The Sun.
London, England, 1871-02-15 00:00:00

TENNIEL'S CARTOONS.

(Published in two volumes by Bradbury, Evans, and Co.)
As a political caricaturist, John Tenniel is simply in-
comparable. He has distanced the ablest of those who
might formerly have been regarded as his competitors. As
an artist and as a humorist he is equally entitled to our
admiration. It is not merely that he has won for himself
the position of the greatest of all political caricaturists. He
is that, and something more. Accepting the title of car-
toon long applied to the weekly full-page illustration of
Punch, we would prefer henceforth to speak-of Tenniel
rather as a cartoonist than as a caricaturist. His draw-
ing is masterly and worthy of the pencil of an academician.
His daring handling of anatomy, his foreshortening,
his grouping, the noble pose of his allegorical figUres,
the dignity, often it might even be said the sublimity, of
the effects produced by him in a sketch (obviously dash4cl
off with the trenchant • hand of a headsman, with the
incisive stroke of a skilled and experienced executioner
upon the wood-block I)—these and a multitude of other
notable characteristics peculiarly his own, combine to raise
him above the most rarely gifted of those who might
otherwise have been regarded as his fellows, and invest him,
in his aspect as a political cartoonist, with a wholly iso-
lated and exceptional reputation. Fortunately for us,
we are, in saying' this, talking within the knowledge of
everybody. There is no possibility, here of our speaking
over the heads of anyone. The unlettered wayfarer in the
public streets, if he knows nothing of his A B C, knows
perfectly well, and is thoroughly able to appreciate, in the
shop windows, week after week, those wonderful pictures
" done to a T " in the pages of our " London Charivari."
The most untutored and unsophisticated gamin from the
gutter, who can't made head or tail of a half-penny news-
paper (though he can of a halfpenny) can understand
and enjoy a picture put within the comprehension of
the whole world by the rapid crayon of the great car-
toonist. As an illustrator of literature, . Mr. Tenniel
has won honour to his name by many an exquisite
series of drawings ; as, for example, by those contributed
by him to the Gordian Knot of Mr. Brooks (not of Shef-
field, but Mr. Shirley Brooks) the present editor of Punch;
or, as, for example, again, by his inimitable embellish-
ments of "./Esop's Fables" and of Moore's "Lalla Rookh."
• But, admirable as those illustrations are, no doubt, in
themselves, the artist, beyond all question whatever, is to
be seen at his best, at his very best, when he is acquitting
himself of his duties as a political cartoonist. In that
capacity he exercises extraordinary power, and
again and again has evidenced, in so doing,
extraordinary sagacity. With his swift pencil
he has, for twenty years together, helped to mould
the public opinion of his time. And his hits always tell
—perhaps, among many other good reasons that might be
adduced, because he always strikes while the iron is hot.
