BOOKS.
GILLRAY'S CARICATURES.*
THE present generation know little or nothing of one of the greatest caricaturists who ever lived,—James Gillray, whose powerful and humorous conceptions probably did as much to " temper " the narrow despotism of George 1II.'s reign as any explicit argument, criticism, or invective. A very striking selec- tion from the caricatures which used to make Mrs. Humphry's shop, first in the Strand, then in New Bond Street, then in Old Bond Street, and lastly in St. James's Street, the centre of political interest during the thirty years between 1780 and 1810, has been republished in this handsome volume, and edited by Mr. Thomas Wright. It only needs that absolute essential of all such collections, a good index,—this volume has not even a table of contents,—to make it one of the most amusing and valu- able illustrations of the social and political life of that generation which it is possible to conceive. Tenniel's and Leech's drawings in Punch would scarCely illustrate so fully and freely the life of the Met generation, as Gillray's caricatures did the social and political life of England during the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon. Severe as was the repression of that age, there was a licence per- mitted to the pencil greater than any enjoyed by the pen, for George III. and his Ministers, whatever their faults, were apparently too manly and thick-skinned to flinch from satire directed against their persons. Once only, as it would appear, was Gillray in danger of prosecution for the freedom of his drawing, and that was because he chose to parody a sacred subject, —a kind of bad taste much commoner in those days of loose, flippant scepticism than in these days of strict and serious scepticism. It was on the occasion of the birth of Princess Charlotte in 1796, when Gillray represented the Prince of Wales presenting his infant to Fox and Sheridan, who are paying it a kind of Oriental devotion. Mr. Wright quotes a statement that on this occasion Gillray escaped by accepting an offer of immunity from the Ministry of Mr. Pitt, and a pension
• 77te Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; telth the History of hi, Life and Times. Edited by Thomas Wright, Esq., MA., F.R.S. With 400 Illustrations. London : Chatto and Wh2dus.
with it, on condition that he would exert his talents on the side of Pitt's Government. If so, he escaped easily ; for as far as we can see, there is no marked change in the tone of his caricatures in 1796. Long before 1796, as soon as the French Revolution had begun to alarm England and to turn the tide against French sympathisers, Gillray had reflected the national tone, and bad thrown the influence of his caricatures on the side of order and loyalty. We do not notice any particular change in this respect in March, 1796. Pitt is still occasionally made personally ridiculous as before, and the British feeling, as, con- trasted with the Gallican feeling, is not given any stronger expres- sion than before. If Gillray entered into any contract with the Government in 1796, it was, as far as we can see, only a contract to do what, for three years at least before, he had done pretty steadily without any bribe. The bitterness of the attacks on George III. and his Court had ceased with the first development of the fierce revolutionary tone in France. From that time Gillray became as Conservative as the keen, satiric humour he possessed would ever have allowed him to be.
What is most remarkable in Gilkey is the extraordinary point which his sense of the grotesque adds to his satire. Usually the sense of the grotesque is hardly favourable to satire. It introduces an element of disproportion which is impartially distributed over the whole moral area delineated, and in which there is too much lightness of heart for grave satire. But Gillray's feeling for the grotesque seems always to have been edged with purpose. What can be more bitter than the grotesqueness of the caricature in which Thnrlow's quarrel with Pitt is painted as a parody on Milton's description of the strife between Satan and Death, Queen Charlotte, who protected Pitt and saved him from Thurlow's anger, appearing as Sin,—
" the snaky sorceress that sat Fast by Hell-gate, and kept the fated key," and who is holding back Pitt on the one side and Thurlow on the other ? The whole poison of the sarcasm is levelled here at the Queen. She is made at once ridiculous and terrible, absurd, fearful, and disgusting. It is evident that something in Queen Charlotte was particularly detestable to Gilkey. She appears again and again in his caricatures, and almost always is loaded with scorn. She is drawn, for instance, in a night-cap frying a sprat for an economi- cal supper, while King George, opposite her, toasts a muffin,—and gold is running out of both their pockets. The King's expression of delight in his little frugality is childish, but the Queen's is mean and hideous. The picture is a kind of wizened anticipation of the C harlotte in "Oliver Twist,"—Noah Claypole's companion and tool. The Queen appears again, recommending to the royalfamily to drink their tea without sugar, first for the benefit of the slaves, next (and chiefly) to save their dear father a little extra expense, and a more vulgar wheedling smile than Gillray has put on the Queen's face, as she tries to persuade her dear daughters to drink the nauseous fluid, it is impossible to conceive. Here, again, there is something almost pleasing in George's childish delight in the new plan, but his queen is made a gap-toothed old harridan, with a hypocritical would-be persuasiveness of the most repulsive kind, the more repulsive that all her daughters are very pretty, though decidedly scornful, as they try to acquiesce in their mother's wish. Again, observe the skill in pointing a grotesque concep- tion with which Pitt's head, just after the sudden growth of his political power, is made to resemble a mushroom, and the mixture of horror and of contempt excited by the little etching of Pitt and the Queen swinging as a pair of pendants