DR. PERCY. "THE HOUSE UP."
From "Punch."
I only once caricatured Dr. Percy in Punch (December, 1886), after there had been a sort of earthquake in the Inner Lobby of the House, and the tesselated pavement was thrown up. I made a drawing, "The House up at last." Dr. Percy "is personally directing the improvements." It is interesting to know that some of the pavement taken up on that occasion is laid in the hall of an hon. Member's house in the country, not far from West Kirby, Cheshire.
MR. PUNCH'S PUZZLE-HEADED PEOPLE. MR. GOSCHEN.
From "Punch."
THE VILLAIN OF ART.
One frequently hears the remark, "Caricature is so ugly." Well, certainly pure caricature is the villain of art, and the popular draughtsman, like the popular actor, should, to remain popular in his work, always play the virtuous hero. If the leading actor must play the villain, he takes care to make up inoffensive and tame. So the villain caricaturist need not be "ugly"—but then he cannot be strong. Nor is it left to an actor—unless he be the star or actor-manager—to remain popular by being tame and pretty in every part. So is the caricaturist, if he is not the star, liable to be cast to play the villain whether he likes it or not, and if he is a genuine worker he will not shrink from the part, merely to remain popular and curry favour with those deserving to be satirised.
PUNCH'S PUZZLE-HEADED PEOPLE. "ALL HARCOURTS."
From "Punch."
Now in Punch, as I was cast for it, I played the villain's part. In doing so I was at times necessarily "ugly," and therefore to some unpopular. I confess I felt it my duty not to shrink from being "ugly," although whenever I could I introduced some redeeming element into my designs—the figure of a girl, allegorical of Parliament or whatever the "ugly" subject might happen to be—but in some of my Punch drawings this relief was impossible. For instance, the series of "Puzzle Heads," in each of which a portrait of the celebrity is built up of personal attributes, characteristics, or incidents in the career of the person represented, could not but be unpleasant pictures. Some subscribers threatened to give up the paper if they were continued; others became subscribers for these Puzzle Heads alone. It is ever so. The old saying, "One man's meat is another's poison," is as applicable to caricature as to anything else. It is impossible to please all tastes when catering for the large public, unless an editor is satisfied to be stereotyped and perfunctory; but Mr. Punch has made his name by his strength, not his weakness, and it may be safely inferred that no Tory thinks less of him for having used all his talent in attacking Benjamin Disraeli year after year as no man has been attacked before—or since—in his pages.
In looking through the volumes of Punch one is apt to forget that the strong situations and stirring events by which a caricaturist's hit is made effective at the time of publication fade from one's memory. The cartoon in all its strength remains a record of an event which has lost its interest. One cannot always realise that the drawing was only strong because the feeling and interest at the time of its conception demanded it. Allowance should therefore be made for the villain's ugly caricature, if it is a good drawing, prophetically correct, and therefore historically interesting.