As a rule he always hits the right nail on the head, and in
so doing runs it well home through the political Holo-
fernes of the hour. Heartily as we have appreciated the
cartoons of Punch, week after week, we realise for the
first time as it were the remarkable power they evidence
when we come to loDk upon them as a whole when brought
together in these two superb volumes. Then it is that we
recognise more clearly than ever the accumulated force of
what has been coming to us so long piecemeal, and what
has been, piecemeal, captivating at once our admi-
ration and our imagination. Nevertheless, in
these two volumes we have, in point of fact,
not by any means the whole, we have merely as it seems
to us the pick of the cartoons contributed for sixteen years
past, that is from 1854 to 1870, each inclusive to the first
not only of English, but of all, comic periodicals. A single
instance will suffice to demonstrate the fact that several of
the happiest of Mr. Tenniel's cartoons have not been
included in either of these collections. There was that
inimitable one for example in which he depicted the Em-
peror Napoleon 111. (just after the publication of the Life
of Julius Cesar) in a little French blouse or tunic, and
little FrenCh knickerbockers, and little French tipped
boots, seated on a stool at the foot of a grand colossal
effigy of Julius Caesar, addressing himself to the statue, in
gasps, in between the puffs with which he is endeavouring
to blow out an elastic figure of Napoleon the Great, say-
ing thus comically—" Aha ! mon ami, I sail make him so
.big as you !" Although the collection is not complete,
it is sufficient. It is sufficient, we mean in this
way that it proves beyond all possibility of contradiction,
the pre-eminence of John Tenniel, as a cartoonist, over
all preceding political caricaturists. Rowlandson, Gilray,
Bunbury, H. B. even Leech, even Cruickshank, re-
garded simply as political caricaturists, are not for a
moment to be brought into comparison with Tenniel,
whose cartoons as artistic drawings, no less than as
humorous hits are in one word—masterpieces. For
comicality of effect, look at one of the earliest of all in
these two volumes. " You are requested not to speak to
the man at the wheel," the date being just the commence-
ment of the Crimean war, the man at the wheel being the
then Premier, the Earl of Aberdeen. Or look again at
" The Quaker and the Bauble." Mr. Bright, with a
wrathful eye gleaming through his eyeglass on the
Speaker's mace as he enacts a sort of Brumagem Crom-
well ! Under date March, 1863, when the hopes of Poland
seemed surviving, glance then for a moment at " Poland's
chain - shot," the allegorical goddess of that heroic
nationality, ramrod in hand, driving in at the muzzle
of a cannon the broken chains of her children !
Suggested by a famous picture in the Academy
Exhibition of the season, who has yet forgotten
" Disraeli's Triumph," in the typical form of " The
Sphinx?" Or the laughter-moving introduction of the
same great Party-Leader in a travesty of another popular
picture of that season at the Academy, " Returned from
Victory ?" " Mean Time at Greenwich," again, was a
delightful hit —both verbal and pictorial—relating to the
economic Ministerial drop of the customary whitebait
banquet down the river. " The Derby of
1867," too, with Dizzy as winner, was as
exhilarating as any rapid feat of horsemanship ever
witnessed on Epsom Downs. For bold pencilling, more-
over, in the delineation of the comic and grotesque, what
could be better in its way than the two-paged revelation
of the scene in the political arena called " Before the
Tournament"—unless it were the one constituting what
may be termed the sequel, or companion to it,
entitled "The Mel& ?" Earlier cartoons than those,
are still vividly remembered, and always with
delight—as for example the grand snow scene,
" They're saved ! They're saved !" or " The British
Lion's Vengeance" in bounding across the breadth of
Europe on to the ravening Bengal tiger, looking up with
a snarl of rage from its mangled victims at Cawnpore !
or, again, " Master Bull and the Dentist," Gladstone
being the dentist and the Ma Britannia, ; or " Waiting
for an Answer" when the tutelary goddess of these realms,
with her grasp upon the trigger of a huge piece of
ordnance,- looked calmly across the Atlantic
in the midst of the Trent difficulty ; or
the " Sensation Struggle in America," where, holding
e
on by the snapping branch of the " Union," North and
South in deadly grapple with each other bowie kn.! ind
hand, impended frightfully over tho abyss of civil war;
or " Monsieur Walker," John Bull's dangerous- Gallic
neighbour, the Pyrotechnist ; besides a whole swarm of
other world famous pictures. Coming down, however,
to a period more immediately within the range of popular
recollection, what possibly could be better of their kind,
more wise, more witty, more apt, here and there, in a
manner, more distinctly prophetic, than the sketches that

have been dashed off during this last half-year by the same
facile draughtsman in illustration of the terrible moving
panorama of the great Franco-German war not yet brought
to its conclusion ? Witness this, the " Duel to the
Death," between Napoleon and William, the former say-
ing to Britannia, who has attempted to interfere, " Pray,
stand back, Madame, you mean well ; but this is an old
family quarrel and must be fought out." Witness this
yot more, the sequel or companion picture of " The
Duel Decided, " in which William says to his opponent,
"You have fought gallantly, Sir : may I not hear you say
you have had enough? " whereto the Emperor replies, " I
have been deceived about my strength. I have no
choice." Between these two cartoons, that is between
the 23rd July and the 10th September, appeared
at the very opening of the war, the celebrated historical
cartoon entitled "The Vision on theWay—` Beware !' " in
which Napoleon 111. and the Prince Imperial, on their
road from St. Cloud to Saarbruck, were confronted by the
apparition of the Great Emperor waving them back from
their perillous adventure ! Upon the morrow of Louis's
Baptism of Fire, Tenniel gave his pathetic group of " The
Two Mothers"—a peasant woman sobbing out to the
Empress, who is clasping the boy prince in her arms,
" Ah, madame, a sure happiness for you sooner or later.