strung up to the lamp-posts, while poor old George, with a mixture of confusion and wildness in his eyes, his bead held down by Sheridan to the block, is struggling to rise, while Fox wields the axe in a hesitating manner, and Priestley stands by as chaplain, with his pamphlet on the future state in his hand. The intention, of course, is bitterly anti-revo- lutionary; but the caricaturist manages to achieve with it a back-handed blow at the Court, for while Pitt swings with a kind of stately composure, the wretched Queen, her eyes starting from the socket, is struggling and gasping after the most unroyal fashion ; and George, though he cannot under- stand what is going on, and cries, "What! what ! what ! what is the matter now ? " is meant to be a subject of compassion, rather than of either respect or contempt. Even when there is nobody to satirise, Gillray's sense of the grotesque has an incisiveness about it which rather makes one shrink than laugh. Look at that wonderful impersonation of "the gout" on page 264 of this selection, where a hideous little demon of torture is digging his various fangs into a swollen human foot. The grinning demon is a curious compound of stings and hooks and teeth, with a tail reared up in the act to strike a new and deadly
blow on flesh already racked by all sorts of barbs and veno- mous talons. The picture is truly hideous, and shows a vivacity of impersonating faculty in relation to the detail of punishment which renders it no surprise to hear that the last part of Gilkey's. life was 'passed in a state of mental alienation. The mind that could have thrown itself with such awful force into a single kind of anguish, and represented it with such intense sense of its cruelty,. would hardly be likely to retain its general balance of judgment and sagacity under any serious falling off of physical power.,
The quietest kind of strength which Gillray shows is in the pictures of Napoleon as Gulliver before the King of Brobdingnag (George III.),—the pictures which first gained Bonaparte that. title of "Little Boney " which contributed so much to the sang-froid of England during her struggle against a military genius which quite awed the Continent. The amused microscopic attention which George gives to the little soldier's construction, as he holds him in his hand and gazes at him through a mag- nifying glass,—evidently straining his sight in order to see him,— and the general hilarity with which all the Court regards his pluck when he manages his boat in the tank with so much gallantry for the amusement of their Majesties and the Princesses, while the pager are getting up a gale by blowing into the sail to try hiaaddress,— are displayed with wonderful subtlety. In the latter picture George bends his eyes with a look of anxious amusement on the tank, as if he had some difficulty in keeping in sight the ,ininute helmsman as he is minding his tackle. Lord Salisbury, standing behind his Sovereign's chair, is evidently feeling the profoundest contempt for the whole affair, and amazed that the King can condescend to. look at such trifles, even for his amusement. In these pictures Gillray shows us how completely he can suppress all signs of the naturally nervous intensity of his genius for caricature, wherever the very idea of the picture requires an ideal sang-froid. But these kind of drolleries are rare with him. More characteristic of him ere such delineations as that of the Government of all the Talents,—first as a brood of sucking-pigs far too numerous for the exhausted sow,. which represents England,—this picture Gillray called "More' Pigs than Teats ;"—and next as the herd of swine into which the legion of devils has entered, the herd being represented as rushing fiercely down the hill into the lake. The contempt which breathes in these pictures is of a kind which hardly any one but Gillray could express. Never was any man's feeling for the grotesque turned into so sharp a weapon of attack. Or take the wonder- ful caricature of Pitt and Napoleon carving at the plum-pudding, —which represents the globe,—at the time that Napoleon made- overtures of peace to England, at the beginning of 1805. Pitt, with a sort of priggish formality, as if he were a mere servant,. doing the modestest thing in the world, is cutting off just half of the pudding, the hemisphere of sea, into which he is striking his trident, while Great Britain remains on the other half, of which he- is evidently intending to take the larger part for a second help- ing; Napoleon, with a lurid wildness of manner whiCh indicates. the gamester or the madman, is just carving away the better part of Europe, his fork being stuck very viciously into the centre of Hanover. The power of the caricature consists in the contrast- between the expressions of the two diners. Pitt is discharg- ing a formal duty with an air of decorous frigidity, his mouth shut with the primmest precision ; Napoleon is rolling his eyes. in lunatic extacy, and his parted lips are preparing greedily for a bite. The caricature could not have expressed with more deadly effect the contrast between the cool official routine that does big things without knowing it, and the glaring theatrical temper that broods on its own achievements, and is always trying to appear- to do even bigger things than it does.
But it must not be supposed that Gilkey did not caricature typically English deficiencies as successfully as ever he carica- tured those of foreigners. No conception of the smug English Philistine was ever more severe than his. The picture of the twopenny whist party, for instance, and that of the guests who are so much horrified at their hostess's getting up to ring the bell, that they spring to their feet in theatrics? dismay, upsetting everything, and making a very chaos of the room in their affected politeness, are wonderful caricatures of English vulgarities. Indeed, Gilkey's conception of John Ball is always in itself a satire, but just such a satire as England apparently likes to pass upon herself.
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