Bunbury's caricatures commence as early as his foreign tour, though some of the best refer to his later military life in England; especially to the time when he was in camp at Coxheath, during the troubled days of the American War. For we have now left far behind the days of Swift and Bolingbroke and Oxford, of Marlborough's battles, and of the great political settlement which marked the Hanoverian succession. Dettingen and Fontenoy are now old soldiers' tales, and the invasion of England by Charles Stuart, the younger Pretender—in which connection we may remember Hogarth's print of the march of the Guards to Finchley—lies equally behind us: we have passed through the long Ministry of Walpole and that of the elder Pitt, we have seen the war with France, and been stirred by Wolfe's victory and heroic death upon the Heights of Abraham. In a word, we have turned the corner with the year of our artist's birth, and are going downwards into the latter half of the eighteenth century.
George III. has now taken his father's place upon the throne of England: the Tories have returned again to be a power in political life as in the days of Bolingbroke, and against the "King's friends," the party subservient to Court influence, there appears in the nation a very strong democratic movement with John Wilkes as its leader and idol. Meanwhile the fatal policy of Grenville had led to the alienation of the great American colonies, and the passing of the Stamp Act in 1765 brought a complete rupture. But this phase of politics enters but little into our present subject. It is of more interest to inquire, apart from this complex turbulent world of home or foreign politics, what were the people themselves in their home life, their outdoor life, their tastes, aspirations, sympathies, social surroundings? I think we shall get an answer to some of these questions—an answer none the less valuable because it comes to us indirectly—from the study of Henry William Bunbury's social caricatures. These appear to commence with (or are in some special cases even earlier than) his Grand Tour. The delightful "Courier François"—published by Bretherton at 134 New Bond St.—belongs surely to this period; and Thomas Wright, in his valuable "History of Caricature,"[[5]] seems to bear this out when he says of Bunbury that his earlier prints were etched and sold by James Bretherton, who published also the works of James Sayer—an artist whom we shall meet in our next chapter. In this print the "Courier" cracks a long whip as he covers the ground, mounted upon a steed almost as long, as tough and wiry-looking as himself. A short sword is at his side, and he wears enormous jack-boots. In the distance rise peaked mountains, perhaps those of Southern France or Savoy; and the inn to which he seems bound bears the legend, Poste Royale, with the three fleur-de-lys. Our Courier belongs evidently to the ancien règime, and might indeed have stepped—or galloped—to us out of Sterne's "Sentimental Journey." The drawing of these prints is clumsy and coarse in technique, though full of character; and, in fact, Bunbury, who seems to have begun to publish as early as 1771,[[6]] when he was only twenty-one years of age, had little knowledge or skill in engraving, and seems, after some preliminary efforts which were not very successful, to have entrusted the most of his work to be engraved by other hands. Thus James Bretherton, who was an engraver as well as a publisher, was engaged on Bunbury's prints from 1772 onwards; though later we shall find Rowlandson working as an engraver on Bunbury's humorous sketches, and necessarily, from his strong individuality, imparting to them much of his own character.
The pendant to the print just described is the "Courrier Anglois," and this was in fact both engraved and published by Bretherton in 1774 (it bears the inscription, H. W. Bunbury, delineavit; J. Bretherton, fecit). In fine contrast to the hurry of the lean Frenchman his English counterpart ambles leisurely along, as if time were for him a matter of entire indifference; his horse is loaded with a heavy pack, against which the rider comfortably leans, while he puts a long horn to his lips. He has no sword, or any weapon of defence; but the two grisly figures by the roadside dangling on a gibbet, and his own inimitable expression of contented ease, seem to imply that travelling is secure for him, and Justice prompt and keen-eyed.
To this period of the Grand Tour belong also, in my judgment, the "Tour to Foreign Parts" (drawn by Bunbury, engraved by Bretherton, published in 1799 by J. Harris of Cornhill), the "Cuisine de la Poste," or "The Kitchen of a French Post House" (H. Bunbury, invt., published 1771 by Harris), "The Englishman at Paris," 1767, the earliest in date of these (Mr. Bunbury, del.; Js. Bretherton, fecit, published 1799 by J. Harris), and lastly the "View on the Pont Neuf at Paris" (H. W. Bunbury, invt. The engraver's name, in my example, is cut). These prints are as precious in their detailed evidence of costume and methods of life as they are amusing. They are snapshots caught—not with a camera, but with an eye and pencil which were almost as quick—of the life of that old monarchic France as it was seen by the English traveller, posting along the great high-roads, or taking his walk through the town. Soon, very soon, all that life was to be swept away in the hurricane of political passion, never in any of its quainter features to return; that is why these jottings of our artist are to the student of this period so inestimably precious.
