Part 11 (1/2)
Nevertheless, to the close student of political history there is in the American cartoon of this period, with all its flamboyant colorings, its reckless exaggeration, its puerile animosity, material which the more sober and dignified British cartoon does not offer. It does not sum up so adequately the sober second thought of the nation, but it does keep us in touch with the changing mood of popular opinion, its varying pulse-beat from hour to hour. To glance over the old files throughout any one of the Presidential campaigns is the next best thing to living them over again, listening once more to the daily heated arguments, the inflammable stump speeches, the rancorous vituperation which meant so much at the time, and which seemed so idle the day after the election.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Poor France! The Branches are broken, but the Trunk still holds.”
_By Daumier in ”Charivari.”_]
It is not strange that during these years American cartoonists concerned themselves but little with matters outside of their own country. For more than a decade after the close of the Franco-Prussian War there were very few episodes which a.s.sumed international importance, and still fewer in which the United States had any personal interest. France was amply occupied in recovering from the effects of her exhaustive struggle; United Germany was undergoing the process of crystallizing into definite form. Europe, as a whole, had no more energy than was needed to attend to domestic affairs and to keeping a jealous eye upon English ambition in Egypt and Russian aggression in the Balkan States. For some little time after the French Commune echoes of that internecine struggle were still to be found in the work of caricaturists, both in France and Germany. Before taking final leave of that veteran French artist, Honore Daumier, it seems necessary to allude briefly to a few of the cartoons of that splendidly tragic series of his old age dealing with the France which, having undergone the horrors of the Germanic invasion and of the Commune, is shattered but not broken, and begins to look forward with wistful eyes to a time when she shall have recovered her strength and her prosperity. One of the most striking of these cartoons represents France as a deep-rooted tree which has been bent and rent by the pa.s.sing whirlwind. ”Poor France! The branches are broken, but the trunk holds always.” Simple as the design is, the artist by countless touches of light and of shadow has given it a somber significance which long remains in the memory. It was to Napoleon that Daumier bitterly ascribed the misfortunes of _La Patrie_, and in these cartoons he lost no opportunity of attacking Napoleonic legend. Stark and dead, nailed to the Book of History is the Imperial eagle. ”You will remain outside, nailed fast on the cover, a hideous warning to future generations of Frenchmen,” is Daumier's moral. Of brighter nature is the cartoon called ”The New Year.” It represents the dawning of 1872, and portrays France sweeping away the last broken relics of her period of disaster.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”You shall stay there, nailed to the Cover, a Warning to Future Generations of Frenchmen.”
_By Daumier in ”Charivari.”_]
In Germany, also, one finds a few tardy cartoons bearing upon Napoleon III. Even in the _Fliegende Blatter_, a periodical which throughout its history has confined itself, with few exceptions, to social satire, perennial skits upon the dignified Herr Professor, the self-important young lieutenant, the punctilious university student, one famous cartoon appeared late in the year 1871, ent.i.tled ”The Root of All Evil.” It portrayed Napoleon III., as a gigantic, distorted vegetable of the carrot or turnip order, his flabby features distended into tuberous rotundity, the familiar hall-mark of his sweeping mustache and imperial lengthened grotesquely into the semblance of a threefold root. Still better known is a series of cartoons which ran through half a dozen numbers of the _Fliegende Blatter_, ent.i.tled ”The Franco-Prussian War: A Tragedy in Five Acts,” in which the captions are all clever applications of lines from Schiller's ”Maid of Orleans”. As compared with the work of really great cartoonists, this series has little to make it memorable. But as an expression of a victorious nation's good-natured contempt, its tendency to view the whole fierce struggle of 1870-71 as an amusing farce enacted by a company of grotesque marionettes, it is not without significance and interest.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The New Year brings New Hope for France.
_By Daumier in ”Charivari.”_]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”The Root of all Evil.”
_From the ”Fliegende Blatter” in 1871._]
Almost as Germanic in sentiment and in execution as the ”Maid of Orleans” series in the _Fliegende Blatter_ was the curious little volume ent.i.tled ”The Fight at Dame Europa's School,” written and ill.u.s.trated by Thomas Nast. This skit, which was printed in New York after the close of the War, contained thirty-three drawings which are remarkable chiefly in that they are comparatively different from anything else that Nast ever did and bear a striking resemblance to the war cartoons of the German papers. The Louis Napoleon of this book is so much like the Louis Napoleon of the _Fliegende Blatter_ that one is bound to feel that one was the direct inspiration of the other. The text of the book, though nothing astonis.h.i.+ng, serves its purpose in elucidating the drawings. It tells of the well-ordered educational establishment kept by Dame Europa in which the five largest boys acted as monitors, to keep the unruly pupils in order.
These boys were Louis, William, Aleck, Joseph, and John. If a dispute arose among any of the smaller boys, the monitors had to examine into its cause, and, if possible, to settle it amicably. Should it be necessary to fight the matter out, they were to see fair play, stop the encounter when it had gone far enough, and at all times to uphold justice, and to prevent tyranny and bullying. In this work Master Louis and Master John were particularly prominent. There was a tradition in the school of a terrific row in times past, when a monitor named Nicholas attacked a very dirty little boy called Constantine. John and Louis pitched in, and gave Nicholas such a thras.h.i.+ng that he never got over it, and soon afterward left the school. Now each of the upper boys had a little garden of his own in which he took great pride and interest. In the center of each garden there was an arbor, fitted up according to the taste and means of its owner. Louis had the prettiest arbor of all, while that of John was a mere tool-house. When the latter wished to enjoy a holiday he would punt himself across the brook and enjoy himself in the arbor of his friend Louis. By the side of Louis's domain was that of William, who, though proud of his own garden, never went to work in it without casting an envious glance on two little flower beds which now belonged to Louis, but which ought by rights he thought to belong to him. Over these flower beds he often talked with his favorite f.a.g, a shrewd lad named Mark, full of deep tricks and dodges.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The whole spirit of these pictures, which appeared in the _Fliegende Blatter_ after the Napoleonic downfall in 1871, is a travesty on the splendid lines of Schiller in the ”Maid of Orleans”
(Jungfrau von Orleans).]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 294. La situation politique en France. (Novembre 1873.)
Caricature de Felix Regamey, publiee dans le _Harper's Weekly_ de New-York.]
”There is only one way to do it,” said Mark. ”If you want the flower beds, you must fight Louis for them, and I believe you will lick him all to smash; but you must fight him alone.”
”How do you mean?” replied William.
”I mean, you must take care that the other monitors don't interfere in the quarrel. If they do, they will be sure to go against you. Remember what a grudge Joseph owes you for the licking you gave him not along ago; and Aleck, though to be sure Louis took little Constantine's part against him in that great bullying row, is evidently beginning to grow jealous of your influence in the school. You see, old fellow, you have grown so much lately, and filled out so wonderfully that you are getting really quite formidable. Why, I recollect the time when you were quite a little chap!”
Thereupon the astute Mark designs a plan by which William may provoke the encounter while making Louis seem the aggressor. And so on, under the guise of fistfight between two schoolboys, Nast tells of all the events of the struggle of 1871; the outbreak of hostilities, the Baptism of Fire, Sedan, the German march on Paris, the Siege, and the different att.i.tudes a.s.sumed by the other monitors.
CHAPTER XXV
GENERAL EUROPEAN AFFAIRS
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”New Crowns for Old.”