Another interesting effect of the growing conservative spirit in caricature is seen in the gradual crystallization of certain definite symbolic types. Allusion has already been made, in earlier chapters of this work, to the manner in which the conception of John Bull and Uncle Sam and other analogous types, has been gradually built up by almost imperceptible degrees, each artist preserving all the essential work of his predecessor, and adding a certain indefinable something of his own, until a certain definite portrait has been produced, a permanent ideal, whose characteristic features the cartoonists of the future could no more alter arbitrarily than they could the features of Bismarck or Gladstone. And not only have these crystallized types become accepted by the nation at large,—not only is Uncle Sam the same familiar figure, tall and lanky, from the New York Puck to the San Francisco Wasp,—but gradually these national types have migrated and crossed the seas, and to-day they are the common property of comic artists of all nations. John Bull and the Russian Bear, Columbia and the American Eagle, are essentially the same, whether we meet them in the press of Canada, Australia, Cape Colony, or the United States. And for the very reason that there is so little variety in the obvious features, the mere physical contour, the subtler differences due to race prejudice and individual limitations are all the more significant and interesting. There are cases, and comparatively recent cases, too, where race-prejudice has found expression in such rampant and illogical violence as prompted many of the Spanish cartoons during our recent war over Cuba, in which Americans were regularly portrayed as hogs—big hogs and little hogs, some in hog-pens, others running at large—but one and all of them as hogs. The cartoonists of the Continent, Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians alike, have difficulty in accepting the Anglo-Saxon type of John Bull. Instead, they usually portray him as a sort of sad-faced travesty upon Lord Dundreary, a tall, lank, much bewhiskered "milord," familiar to patrons of Continental farce-comedy. But it is not in cases like these that race prejudice becomes interesting. There is nothing subtle or suggestive in mere vituperation, whether verbal or pictorial, any more than in the persistent representation of a nation by a type which is no sense representative. On the other hand, the subtle variations of expression in the John Bull of contemporary American artists, or the Uncle Sam of British caricature, will repay careful study. They form a sort of sensitive barometer of public sentiment in the two countries, and excepting during the rare periods of exceptional good feeling there is always in the Englishman's conception of Uncle Sam a scarce-concealed suggestion of crafty malice in place of his customary kindly shrewdness, while conversely, our portrayal of John Bull is only too apt to convert that bluff, honest-hearted country gentleman into a sort of arrogant blusterer, greedy for gain, yet showing the vein of cowardice distinctive of the born bully.
CHAPTER XXIX
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 Japan, 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.
I. Absolute Monarchy.
II. Constitutional Government.
III. Middle Class Republic.
IV. Social Republic.
A Present Day Lesson.
From the "Revue Encyclopédique."
