain; and as suffering every possible misfortune which the artist could invent. In 1809, the pencil of

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elevation of his countrymen, That man is

GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.

The name, the reader will at once perceive, is Scotch. A generation of the Cruikshanks flourished in the '45, and the grandfather of the present artist went out with Charles Edward, and, like that once popular prince, finished his campaigns on Drummossie Moor. Tradition states that members of the artist's mother's family, were also active in aiding the young fugitive, and in

the caricaturist ceased from its labours. Sayer had already given over, and others were rising, but none with the graphie force of Gilray; he would have still monopolised the field, had not his own acts destroyed him. He had an almost insatiate thirst for spirits, and left his own publisher with whom he lodged, in Bond-street, frequently, to sell plates to Fores, in Piccadilly, for the purpose of procuring ardent drink with the money. His last work is dated 1811, after that he sank into a state of mingled delirium and imbecility, and attempted suicide, by endeavouring shielding and hiding him in his many to throw himself out of window. For four years he lingered in this state, and finally died on the first of June 1815, and was buried in the churchyard of St. James's, Piccadilly, near the rectory house.

perilous escapes. These circumstances no doubt impoverished his family, and the father of Isaac came from Edinburgh to London, like hundreds of his countrymen, bent upon trying his fortune. He left his son an orphan in London, and there, in the parish of Bloomsbury, his son George was born, in the year 1794. He was the second son of Isaac Cruikshank, caricaturist and engraver, having for an elder brother Robert, a follower of the same art, and once known popularly as the illustrator of Coleridge's "Devil's Walk," and of "Monsieur Tonson," about the eccentric author of which Jerdan discourses pleasantly in his recent autobiography.

James Gilray had occupied the public almost incessantly with his plates from the year 1779 to the year 1811. His drawings have force, great skill, and display an immense power of invention. He lived in a stirring political time, and seems to have hit upon popular subjects with an unerring sagacity. His politics were most probably liberal, but as he sold the efforts of his pencil, and perhaps cared most for the side which paid best, it is somewhat difficult to In that art in which he was to gain judge. He was a man who had, how-distinction, George Cruikshank had litever humble some may deem his wea- tle or no instruction. He picked up his pon, an immense influence on his fel-knowledge by seeing his father work, low countrymen, and through them on and once in his early life made a drawthe world, and in looking over, even ing from a cast, as a specimen to obtain casually as we have done, his numerous his admission as a student of the Royal works, we cannot but endorse the Academy, under the superintendence of opinion of Croker, expressed in his Fuseli, a learned professor, who with "New Whig Guide," "that political his nine languages, might well claim to caricatures are parts of political history. be classed amongst those who are acThey supply information as to the percredited sonal habits, and often as to the motives and objects of public men, which cannot be found elsewhere."

Well versed in Greek, deep men of letters.

The classes of such a professor were To trace the lives of Rowlandson and sure to be well attended, and when Fuof Isaac Cruikshank, to give each par-seli received the drawing of Cruikshank ticular of Woodward and of Bunbury, the room was crowded. He examined would be no easy task, neither, it must the drawing, was well pleased with it, be confessed, would it be a grateful one. and sent down the following characterBut there is one man whom we must istic message to the draughtsman, "Tell not omit, and whose works are the most him, he may come up, but he must universal of any caricaturist who has fight for a seat." The young artist did yet existed, one whose works and name fight for room that evening, but engageare a synomyn for popularity, and ments which brought in money, occuwho has exercised the very great pied his time fully, and he neglected to talent he possesses, not alone in creat-go any more. While upon the subject ing laughter and dispersing care, but we may as well mention that the second also for the moral improvement and drawing for admission to the Royal

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