But there were dear sons 'of mine whom I shall never
see again." Several grand historical groups, or
heroic single figures, have also appeared in this
particular series of war cartoons fall of power,
of passion, of visible eloquence, and always of great
artistic excellence. " Paris, 1870," was one of these, with
the motto from Macbeth, " The cry is, still they come !"
" France, September 4," was another with the refrain,
"Aux armes, Citoyens," typical of the Revolution. An-
other was "The Battle of the Amazons." So also was "Ger-
many's Ally," meaning Famine. As a vindication of Eng-
land's position as a niere looker on and non-combatant,
perhaps nothing better could ever by possibility be said
than those words which are put into the mouth of
Britannia in the cartoon entitled " A Quarter of
a Million," when Germania taunts her with "Neu-
trality, indeed ! You ought to have helped me," and
France with " Non, non. 'Tis me you should have
helped "—England's reply being, as she looks up from
the costly bales she is sending out turn by turn to the seat
of war, "I am doing my best to help you both." The
helplessness of the besieged cities, again, and the irre-
sistible might of the power directed against them, no
description could have defined more impresively or more
pathetically, than the affecting group representing Paris
as the " Niobe of Nations," surrounded by the sorely
stricken and dying forms, each wearing a mural crown,
typifying Met; and Stiasburg, and the other beleaguered
strongholds. " Demand thy Life," shewed more em
phatically than any written language could have done,
the implacable fury of the combatants. " The Unwelcome
Guest," being La Verit4 denied admission by Gambetta,
conveyed the cruellest sneer at the unreliable charac-
ter of the proclamations issued by the Govern-
ment of Defence. Another powerful cartoon was the
on a entitled " Gaul to the New Cesar," repre-
senting the former as a prostrate warrior holding
a broken glaive in his grasp, while the latter under the
guise of an old Viking threatens to strike his fallen foe to
the dust with a brandished battleaxe—signalizing the
desperate position attained immediately before the close of
the year by the infuriated belligerents. Finally, upon the
very last day of 1870 there came forth, as good-huinouredly
illustrative of our relations not only with the French and
the Germans, but with each and all of the rest of the
Great Powers, the half grim, half jovial cartoon, entitled
" England's Christmas Bombardment," it being added
thereupon parenthetically, like a smile through a gleam o
teeth " (with ` all the compliments of the season')"—John
Bull bawling out, as he hurls the plum-puddings among
the representatives of the nations—" If you don't
like them, we've plenty more of the same
shape but a great deal harder." Russia being all but
knocked off his legs by getting one slap in his chops !
France and Germany struggling for the posses-
sion of one that has fallen between them !
Jonathan, on the broad grin, making a most
ludicrous catch at it, his long legs and short trousers
displaying his ill-fitting Wellingtons, almost as conspi-
cuously as Mr. Squeers displayed his upon the occasion of
his memorable war-dance in the doorway at Nicholas
Nickleby's cottage residence. Altogether, as a pictorial
history of the times in which the artist flourished,
Tenniel's cartoons are as valuable as they are delightful.
They are equally honourable to his genius as a humourist,
to his sagacity as a politician, to his power as a satirist,
and to his patriotism as an Englishman.