Multi-Panel Caricature in The Scourge –

George Cruikshank

The Scourge and Satirist; or, Literary, Theatrical and Miscellaneous Magazine was a text magazine published monthly in London by J. Johnston, and the strips were steel-engraved foldouts that came with the original periodicals. The Scourge published Cruikshank's first professional works. The editor was “Mad”

  Jack Mitford.

John Bull's Three Stages; or, From Good To Bad & From Bad To Worse, George Cruikshank, March 2, 1815

A Paradice for Fools; – A Nocturnal Trip-or-The Disciple of Johanna benighted, Sept 1, 1814. This is not George Cruikshank, like the previous. The print is not signed but the publisher is noted: W. H. Jones

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream, George Cruikshank, July 1815

Napoleons trip from Elba to Paris, & from Paris to St. Helena, George Cruikshank 3-panel plate, Sept 1815. The plate was folded to fit into the bound volume.

Early sporting cartoon by Geo. Cruikshank, steel-engraving, The Scourge, Oct 1815

⛨

Brain-openers in illustration 1819-2002

          

 

by Huib van Opstal

Brain-openers in illustration depict the human head spiked or sucked, opened up, overflowing or downright exploding. Today, the result is picture rhyme.

 

1

1 [1819] Brain spikes. A band of little devils forcefully open up a sick man’s head. ‘Head ache,’ a captioned etching by George Cruikshank, published in colour by G. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s St., London, on Friday, February 12.

2

2 [1909] Brain tap. An enormous mosquito gorges himself on a drinker’s head. Winsor McCay signing as Silas, in a page of his ‘Dream of the Rarebit Fiend’ strip series (detail), published in various American newspapers, this dream on Saturday, June 5.

3

3 [1911] Brain tap. A giant mosquito gorges himself on a sitting man’s head. Winsor McCay, in a page of his ‘Midsummer Day Dreams’ strip series (detail), published in various American newspapers.

4

4 [1861] Brain blast. A frustrated dentist resorts to blowing up his patient’s head. Édouard Chevret, in page 14 of his 38-page French comic strip novel ‘La Perroquettomanie,’ self-published.

5

5 [1869] Brain smokers. Addlebrained addicts smoke out their brains to the tune of scorched old fiddler Nick-Otin. Fully titled ‘Old Nick-Otin Stealing “Away the Brains” of His Devotees’, a captioned cartoon in woodcut by N.N., in the London weekly Punch, Saturday, January 16, page 21. 

6

6 [1911] Brain blast. A sneezing man’s head explodes. Winsor McCay signing as Silas, in a page of his ‘Dream of the Rarebit Fiend’ strip series (detail).

7

7 [1906] Brain blast. Showered with compliments, the head of strip maker “Silas” gets bigger and bigger until it explodes. Winsor McCay signing as Silas, full page of his ‘Dream of the Rarebit Fiend’ strip series, Thursday, November 22.

8

8 [1902] Brain blast. A new way to graft trees blows a botanist’s top off. Christophe, in ‘Fantaisies de botaniste,’ captioned cartoon in the French weekly Soleil du Dimanche.

 

9

9 [c.1890] Brain mug. Cartoon of a man with steaming character mug (detail) by Adolf Öberlander, in the Munich weekly Fliegende Blätter.

10

10 [c.1901] Brain jug. Ceramic character jug in variable brown glaze, Martin Bros., London and Southall. 

11

11 [1908] Brain stretch. A man’s head becomes a putty-like mass of jelly. Winsor McCay signing as Silas, in his ‘Dream of the Rarebit Fiend’ strip series (detail), Saturday, September 26.

12

12 [1891] Brain-opener. One of many English celebrities exposed by Phil May – this one titled ‘The Duke of Cambridge’ – number 15 (not 14) in his series of caricatures ‘On the Brain,’ published in the London weekly Pick-Me-Up, September 12.

13

13 [1891] Brain-opener. ‘Mr. Punch’ by Phil May, in his series ‘On the Brain,’ in the London weekly Pick-Me-Up.

14

14 [1891] Brain-opener. ‘Sir Edward Lawson’ by Phil May, in his series ‘On the Brain,’ in the London weekly Pick-Me-Up.

