The First Conscript of France.
The authentic portraits and contemporary descriptions of the first Napoleon show us that he was a man whose appearance was marred by no particular eccentricity of feature, and that the cartoons of which he is the principal subject are largely allegorical, or inspired by the artist's intensity of hatred. One German caricaturist, by a subtle distortion and a lengthening of the cheeks and chin, introduced a resemblance to a rapacious wolf while preserving something of the real likeness. But in the goggle-eyed monsters of Gillray there is nothing save the hat and the uniform which suggests the real Napoleon. It was a sort of incarnation of Beelzebub which Gillray wished to draw and did draw, a monstrosity designed to rouse the superstitious hatred of the ignorant and lower classes of England, and to excite the nation to a warlike frenzy. The caricature aimed at Bonaparte's great rival, the conqueror of Waterloo, was produced in more peaceful times, was the work of his own countryman, was based mainly on party differences, and, naturally enough, it was in the main good-natured and kindly. Wellington in caricature may be summed up by saying that it was all simply an exaggeration of the size of his nose. The poire drawn into resemblance of the countenance of Louis Philippe was originally innocent enough, and had it been entirely ignored by the monarch and his ministers, would probably have had no political effect, and in the course of a few years been entirely forgotten. But being taken seriously and characterized as seditious, it acquired an exaggerated significance which may almost be said to have led to the revolution of 1848 and the establishment of the Second Republic. From the rich material offered by our War of Secession the caricaturists drew little more than the long, gaunt figure and the scraggy beard of Lincoln, and the cigar of General Grant. The possibilities of this cigar, as they probably would have been brought out by an artist like Daumier, have been suggested in an earlier chapter. It was the goatee of Louis Napoleon that was exaggerated to give a point to most of the cartoons in which he was a figure, although during the days of his power there were countless caricatures which drew suggestions from the misadventures of his early life, his alleged experiences as a waiter in New York and a policeman in London, his escape from prison in the clothes of the workman Badinguet (a name which his political enemies applied to him very freely), and the fiasco at Strasburg. No men of their time were more freely caricatured than Disraeli in England and Thiers in France, for no men offered more to the caricaturist, Disraeli being at once a Jew and the most exquisite of affected dandies, and Thiers being, with the exception of Louis Blanc, the smallest man of note in France. In one cartoon in Punch, Disraeli was figured as presiding over "Fagin's Political School." In another he was represented as a hideous Oriental peri fluttering about the gates of Paradise. Thiers's large head and diminutive stature are subjects of countless cartoons, in which he is shown emerging from a wineglass or concealed in a waistcoat pocket, although Punch once humorously depicted him as Gulliver bound down by the Lilliputians.
The Situation.
By Gill.
If one were to attempt to draw a broad general distinction between French and English caricature throughout the century, it would be along the line of English superiority in the matter of satirizing great events, French superiority in satirizing great men. The English cartoonists triumphed in the art of crowded canvases and effective groupings; the French in seizing upon the salient feature of face or form, and by a grotesque distortion, a malicious quirk, fixing upon their luckless subject a brand of ridicule that refused to be forgotten. Although the fashion of embodying fairly recognizable portraits of prominent statesmen in caricatures became general in England early in the century, for a long time the effect was marred by their lack of facial expression. From situations of all sorts, ranging from high comedy to deadly peril and poignant suffering, the familiar features of British statesmen look forth placid, unconcerned, with the fixed, impersonal stare of puppets in a Punch-and-Judy show. No French artist ever threw away his opportunities in such a foolish, spendthrift manner. Even where the smooth, regular features of some especially characterless face gave little or nothing for a satiric pencil to seize upon, a Daumier or a Gill would manufacture a ludicrous effect through the familiar device of a giant's head on a dwarf's body, or the absurdly distorted reflection of a cylindrical mirror. But by the time hostilities broke out between France and Prussia facial caricature had become an important factor in the British school of satire, as exemplified in the weekly pages of Punch.