It may be, of course, that the Process block of to-day will be found to be as full of romance to-morrow. Indeed we have already found some indications of this in a former chapter, and it is probably true that romance is as all-pervading in the mental as ether is in the physical world, and that it is only lack of the proper intellectual reagent that makes the discovery of it difficult.
However that may be, one thing is certain, that most of us find it easier to come at the “poetry of circumstance” when centuries or decades have left it behind than when it is at our immediate threshold.
In these days of lightning pictorial satire, when Monday’s political move is on Tuesday served up {194} in genial topsy-turvy by “F. C. G.” in the Westminster or “G. R. H.” in the Pall Mall, and when Punch’s weekly cartoon is voted seven days late by the Man in the Street, it is difficult for us to realise the shifts to which political satire was put when the laborious engraved or etched broadside was the quickest method of getting at the picture-loving masses. Just imagine the agony of impatience of the political satirist who had designed his broadside and had to await the tardy engraving of the copperplate, to be followed by the deliberate hand-printing and hand-painting of the impressions before they could be published, perhaps only to find in the end that the nine-days’ wonder was past, or that events had blunted his most telling points.
So, too, when satirist was employed against satirist, how hopeless it seemed for retaliation to follow swiftly enough upon the occasion to make any retort in kind worth while at all.
Then it was that the wit of man, quickened by necessity, conceived the clever stratagem of the adapted copperplate, of which it is here my purpose to give some remarkable examples. {195}
I fancy I see the victim of some shrewder libel than usual, with which the town has been flooded, pricking off in hot haste to the pictorial satirist in his pay, and demanding the production of a trenchant and immediate reply, so that the retort may be in the printsellers’ windows before the attack has had time to do its deadly work.
The satirist names a month as the earliest possible date. His employer curses him for a blundering slowcoach. Before a month is out the mischief will be done beyond repairing. And he is flinging himself out of the workshop when a happy thought comes with a flash into his head.
How about the copperplate of that broadside which fell so flat a year ago because of its tardiness? It was meant to be a counter-thrust to just such another attack as this, but it was a month too late. Is there no way of fitting a new barb on to the old arrow? Is there no way of adapting the year-old weapon to the present necessity?
And then there follows anxious discussion and careful examination. The head of A. burnished out here can be re-engraved in the similitude of B. {196} C. will stand as he is and do duty, with a new index number and altered footnote, for D. Here an inappropriate object can be replaced by a panel of appropriate verse. The inscriptions on the banderoles issuing from the characters’ mouths must be altered. And, hey presto! in the twinkling of a bedpost we have our answer ready for a not too critical public.
The original lampooner, who counted on a good month’s start, will be confronted with a retort before he has time to turn round. The whole town will be set buzzing about the successful ruse, and the laugh will be turned upon the aggressor.