15

15 [1906] Brain-opener. An absentminded man takes the lid of his head to count his marbles. Winsor McCay signing as Silas, full page of his ‘Dream of the Rarebit Fiend’ strip series, Thursday, October 25.

16

16 [1912] Brain paint. ‘Inspiration,’ self-portrait by German illustrator-painter Heinrich Kley, in his picture book ‘Leut’ und Viecher,’ Bavarian/Austrian dialect which translates to ‘People and [crazy] Animals,’ page 13.

 

17

17 [1952] Brain fill. ‘Filling Ingot Molds’ by Russian-American illustrator-caricaturist Boris Artzybasheff. Detail of full-page illustration from the ‘Machinalia’ chapter in his picture book ‘As I See.’ 

18

18 [c.1950] Brain-opener. American comic strip author Fred Laswell presents his strip character Snuffy Smith in a self-caricature, ‘Fred Lasswell by hisse’f.’

19

19 [1961] Brain-opener. American cartoonist Vip (Virgil Partch), self-caricature on the cover of his Gold Medal picture pocket book ‘Cartoons Out of My Own Head.’

20 [2002] Brain blast. “Chief scientist of Alias Wavefront Bill Buxton demonstrates what Maya, cheaper than before though still ridiculously expensive, can do in this ad that probably didn’t make it onto TV from the looks of it. VFX by Topix.” See the one minute video HERE.

A special Note of Thanks to: Ulrich Merkl, Antoine Sausverd, Mike Lynch, Ianus Keller and François Caradec, plus virginia.edu, carters.com.au, gallica.bnf.france, coconino-world.com

Victorian Speech Bubbles

Speech Bubbles pop up occasionally in Victorian cartoons, but seldom do you find a whole comic page with balloons. Charles Samuel Keene drew this eye-popper “Our American Cousin in Europe” for Punch, Vol. 68, included in Punch’s Almanack for 1875. Keene is obviously trying to ape an American accent – badly. 
Below is a transcription of the text, as near as I can make it out. Makes you wonder if Victorians, who prided themselves on good handwriting, had much of a conception of printing by hand.

1 Some of our Gals’ Luggages!

2 Drop me for the Alps and back!

3 Your tailors are pretty good Britisher, but we beat all creation in Shirts! & our Bosoms are Soo-perb!

4 Guess you must v’ ped a powerful heap for that Soo-perior Back Switch Nip!

5 There’s a general look o’ disrepair about these olde countries Stranger, that we ain’t used to in New York!

6 Knew where you came from directly Britisher! You speak ‘American’ with such a strong English twang!

7 Garçon! Comment pensey vous q’un gentilhomme peut manger da petits pois avec tel couteau comme ça?!

8a  My dear Cassandra hadn’t you better go to bed?
8b  What, atop o’ that tea Ma?! Wouldn’t sleep a wink!

9 Saw the Father o’ my Country in Wax at Mad. Tussaud’s!

10 And I’ve got a Carpetbag full o’ curiosities! a nose of a statue from Pompeii and some Mosaics out o’ the Pavement of St. Marks — 
I whipped out my knife to get a slice o’ your Coronation chair — 
but I had to leave! — I shall try again if I go home your way, 
Good bye John!

George Cruikshank strip above, from The Comic Almanack For 1849, Second Series, 1844-1853. Folding plate from a reprint by Chatto & Windus, 1912. Whereas the Keene bubble comic was a wood-engraving, Cruikshank’s The Preparatory School was steel engraved.

My Sketch Book, 1834 

My Sketch Book, 1834

The Preparatory School

George Cruikshank strip above from The Comic Almanack For 1849, George Cruikshank, Second Series, 1844-1853. Folding plate. From a reprint by Chatto & Windus, 1912.

Points of Humour

A selection of George Cruikshanks images from Points of Humour published by J. Robins in 2 parts in one volume, Mornings at Bow Street: a selection of the most humorous and entertaining reports which have appeared in the "Morning Herald," by J. Wight, London: George Routledge, 1824, and German Popular Stories by George Cruikshank, London: C. Baldwyn, Newgate Street, 1823. Here's one from the 19th century swipe-file: compare Cruikshank's cat below with A. B. Frost's famous comic strip “Our Cat Eats Rat Poison” HERE.

