THE NEW POLITICAL CARICATURES.
OUR leading statesmen certainly appear to have been intended by nature expressly for caricature. They are almost all of them plain, they are many of them ugly, and all the most eminent of them have very dominant characteristics of countenance. An extraordinarily clever series of Caricatures has now been for some time appearing in an otherwise uninteresting journal called Vanity Fair, which nobody reads, but the cartoons of which everybody buys, borrows, or steals a gratuitous glance at in Messrs Smiths' railway stalls. Colour,—till lately, we suppose, unmanageable for a printed journal,—has been most effectively used to enhance the skilful exaggerations of the draughtsman. The artist seizes either on the peculiar hue of complexion, where the complexion is peculiar, or if not, upon any pallor or flush which is best calculated to serve as a foil to the expression of the countenance, and spreads it uniformly over the whole face. Of course, he exaggerates enormously the gait or gesture which is the most characteristic of the statesman to be caricatured, and in addition, he is extremely skilful in choosing the accessories which best enhance his intended effect. He makes very dexterous use of hats, chiefly to conceal the forehead, partly also,—and in this case he caricatures the hat itself, either magnifying it indefinitely or cutting it down to half its natural size,—to give a geographical effect to the person of the caricaturee, as though he inhabited his hat, as in Lord Russell's caricature, or as though his hat were a freak of nature, like a stone on "the bald top of an eminence," "wonder to all who do the same espy,"—out of connection, that is, with his person, and the result of some fortuitous concourse of civilization with huge natural objects, as in the caricature of Mr. Forster. Where he uses the hat for the purpose of hiding the forehead, which is usually his first and almost always a secondary object, the motive probably is to add to the grotesqueness of an energetic momentary expression by concealing all trace of past reflectiveness —of the permanent sources, the workshop, of the eagerness or
incisiveness of the speaking face, —just as the top-royal sails of a ship secu moving along just above the horizon, and therefore without the supporting masts and hull, always give to a landsman a certain effect of preternatural motion. But in some cases the caricaturist abjures the hat, and whenever he does so, it is because the pose of the forehead and hair, instead of balancing the peculiar expression of the face, as is apt to be the case, heightens it. This is particularly the case with Lord Granville, Lord Clarendon, the Duke of Argyll, Mr. Cardwell, and Lord Westbury. Lord Granville's coaxing irony of expression, the display of the whites of his eyes with an amiably dangerous sparkle in them, the finesse of his gesture as he connects the tips of the fingers and thumb of the one hand with the corresponding tips of the other, the pudgy effect of the bland cheeks, and mouth parted in a halfanxious smile, and of the upper figure tapering off downwards to feet which scorn to support the man in a very unstable position of equilibrium, all would be more or less marred if that broad full forehead did not shine over all, giving an air of lucid purpose to the whole character of the figure. 'Without the forehead, the figure might be that of a petit maitre, and so would lose all its peculiar character, which consists in the intellectual use of the attitude and gestures of a petit maitre. Without the forehead, the eyes would look less dangerous in their amicability, or dangerous only in a personal and not in a political way ; without the forehead, the cherubic expression might approach that of R. Wilfer. in Our Mutual Friend; without the forehead, the attitude of the fingers might seem to indicate that the speaker was expounding laws of etiquette or gastronomy ; without the forehead, the pudginess of the upper figure would lead you far away from political fields of thought. As it is, its broad, serene, uufurrowed expanse bespeaks the unique politician in what might otherwise be the master of an insignificant finesse. This opponent of foreheads,—the artist signs himself "Ape," and evidently aims in general at ignoring the human forehead,—has, as we intimated, made other exceptions from his usual rule, in the interests of true political caricature. But perhaps Lord Clarendou's caricature is hardly an exception, for the forehead trends backwards so suddenly as only to enhance by contrast the effect of the precipitous abyss of the starved, death's-head sort of face. Indeed, it produces the impression that the materials of the head had been so freely lavished on the lofty perpendicular descents of the upper and lower lip, that the stuff for nose, eyes, and forehead fell short, and the work had to be miserably scamped. Perhaps, therefore, the artist, as an antagonist of foreheads, was not inconsistent with himself in displaying Lord Clarendon's. With the Duke of Argyll, Lord Westbury, and Mr. Cardwell, as with Lord Granville, he