Our travellers, three in number, and evidently portrayed from the life, have just descended ("A Tour in Foreign Parts") from the two-horse chaise, which the postilion is driving into the yard. The smallest of the three Englishmen, with "Chesterfield's Letters" under his arm, approaches the obsequious host of the "Poste Royale" with a conciliatory smile; the while the landlady is engaged in an assault upon her hen-roost, and the servant-girl seems to aim at a similar result with the domestic cats.
And now ("La Cuisine de la Poste") we are introduced to the interior. The pot-au-feu hangs in the great chimney over the blazing logs; the village gossips are there—the postilion in his clumsy jack-boots, the housewife, and the curé with a friend sipping his glass of red wine—and on the walls Louis le bien-aimé, with baton and perruque, is balanced by Sanctus Paulus, with a sword much bigger than himself, or by the "Ordonnances de Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul, Grand Maître des Postes et Relais de France." Or, again, our travellers have arrived at last in the great city ("Englishman at Paris"), and take their walk in the streets of La Ville Lumiére. A fat monk and a thin peasant seem both to regard our tourist with astonishment; a dandy of the period is driving his chariot with a lackey hanging on behind, and the indispensable perruquier is hurrying to an appointment. Or—in its way most curious of all—we see the Pont Neuf of those old days, with the costumes and characters which then thronged its thoroughfare. Huge muffs seem to have been then the fashion, often combined in use with umbrellas, such as we now should call Japanese sunshades; the perruquier here, too, must have his muff, though both hands are filled with the shaving-pot and curling tongs; the trim abbé in his short cassock, even the truculent-looking postilion are all provided. In the corner a poodle is being clipped, just as we may see to-day beside the Seine, and is loudly vociferating his complaints; and, above all, we see the quaint ensign of the trade, which combined the shoeblack's lower art with that of the dog-barber.
Aux Quarante Lions
St. Louis
Décrotte à l'Anglaise
et Tond des Chiens
Proprement
Allons, Messeigneurs, Allons.
We must turn now to our artist's later prints of English eighteenth-century social life, which are as full of humorous observation, even though they have not the special interest of these notes on old France. For, like Collet and Sandby, his predecessors in English caricature, Bunbury gave but little attention to political caricature. Sandby belongs almost (b. 1725) to the later years of Hogarth's ascendency; and, though not a professional caricaturist, being perhaps annoyed at that artist's depreciation of other painters, many of his caricatures are directed against Hogarth himself. But Sandby's best claim to our interest lies outside our present subject; for his landscape work in steel engraving, in aquatint and oil-colour, had led him up to the discovery of the beauty and interest of water-colour painting, in which art he may claim to be a pioneer. He outlived John Collet, who had been born in the same year (1725) as himself, and is said to have been a pupil of Hogarth, though Lambert, a landscape-painter, is mentioned as giving him his first instructions. Certainly there is something which recalls Hogarth in his drawings, which deal, as I have said, with social satire rather than politics. "A Disaster" treats of a lady who has lost both hat and wig together by the same gust of wind; her footman behind has caught one of these in each hand, and the rustics, who have preserved nature's covering, laugh at her plight. Collet's picture of "Father Paul in his Cups, or The Private Devotions of a Convent," was one of a series by our artist intended to illustrate Sheridan's comedy of "The Duenna," produced in 1775. This was close upon the period of Lord Gordon's riots (1780), and the "No Popery" feeling which then prevailed finds illustration in this work of Collet's. Like Sandby, he worked also in water-colour, and two of his sketches in this medium are mentioned by Bryan as in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
We have now returned with Bunbury from his "grand tour" abroad, and have to study him at his best in his sketches of English social life in town and country. He was probably himself a good horseman, and at any rate understood, as thoroughly as even Caran d'Ache himself, the humorous side of the equestrian art. A whole series of his smaller prints deal with the rider and his steed. "How to pass a carriage," "How to lose your way," "How to travel on two legs in a frost," are among the best of these. Another clever print shows the rider of a pulling animal with a mouth of cast-iron just clearing an old woman's barrow; while among the larger prints we have "Richmond Hill," "Hyde Park," "Coxheath Ho," and "Warley Ho," and his inimitable print of a "Riding House," published by Bretherton in 1780.
Bunbury's caricatures of military subjects naturally connect themselves with the period when he was actively connected with the Suffolk County Militia, more especially when, in 1778, he was in camp at Coxheath at the time of the war in America.