A Slap at Slop

Mathew Crowther has found an extraordinary broadsheet format version of William Hone's 'Slap at Slop' which I have posted in 4 high-res images HERE.

Mathew explains "I already own a copy of the 1822 re-issue which was re-worked by Hone into a standard octavio-sized pamphlet but this original version is something else. It was published as a full-sized replica of a broadsheet newspaper running to 4 pages in total and containing a plethora of absolutely amazing woodcuts by Cruikshank. These early broadside editions are really rare and most of the copies of Slap at Slop you tend to see for sale today are re-issues which have been disbound from the bound volume of reproductions which Hone published in the 1820s."

Man Slaughter Men

By Mathew Crowther

A copy of one of the Cruikshank prints on the killing of protesters at Queen Caroline's funeral published by John Fairburn.

Cruikshank's decision to depict the soldiers of the Household Cavalry with no torso and huge exaggerated limbs is a sly reference to the fact that the court of enquiry ruled that "nobody" could be identified and brought to trial for the killing of two civilian protesters.

This print and a companion piece entitled "Killing No Murder" are recorded in the British Museum catalogue as being amongst a number of prints which were supressed by the government. This is a rare example of a copy which must have slipped through the hands of the censors somehow.

William Hone Part IX

By Mathew Crowther

In January 1821 William Hone published a new satire, The Political Showman – At Home! In it he reflects on the role which the press had played in undermining the government’s attempts to subvert the constitution since 1819. The satire shows a printing press anthropomorphized into a circus ringmaster who is conducting the viewer through a menagerie of fantastical beasts which sport the heads of various members of the cabinet and the royal family. The ministers have now been tamed by the press and the power of the press will also finally bring about the downfall of ‘The Legitimate Vampire’, a huge man-eating monster which embodies the spirit of despotism.

Despite being the most well-considered and carefully executed of all the pamphlets Hone had produced, The Political Showman was also far less successful than his earlier publications. The sense of outrage and frustration which had engulfed Britain between Peterloo and the Queen’s trial was abating and with it went the public’s appetite for the kind of venomous radical satire which had been found in works such as The Political House.., Man in the Moon and The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder. By early 1821 Hone’s own motivation had also moved beyond purely political concerns and it likely that his decision to return to political satire was also motivated by his growing financial problems.

The success of Hone’s pamphlets made him a considerable amount of money but Hone, who throughout his life repeatedly demonstrated a positive talent for fiscal incontinence, contrived to spend all the money he could muster on feeding his passion for collecting books and prints. He recalled that “I used to go to my cashier for £5 or £10 at a time generally to buy old prints and curious books; at last, asking for money, he said there were no funds. I insisted; ‘I must have the books I have been looking at’”. By the end of 1820, Hone’s most successful year as a publisher, he was forced to pledge his book collection for a loan. When he defaulted on the repayments of the loan the following year his entire library of 1,171 books was hurried into auction.

Hone’s workload from the winter of 1820 onwards seems to have been increasingly dictated by these financial pressures and despite the fact that there was a notable cooling off in the numbers of political pamphlets being produced by other radical publishers during this period, Hone kept up a grueling schedule of work. As well as writing new satires, he was also still publishing new editions of his most successful pamphlets, revising and reissuing updated versions of some of his works from the 1810s and conducting exhaustive research for a planned multi-volume history of parody.

Two months later he published another pamphlet; The Right Divine of Kings to Govern Wrong! This partial revision of Daniel Defoe’s Jure Divino launched an attack on concept of autocratic monarchy and an established church which earned Hone critical applause from the pages of the Examiner and other liberally-minded journals but was even less commercially successful than its predecessor. That it is remembered at all today is probably thanks only to the two stunning woodcuts which Cruikshank was able to produce for the cover and back page of the pamphlet.

By this point Hone’s relationship with Cruikshank was reaching a crisis point. In January 1821 Hone, whose patience was no doubt shortened by fatigue, was becoming increasingly irked by his young friend’s hedonistic lifestyle. Initially Hone tried pleading with Cruikshank to “foreswear late hours, blue ruin and dollies” and become “a man of business” but the 28 year old artist responded bluntly by telling Hone to “go to hell” and to “go teach my Granny to suck eggs”. He would later write an exasperated letter in which he recalled that Cruikshank had turned up at his house late one evening to request that Hone use his influence with the city Alderman to secure the dismissal of a watchman with whom Cruikshank had fought a drunken brawl during the previous night’s carousing. When the request was refused Cruikshank obnoxiously sat blowing “clouds of smoke over me and my books... for a couple of hours, demanded entrance to my wife’s bedroom to shave and smarten himself for an evening party, took possession of my best Brandenburg pumps, damned me... [and]... otherwise decomposed the wanted order of my mind and household and manifested what I had long suspected, that he is by no means friendly to Reform!”

