Part 13 (2/2)

YEARS OF TURBULENCE

In marked contrast to the preceding lengthy period of tranquillity, the closing decade of the nineteenth century witnessed a succession of wars and international crises well calculated to stimulate the pencils of every cartoonist worthy of the name. One has only to recall that to this period belong the conflict between China and j.a.pan, the brief clash between Greece and Turkey, the beginning of our policy of expansion, with the annexation of Hawaii, our own war with Spain, and England's protracted struggle in the Transvaal, to realize how rich in stirring events these few years have been, and what opportunities they offer for dramatic caricature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I. Absolute Monarchy. II. Const.i.tutional Government.

III. Middle Cla.s.s Republic. IV. Social Republic.

A Present Day Lesson.

_From the ”Revue Encyclopedique.”_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A _Punch_ slip: a cartoon published in antic.i.p.ation of an event which did _not_ occur--viz. the meeting of General Gordon and General Stewart at Khartoum.

_By Tenniel, February 7, 1885._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Telegram, Thursday morning, Feb. 5._--”Khartoum taken by the Mahdi. General Gordon's fate uncertain.”

_By Tenniel, February 14, 1885._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The London ”Times” and the Spurious Parnell Letters.]

A cartoon produced in an earlier chapter, ent.i.tled ”Waiting,” showed General Gordon gazing anxiously across the desert at the mirage which was conjured up by his fevered brain, taking the clouds of the horizon to be the guns of the approaching British army of relief. Early in 1885 the relief expedition started under the command of General Henry Stewart, and on February 7 there was published in _Punch_ the famous cartoon ”At Last,” showing the meeting between Gordon and the relieving general. This was a famous _Punch_ slip. That meeting never occurred. For on February 5, two days before the appearance of the issue containing the cartoon, Khartoum had been taken by the Mahdi.

The following week Tenniel followed up ”At Last” with the cartoon ”Too Late,” which showed the Mahdi and his fanatic following pouring into Khartoum, while stricken Britannia covers her eyes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tenniel's Famous Cartoon at the Time of Bismarck's Retirement.]

The _Times_ challenge to Charles Stewart Parnell was, of course, recorded in the caricature of _Punch_. The ”Thunderer,” it will be remembered, published letters, which it believed to be genuine, involving Parnell in the murders of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr.

Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin, in 1882. When these letters were proved to have been forged by Pigot, _Punch_ published a cartoon showing the _Times_ doing penance. Both of these cartoons were by Tenniel. ”The Challenge” appeared in the issue of April 30, 1887, and ”Penance”

almost two years later, March 9, 1889.

[Ill.u.s.tration: L'enfant Terrible.

The Baccarat Scandal at Tranby Croft in 1891.

_From ”Puck.”_]

A cartoon which marked Tenniel's genius at its height, a cartoon worthy of being ranked with that which depicted the British Lion's vengeance on the Bengal Tiger after the atrocities of the Sepoy rebellion, was his famous ”Dropping the Pilot,” which was published on March 29, 1890, after William II. of Germany had decided to dispense with the services of the Iron Chancellor. Over the side of the s.h.i.+p of state the young Emperor is leaning complacently looking down on the grim old pilot, who has descended the ladder and is about to step into the boat that is to bear him ash.o.r.e. The original sketch of this cartoon was finished by Tenniel as a commission from Lord Rosebery, who gave it to Bismarck. The picture is said to have pleased both the Emperor and the Prince.

[Ill.u.s.tration: William Bluebeard.

”My first two wives are dead. Take care, Hohenlohe, lest the same fate overtake you.”

_From ”La Silhouette” (Paris)._]

The baccarat scandal at Tranby Croft and the subsequent trial at which the then Prince of Wales was present as a witness was a rich morsel for the caricaturist in the early summer of 1891. Not only in England, but on the Continent and in this country, the press was full of jibes and banter at the Prince's expense. The German comic paper, _Ulk_, suggested pictorially a new coat-of-arms for his Royal Highness in which various playing cards, dice, and chips were much in evidence. In another issue the same paper gives a German reading from Shakspere in which it censures the Prince in much the same manner that Falstaff censured the wild Harry of Henry IV. The London cartoonists all had their slings with varying good nature. _Fun_ represented the Prince as the Prodigal Son being forgiven by the paternal British nation. Point to this cartoon was given by the fact that the pantomime ”L'Enfant Prodigue” was being played at the time in the Prince of Wales'

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