has sacrificed something of his natural antipathy in the interest of political irony. He wished to give the effect of a pragmatic Presbyterian lecturer, great in his self-esteem, great also in his sense of social importance, to the great chief of the clan of the Campbells. He wished to put his Grace's nose in the air. B ut a nose in the air is very much enhanced by a steep cliff of forehead sloping away behind it, and a towering mass of tawny Celtic hair combed back again beyond that. He has thus managed to make his Grace into an arrogant And grotesque domiuie, conscious of great talents and great position, but entertaining only scorn for the pupils he condescends to teach, and to discipline with his intellectual "taws." In Lord Westbury's case the forehead is essential to the full superciliousness of the effect. The full effect of the cruelty of that inward-drawn upper lip, with which Lord Westbury is evidently nibbing his words so as to give them a finer edge of sarcasm, would be very much diminished without the great display of permanent intellect in the high, full, and rounded forehead. There you see an engine which might construct a new code deliberately devoted to pointing pins. The ruddy colour given to Lord Westbury, in its contrast with the snow-white, unvenerable hair of the caricature, would in any case give a touch of monstrosity to that bland affectation of precision in every line of the caricature and the steady coldness of the fixed eye,—but without the serene dome of intelligence above, the monstrosity would not seem half as deliberately planned and executed. In Mr. Cardwell's case the conical arch of wrinkled forehead, in its contrast with the framework of light hair and light whisker so carefully arranged around the face, is needed in order to give the requisite effect of pompous but superficial anxiety which languidly oppresses the statesman's amiable heart, though not so much as to conceal altogether the faint gratification of responsible cares.
In almost every other caricature of any note the caricaturist has used his favourite hat in order to conceal the intellectual power which might explain and reconcile us to the eagerness or emphasis of the expression. Thus, Mr. Goschen, who is stooping eagerly and yet reticently forward to pounce as from an intellectual
ambush, on some point which he wishes to elicit without betraving his own view, has every feature tortured into a sort of subtle anguish in the conflict between the acute concentration of his mind on the point in question, and the wish to keep his own view still in reserve. With the forehead the poignant torture of feature in this caricature would lose half its grotesque intensity. At present, a veil is drawn over the existence of any span. taueous reflective power ; you see the spasm Of conflicting eagerness and caution, but not the intelligence which is its source. With Mr. Forster the caricaturist has caught the worn sensitiveness of all the region below the eyes, and the fagged patience of the eyes themselves when they rest from expression and there is no longer any speculation in them, and he has made the more of these qualities that, by hiding the forehead, setting the eyes, Mongol fashion, corners down, in the head, and giving great prominence to the red hair and beard, and exaggerating the cheek bones, he has managed to give dumb melancholy to the effect as of a member of a ferocious tribe of savages whose reign is over and doom is come. With Mr. Stallsfeld the caricaturist has been more severe. He has given a shiver of depression to his whole air, as of an olive-coloured foreigner, with wistful imaginative gaze and head much too large for his body, yet carefully shaved, and with a carefully-trimmed conical pendant of beard drooping from his chin, musing on the counsels "by hopeless fancy feigned" in Cabinets that are for others.. The caricature of Mr. Lowe was doubtless easy. The snow-white eyebrows and eyelashes peering out in relief against the hat which obliterates his forehead, the shimmer of glancing lines over his sarcastic face, the droop of his nose, the fastidious wrinkle of his nostril, and the sinister set of his chin, were all too marked to lose, and by their severence from the intellectual brow they assume almost a demoniac acuteness, and miss their intellectual excuse. The only caricature in which the artist has absolutely and wholly failed is Mr. Bright's. He has made Mr. Bright into a vulgarly pugnacious, middle-class John Bull, —missing all the tempest and passion in his face. In the case of Lord Hatherley he has drawn less, perhaps, of a caricature than of a likeness, with a very slight exaggeration of the severe conscientiousness and stony pieties of his face. But, Mr. Bright's case alone excepted, there is hardly one of these caricatures that does not isolate and exaggerate some leading characteristic of the statesmen in question, so as to throw a more or less true, though grotesque, light on his career and character,—which is, we take it, the true function of caricature.
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