Part 3 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Cossack Bite.
An american cartoon of the war of 1812.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: John Bull and the Alexandrians.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: John Bull's Troubles.
A caricature of the war of 1812.
_From the collection of the New York Public Library._]
CHAPTER VIII
THE ”POIRE”
Throughout the Napoleonic period England practically had a monopoly in caricature. During the second period, down to the year 1848, France is the center of interest. Prior to 1830, French political cartoons were neither numerous nor especially significant. Indeed they present a simplicity of imagination rather amusing as compared with the complicated English caricatures. A hate of the Jesuits, a mingling of liberalism, touched with Bonapartism, and the war of newspapers furnished the theme. The two symbols constantly recurring are the _girouette_, or weather-c.o.c.k, and the _eteignoir_, or extinguisher.
Many of the French statesmen who played a prominent part during the French Empire and after the Restoration changed their political creed with such surprising rapidity that it was difficult to keep track of their changes. They were accordingly symbolized by a number of weatherc.o.c.ks proportioned to the number of their political conversions, Talleyrand leading the procession, with not less than seven to his credit. The _eteignoir_ was constantly used in satire directed against the priesthood, the most famous instance appearing in the _Minerva_ in 1819. It took for the text a refrain from a song of Beranger. In this cartoon the Church is personified by the figure of the Pope holding in one hand a sabre, and, in the other, a paper with the words Bulls, crusades, Sicilian vespers, St. Bartholomew. Beside the figure of the Church, torch in hand, is the demon of discord. From the smoke of the torch of the demon various horrors are escaping. We read ”the restoration of feudal rights,” ”feudal privileges,”
”division of families.” Monks are trying to snuff out the memory of Fenelon, Buffon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montaigne, and other philosophers and thinkers. For ten years the caricaturists played with this theme.
A feeble forerunner of _La Caricature_, ent.i.tled _Le Nain Jaune_, depended largely for its wit upon the variations it could improvise upon the _girouette_ and upon the _eteignoir_.
Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that French art was quite dest.i.tute of humorists at the beginning of the century. M. Armand Dayot, in a monograph upon French caricature, mentions among others the names of Isabey, Boilly, and Carle Vernet as rivaling the English cartoonists in the ingenuity of their designs, and surpa.s.sing them in artistic finish and harmony of color. ”But,” he adds, ”they were never able to go below the surface in their satire. It would be a mistake to enroll in the hirsute cohort of caricaturists these witty and charming artists, who were more concerned in depicting the pleasures of mundane life than in castigating its vices and irregularities.” The 4th of November, 1830, is a momentous date in the history of French caricature. Prior to that time, French cartoons, such as there were, were studiously, even painfully, impersonal. Thackeray, in his delightful essay upon ”Caricatures and Lithography,” in the ”Paris Sketch Book,” describes the conditions of this period with the following whimsical allegory:
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Order of the Extinguishers.
_A typical French cartoon of the Restoration._]
”As for poor caricature and freedom of the press, they, like the rightful princess in a fairy tale, with the merry fantastic dwarf, her attendant, were entirely in the power of the giant who rules the land. The Princess, the press, was so closely watched and guarded (with some little show, nevertheless, of respect for her rank) that she dared not utter a word of her own thoughts; and, as for poor Caricature, he was gagged and put out of the way altogether.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Proudhon.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Digging the Grave.]
On this famous 4th of November, however, there appeared the initial number of Philipon's _La Caricature_, which was destined to usher in a new era of comic art, and which proved the most efficacious weapon which the Republicans found to use against Louis Philippe--a weapon as redoubtable as _La Lanterne_ of Henri Rochefort became under the Second Empire. Like several of his most famous collaborators, Charles Philipon was a Meridional. He was born in Lyons at the opening of the century. He studied art in the atelier of Gros. He married into the family of an eminent publisher of prints, M. Aubert, and was himself successively the editor of the three most famous comic papers that France has had, _La Caricature_, _Charivari_, and the _Journal pour Rire_. The first of these was a weekly paper. The _Charivari_ appeared daily, and at first its cartoons were almost exclusively political.
Philipon had gathered around him a group of artists, men like Daumier, Gavarni, Henry Monnier, and Travies, whose names afterward became famous, and they united in a veritable crusade of merciless ridicule against the king, his family, and his supporters. Their satire took the form of bitter personal attacks, and a very curious contest ensued between the government and the editorial staff of the _Charivari_. As Thackeray sums it up, it was a struggle between ”half a dozen poor artists on the one side and His Majesty Louis Philippe, his august family, and the numberless placemen and supporters of the monarchy on the other; it was something like Thersites girding at Ajax.” Time after time were Philipon and his dauntless aids arrested. More than a dozen times they lost their cause before a jury, yet each defeat was equivalent to a victory, bringing them new sympathy, and each time they returned to the attack with cartoons which, if more covert in their meaning, were even more offensive. Perhaps the most famous of all the cartoons which originated in Philipon's fertile brain is that of the ”Pear,” which did so much to turn the countenance of Louis Philippe to ridicule--a ridicule which did more than anything else to cause him to be driven from the French throne. The ”Pear” was reproduced in various forms in _La Caricature_, and afterward in _Le Charivari_. By inferior artists the ”Pear” was chalked up on walls all over Paris. The most politically important of the ”Poire” series was produced when Philipon was obliged to appear before a jury to answer for the crime of provoking contempt against the King's person by giving such a ludicrous version of his face. In his own defense Philipon took up a sheet of paper and drew a large Burgundy pear, in the lower parts round and capacious, narrower near the stalk, and crowned with two or three careless leaves. ”Is there any treason in that?” he asked the jury. Then he drew a second pear like the first, except that one or two lines were scrawled in the midst of it, which bore somehow an odd resemblance to the features of a celebrated personage; and, lastly, he produced the exact portrait of Louis Philippe; the well-known _toupet_, the ample whiskers--nothing was extenuated or set down maliciously. ”Gentlemen of the jury,” said Philipon, ”can I help it if His Majesty's face is like a pear?”
Thackeray, in giving an account of this amusing trial, makes the curious error of supposing that Philipon's _nave_ defense carried conviction with the jury. On the contrary, Philipon was condemned and fined, and immediately took vengeance upon the judge and jury by arranging their portraits upon the front page of _Charivari_ in the form of a ”Pear.” In a hundred different ways his artists rang the changes upon the ”pear,” and each new attack was the forerunner of a new arrest and trial. One day _La Caricature_ published a design representing a gigantic pear surmounting the pedestal in the Place de la Concorde, and bearing the legend, ”_Le monument expia-poire_.” This regicidal pleasantry brought Philipon once more into court. ”The prosecution sees in this a provocation to murder!” cried the accused.
”It would be at most a provocation to make marmalade.” Finally, after a picture of a monkey stealing a pear proved to be an indictable offense, the subject was abandoned as being altogether too expensive a luxury.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Facsimile of the Famous Defense presented by Philipon when on Trial for Libeling the King.
”Is it my fault, gentlemen of the jury, if his Majesty's face looks like a pear?”]
CHAPTER IX
THE BAITING OF LOUIS PHILIPPE
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Pious Monarch. Caricature of Charles X.]