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."
Proudhon.
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 Traviès, 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 naïve 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.