Sufferings endured by a Prisoner of War. (From Gil Blas, Madrid, September, 1870.)
Among the numerous colored engravings which reflect upon, or, rather glorify, the frailty of women is one which can with difficulty be understood by Protestants. A girl is about to go to bed, and is saying a prayer beginning, "With God I lie down, with God I rise, with the Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost!" The joke does not appear at the first glance, for there is no one else in the bedroom, unless there is some one in the curtained bed. We discover, at length, lying near her feet, a pair of man's boots!
Nothing is sacred to these savage caricaturists of the French school. Another colored picture in El Mundo Cómico is called "Absence," and is designed to exhibit the sorrow of a woman at the absence of her lover in the wars. She says: "Poor Louis! I am here alone, forsaken, and he is pursuing the insurgents in the mountains. Does he remember me?" The innocent reader may well ask, What is the comedy of the situation? The woman in this scene is sitting on the edge of her bed, nearly naked, taking off her earrings, with other finery of her trade lying about on the table and the floor.
After running through a volume of this periodical, we are prepared to believe the descriptions given of society in the Spanish capital by the correspondent of the London Times during the early months of Alfonso's "reign." Speaking of a monstrous scandal inculpating the king, he wrote: "In a profligate, frivolous, and gossiping capital like Madrid, where every one seems intent upon political plotting, debauchery, and idleness, there is no scandal, no invention of malice too gross and improbable for acceptance, provided those attacked are well known. The higher his or her rank, the greater is the cynical satisfaction with which the tale of depravity is retailed by the newsmongers in café, tertulia, and club."
Another comic weekly published at Madrid is called Gil Blas, Periódico Satírico. This is by far the least bad of the comic papers recently attempted in Spain. Many of its subjects are drawn from the politics of the period, and some of them appear to be very happily treated. The sorry adventures of Louis Napoleon and his son in the war between France and Prussia are presented with much comic effect. Queen Isabel and her hopeful boy figure also in many sketches, which were doubtless amusing to the people of Madrid when they appeared. The Duc de Montpensier and other possible candidates for the throne are portrayed in situations and circumstances not to be fully understood at this distance from the time and scene.
The Spanish caricatures given in this chapter, whatever the reader may think of them, were selected from about a thousand specimens; and if they are not the very best of the thousand, they are at least the best of those which can be appreciated by us.
Cuba had its comic periodical during the brief ascendency of liberal ideas in 1874. A Cuban letter of that year chronicles its suspension: "The comic weekly newspaper, Juan Palonio, has met its death-blow by an order of suspension for a month, and a strong hint to the director, Don Juan Ortega, that a trip to the Peninsula would be of benefit to his health. The immediate cause of this order was a cartoon, representing the arms of the captain-general wielding a broom, marked 'extraordinary powers,' and sweeping away ignorance, the insurrection, etc. There was nothing, in fact, to take umbrage at; but the cartoon served as a pretext to kill the paper, which was rather too republican in tone. The Government censor was removed from his position for the same reason, and a new one appointed."
In those countries long debauched by superstition, comic art has little chance; for if tyranny does not kill it, a dissolute public degrades it into a means of pollution.