Part 10 (1/2)

_By Daumier in ”Charivari.”_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Prussia Annexes Alsace.

_By Cham in ”Charivari.”_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Oh, no! Prussia has not completely slain her. It is not yet time to go to her aid.”

_By Cham in ”Charivari.”_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Adieu!”

”No, 'au revoir.' Visits must be returned.”

_By Cham._]

Yet to those whose sympathies were with France during the struggle of 1870-71, there is a distinct pathos in the change that is seen in the later work of Daumier--not a personal pathos, but a pathos due to the changed condition of the country which it reflects. The old dauntless audacity, the trenchant sarcasm, the mocking, light-hearted laughter, is gone. In its place is the haunting bitterness of an old man, under the burden of an impotent wrath--a man who, for all that he dips his pencil in pure vitriol, cannot do justice to the nightmare visions that beset him. There is no better commentary upon the pervading feeling of helpless anger and outraged national pride of this epoch than in these haunting designs of Daumier's. They are the work of a man tremulous with feverish indignation, weird and ghastly conceptions, such as might have emanated from the caldron of Macbeth's witches. The backgrounds are filled in with solid black, like a funeral pall; and from out the darkness the features of Bismarck, of Von Moltke, of William I., leer malevolently, distorted into hideous, ghoulish figures--vampires feasting upon the ruin they have wrought.

French liberty, in the guise of a wan, emaciated, despairing figure, the personification of a wronged and outraged womanhood, haunts Daumier's pages. At one time she is standing, bound and gagged, between the gaping muzzles of two cannon marked, respectively, ”Paris, 1851,” and ”Sedan, 1870,” and underneath the laconic legend, ”Histoire d'un Regne.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: Souvenirs and Regrets.

_By Aranda._]

Another cartoon shows France as a female Prometheus bound to the rock, her vitals being torn by the Germanic vulture. A number of these cartoons, all of which appeared in _La Charivari_, treat bitterly of the disastrous results of the twenty years during which Louis Napoleon was the Emperor of the French. The sketch called ”This Has Killed That” has allusion to the popular ballot which elected the Prince-President to the throne. A gaunt, angry female figure is pointing with one hand to the ballot-box, in which repose the ”Ours” which made Louis Napoleon an Emperor, and with the other to the corpses on the battlefield where the sun of his empire finally sets.

”This,” she cries, ”has killed that.” The same idea suggested a somewhat similar cartoon, in which a French peasant, gazing at the sh.e.l.l-battered ruins of his humble home, exclaims in the peasant's ungrammatical _patois_: ”And it was for this that I voted 'Yes.'”

Still more grim and ominous is the cartoon showing a huge mouse-trap with three holes. The mouse-trap represents the Plebiscite. Two of the holes, marked respectively, ”1851” and ”1870,” have been sprung, and each has caught the throat of a victim. The third, however, still yawns open warningly, with the date not completely filled in.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Show of the Napoleonic Mountebanks.

_From a caricature by Hadol._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Prussia introducing the New National a.s.sembly to France.

_By Daumier in ”Charivari.”_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Let Us eat the Prussian.”

_By Andre Gill._]

Still another cartoon, thoroughly characteristic of Daumier's later manner, is ”The Dream of Bismarck,” one which touches upon the idea which has been used allegorically in connection with every great conqueror whose wake is marked by the strewn corpses of fallen thousands. In it Bismarck, frightfully haggard and ghastly of countenance, is sleeping in his chair, while at his side is the grim figure of Death bearing a huge sickle and pointing out over the b.l.o.o.d.y battlefield.

Of the younger group of cartoonists none is more closely connected with the events of the _annee terrible_ than ”Cham,” the Comte de Noe.

The name Noe, it will be remembered, is French for Noah, just as Cham is the French equivalent of Ham, second son of the patriarch of Scripture. The Comte de Noe was also second son of his father, hence the appropriateness of his pseudonym. As a caricaturist, Cham was animated by no such seriousness of purpose as formed the inspiration of Daumier; and this was why he never became a really great caricaturist. It was the humorous side of life, even of the tragedies of life, that appealed to him, and he reflected it back with an incisive drollery which was irresistible. He was one of the most rapid and industrious of workers, and found in the events of _l'annee terrible_ the inspiration of a vast number of cartoons. The looting propensities of the Prussians were satirized in a sketch showing two Prussian officers looking greedily at a clock on the mantelpiece in a French chateau. ”Let us take the clock.” ”But peace has already been signed.” ”No matter. Don't you see the clock is slow?” The German acquisition of the Rhenish provinces is summed up in a picture which shows a German officer attaching to his leg a chain, at the end of which is a huge ball marked Alsace. The siege having turned every Parisian into a nominal soldier, this condition of affairs is. .h.i.t off by Cham in a cartoon underneath which is written: ”Everybody being soldiers, the officers will have the right to put through the paces anyone whom they meet in the streets.” The sketch shows a cook in the usual culinary costume, and bearing on his head a flat basket filled with kettles and pans, marking time at the command of an officer. The att.i.tude of England during the war seemed to the caricaturist perfidious, after the practical aid which France had rendered Albion in the Crimea. Cham hits this off by representing the two nations as women, Britannia looking ironically at prostrate France and saying: ”Oh, no! Prussia has not yet entirely killed her! So it is not yet time to go to her aid.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: New Design for a Hand Bell proposed by ”Charivari” for the Purpose of Reminding the a.s.sembly that Prussian Troops still hold French Territory.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Germany: ”Farewell, Madame, and if--”