Hone and Cruikshank’s professional relationship would endure for long enough to produce one more illustrated pamphlet in August 1821 but their friendship has run its course. The subject of Hone’s final pamphlet was to be Dr John Stoddart and the members of the Constitutional Association – A group which had been founded in December 1820 by wealthy Tories who were disgruntled by the government’s failure to crack down on the radical press and who pledged to provide funds for private prosecutions against reformist publications. In Hone’s eyes the Constitutional Association had the resources and the backing to emerge as a successor to the Crown prosecutors which had almost succeeded in silencing London’s radical satirists in the 1810s.

A Slap At Slop and the Bridge-Street Gang rendered the Constitutional Association, whose headquarters were located on Bridge Street in Blackfriars, a laughing stock just as effectively as Hone’s earlier pamphlets had undermined Sidmouth’s gagging acts and the dignity of the King. Hone revels in pointing out the hypocrisy of loyalist journalists who demanded that their political opponents be prosecuted for publishing libels which were no different from those they themselves were using to attack the reformists and slander the Queen. They were, Hone wrote, “like the hacknied procuress who, to effect her designs upon innocence, pretends an extraordinary affection for virtue... What an insolent appeal from the minions of power, and the overgorged feeders upon the public wealth, to their fellow parasites and gluttons!” Hone then goes on to point out that both Stoddart and Robert Southey, the ultra-conservative poet laureate and Constitutional Association member, had published pro-Jacobin material in their youth which would be considered libelous and that they too risked transportation to Botany Bay.

After failing to indict Hone on a charge of seditious libel the Constitutional Association would go on to waste large amounts of time and money harassing other radical publishers in an attempt to use private wealth to silence the popular press. In the end their efforts were a costly failure -- The Association secured just four convictions and only one sentence at a time when print shops and publishers were still carrying on a healthy trade in anti-government material.

As the recession and political upheaval of the post-war years gradually gave way to the prosperity of the 1820s public interest in radical satire rapidly began to wane. The violence which erupted at the funeral of Queen Caroline in September 1821 was the last incident to really capture the imaginations of the satirists and the remarkable single plate prints which George Cruikshank produced on this subject were amongst the last anti-government satires he produced before government bribes finally convinced him to pursue a more lucrative career producing humorous social satires and book illustrations. The political landscape also changed significantly after 1821, as many of the villains of the Regency-era retired from politics or was able to demonstrate their liberal credentials by offering support to republican revolutionaries in Latin America and Greece. Even the King, who increasingly confined himself to the seclusion of Windsor castle, ceased to be a figure of public mockery.

By the summer of 1821 William Hone, who had worked tirelessly and without rest since 1819, had reached the point of physical and mental breakdown. Out walking one day in September 1821 Hone claimed that he saw the disembodied upper half of his own body floating down the opposite side of Fleet Street and on a number of occasions he refused to enter his own house as he believed it to be surrounded by a huge wall of fire. Suffering from hallucinations, feelings of intense agoraphobia and paranoia, Hone spent more and more time confined to his study and to his books until one night, on hearing the clock of St Paul’s strike 2am, he looked up to his window and saw a “haggard” and “ferocious” face glaring through at the writing on his desk “as though it chiefly desired to be acquainted with the books that lay upon it”. Hone later recalled that in this, the final and most terrifying of his visions, it seemed as though an incubus had been summoned up to steal away his life's work.

Although Hone’s health gradually began to improve as the pressures upon him eased in the early 1820s, he would never again return to the world of political satire. Writing in 1824 he opined that he was “weary of strife” and that he believed that his once famous sense of humour had now left him. He became a successful auctioneer for a while before returning to antiquarian research and popular literature in a series of highly successful books on the origins and oddities of British culture. It is however for his political satires for which Hone is rightly remembered today.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII