Imagining John Bull: Part 1: The Georgian Age

Not so long ago people in much of the world would have easily recognized the image below as John Bull, a symbol of the British nation, much like the USA's Uncle Sam or France's Marianne. But he did not always look like this guy. He evolved for more than two centuries before he was allowed to go to his rest.

John Bull began life as a literary creation rather than an image. He was "born" in 1712 as a character in two of Dr John Arbuthnot's political satires, Law is a Bottomless Pit and The History of John Bull. Ironically, Arbuthnot was a Scot whose character evolved into a personification of Englishness. 

The name "Bull" from the beginning invited comparisons with the animal of that name, especially its virility, strength and stubbornness. Bull also alluded to English fondness for roast beef. The French often called the English les rosbifs.

During the Georgian period, caricaturists provided John Bull with a visual image, or rather a variety of images. He was sometimes portrayed as a bull rather than a man, as in James Gillray's, "John Bull Triumphant" (1780). 

The figure the bull is tossing into the air represents Spain, which had recently joined France and the fledgling United States in war against Britain. The frightened looking figures at the right are France (in blue and pink) and the USA (the Native American!). A farmer in red and buff looks on in satisfaction at the bottom left. Or is he John Bull the man? 

In the cartoon from 1814 below, Bull is pictured as a man with a bull's head. "Johnny Bull and the Alexandrians," however, is by an American. It is commenting on the British attack on Alexandria, Virginia during the War of 1812. The anthropomorphic Bull did not catch on. He was destined to be a man.

The Georgian era John Bull was English, but not necessarily British, in outlook. He was insular in his views. He distrusted "foreigners." That distrust extended to Scots (or North Britons), despite the fact that England and Scotland had been united into Great Britain since 1707.

The cartoon below, Sawney Scot and John Bull (1792) illustrates but seems to condemn the age-old animosity between the Scots and the English. With Britain heading to war with revolutionary France,  the artist was perhaps saying, "let's bury the prejudices that divide us." It would take some time, but John Bull would come to be a British as well as an English symbol. 

During the French Revolution and Napoleonic periods (1789-1815), John Bull emerged into the national limelight as a patriotic, no-nonsense opponent of revolution and then of authoritarianism. 

Two great Georgian caricaturists, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, played significant roles in shaping the image of Bull around the turn of the 19th century. 

An example is Gillray's "French Liberty/English Slavery" (1792). Although Gillray does not name the English figure here, he parallels the image of John Bull he and other artists were developing. 

The "liberated" Frenchman wearing a tricolor cockade is emaciated and attired in rags. He is dining on raw scallions and snails. In contrast, the English "slave" is stout, comfortable, and well dressed He is tucking into a meal of roast beef and ale, his wig at his side. 

The skinny Frenchman is praising the new French republic as a paradise. The portly Englishman is complaining that high taxes are starving him to death. The irony could hardly be missed.  

British caricaturists of the revolutionary period generally drew Bull as a yeoman farmer. He is a man of the earth -- honest, hale, hearty, and rough in manner. Neither rich nor poor, he is a man of simple tastes and strong principles, pugnacious and ever ready to fight Britain's enemies. 

He was also a man of voracious appetites. Gillray's 1798 print, "John Bull Taking a Luncheon, or British Cooks Cramming Old Grumble Gizzard with Bonne Chere" shows Bull gorging on French naval ships. The cooks are British admirals. The one on the right is Admiral Nelson, who had just won a major sea battle against the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile. 

Artists of the time often drew Bull in a long coat and buff trousers (as above), or in a farmer's smock, as in this 1791 Gillray print, "Alecto." 

"Alecto" is a satirical jab at Whig leader Charles James Fox, who had expressed sympathy for the French Revolution. Fox, on the right is pictured as a recruiting sergeant, trying to enlist John Bull into support for the revolution. No hope for that. 

During the 19th century, the farmer's smock disappeared. The long coat and buff trousers became standard in colored prints, often with a red waistcoat. The coat was often blue, perhaps because blue and buff symbolized the two major political parties of the time, the Tories and the Whigs. 

After 1800, the cartoons tend to portray Bull as a sporting countryman who loves dogs, horses, hunting, and English ale. He has little use for intellectualism and European high culture. 

An example is Rowlandson's 1811 print "John Bull at the Italian Opera." While others are enjoying or pretending to enjoy the music, Bull, up in the box, cannot disguise his irritation, or boredom. Away with that foreign stuff! 

John Bull appeared frequently as the nemesis of Napoleon Bonaparte. A common theme was "Come on Boney, we dare you to attack us!" Gillray drew an especially grisly Bull holding the head of Napoleon in "Buonaparte 48 Hours after Landing" (1803)

In "John Bull Making Observations on the Comet" (1807) Rowlandson tells the comet (Napoleon) that he will never reach the level of the sun (King George III). British naval ships on the horizon explain why. 

In "Conversation Across the Water" (artist unknown), 1803, Napoleon declares he will invade Britain. John Bull, looking a bit like Bilbo Baggins, dares him to try. He also points to Royal Navy ships on the horizon. In many of the prints of this time, Napoleon appears as a pint-sized dictator dwarfed by his hat and boots: "Little Boney."

In "John Bull Arming the Spaniards," (1808) Rowlandson portrays Bull as the British emissary bringing aid, arms, and ammunition to Spain in its struggle against Napoleonic conquest. 

In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, Bull was enlisted in other causes, some of them repugnant today. In "John Bull Taking a Clear View of the Negro Slavery Question" (1826), Robert Cruikshank uses Bull to undermine the arguments of the growing antislavery movement. 

The abolitionists (in black) are raving about the terrible conditions of the enslaved in the West Indies. Bull, in blue and buff, peers through the telescope and "clearly" sees them enjoying feasting and dancing. A few years later (1833) the abolitionists succeeded. Parliament abolished slavery in the British Empire. 

By the 1820s, John Bull was maturing as a personification of the British nation. Victorian caricaturists would give him a fashion makeover, and employ him to represent a variety of opinions.

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The Man Who Drew Alice: Sir John Tenniel

Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) was one of the most popular British cartoonists of the 19th century. Victorians regularly viewed and loved his illustrations. For decades he was the chief political cartoonist for the most successful satirical magazine of the day, Punch. 

Tenniel also illustrated two of the most popular and enduring books of the 19th century: Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871). 

Tenniel created 42 images in the Alice books, fixing them forever in our minds. Here are just a few. In order: The Cheshire Cat, The Caterpillar, The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Humpty Dumpty. 

Tenniel and Carroll did not get along, and Tenniel never agreed to work for Carroll again. Both were perfectionists with different ideas of perfection. But working together, they created works of endless fascination. 

Tenniel joined Punch in 1850 as joint cartoonist with John Leech, and became principal cartoonist after Leech died in 1864. Tenniel produced more than 2000 cartoons for the magazine. They often reflected public opinion, which in that day was generally liberal and reformist at home but tended towards imperialism and racism abroad. How far they reflected Tenniel's views is moot, but they certainly matched the outlook of his editors at Punch.

Tenniel often attacked Irish nationalists, who sometimes resorted to terrorist tactics, including bombings and assassinations.  His cartoons of Irish Fenians depicted them as knuckle-dragging ape-like creatures or monsters. Two examples:

In 1893, Queen Victoria knighted Tenniel. He was the first cartoonist to be so honoured. In 1878, another famous caricaturist, "Spy" drew the image of Tenniel below for the magazine Vanity Fair. He died aged 96 in 1914, just before the First World War. 

One wonders what he would made of that.

 

A Victorian Cartoonist's Christmas

Victorian Christmas cartoons tended to lack the rough, sometimes raunchy humor and social satire of their Georgian predecessors. Victorian images of Christmas were more often sentimental, nostalgic, pious, and domestic. They focused primarily on the comfortably well off, and the holiday as a time of merry family celebration. Well behaved children were an important part of the scene. There were exceptions, as we shall see.

An example of the sentimental family scene is this Punch cartoon by John Leech (1817-1864), "A Family Group, Baby Stirring the Pudding." The large-headed Mr. Punch is at the center, helping "Baby," surrounded by admiring adults and children.

The 1840s saw several important developments in the creation of today's Christmas traditions. That decade saw the introduction of the first Christmas cards, by Henry Cole, a British civil servant. This one below, said to be the very first, shows a prosperous and respectable family enjoying a holiday meal. 

The publication of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens in 1843 helped reinforce the sentimental trend. John Leech's illustration of Mr. Fezziwig's Christmas party conveys a nostalgic view of the time when Ebenezer Scrooge was his young employee. The jolly, humane Fezziwig dances under the mistletoe in a room full of happy revelers. Dickens implies that this is how Christmas could be, or rather, should be. 

Fezziwig's party stands in sharp contrast to the Christmas day meal of the Cratchit family. The occasion is pious, sentimental, loving, but meager -- meager at least until the reformed Scrooge shows up with presents, a big turkey, trimmings, and a raise for Bob Cratchit. Now enlightened, Scrooge makes Christmas what it should be.

The decorated Christmas tree began to take front and center in portrayals of the holiday during the Victorian Age. The Hanoverian monarchs had introduced the Christmas tree from Germany in the 18th century. 

But few of the British adopted the custom begore the reign of Queen Victoria. Beginning in the 1840s, her German husband Prince Albert helped to popularize the Christmas Tree. The image below shows the royal family admiring Das Tannenbaum.

The Royals' Christmas dos did not always receive such positive portrayals. The 1840s was not only a time of the emergence of some modern Christmas traditions, but also of the Hungry Forties, great political and social unrest, the democratic movement known as Chartism, and the Irish Famine. 

The cartoon below, from a radical newspaper, pictures the royals and company gorging themselves on a giant Christmas pudding, or "Blom Buddin" as Prince Albert calls it. Albert is presented as a freeloader helping himself the "good tings of Angland." 

Victoria hands a plate of plum stones to John Bull, the "cook" of the pudding, and says he can lick the dish and suck the stones when the family have finished. Bull represents the people who have created the country's wealth but live on crumbs.

Victorian Christmas images, such as the one below by John Tenniel from Punch in 1883, occasionally focused on those for whom the holiday was just another day of deprivation and poverty. Here, Father Christmas confronts a poorly dressed child who lives in a cellar and knows nothing about him. "This must be altered," he says, presumably meaning such dire poverty as well as ignorance of the Great Present Giver.

Some Christmas Cartoons could be positively frightening, in a humorous way, at least. An example is George Du Maurier's Christmas cartoon in Punch, 1865. The caption refers to a naturalist who says that children should not read fables and fairy tales but read natural history instead. "Here is the result [of reading natural history] on the youthful mind" Du Maurier comments tongue-in-cheek. 

Punch Goes to War: World War I

The British humorous and satirical magazine Punch began its long and influential run of publication in 1841. Among other things Punch helped give the word "cartoon" its modern meaning as a humorous picture. Cartoons were a mainstay of Punch as it commented on the events of the day. Some may not seem funny today. Some were racist or xenophobic. But the cartoons were generally designed to raise laughter among the magazine's readers.

As Europe moved towards what would become a world war just before and during 1914, however, its cartoons became increasingly serious in tone and message. As the war unfolded, Punch would become an important tool of British propaganda. 

The cartoon below, "The Boiling Point," appeared in Punch in October 1912.  It was reacting to the dangerous situation created by the first of two Balkan Wars in 1912-13. The wars were related to the long decline of Ottoman Turkish power in the region. Several countries, including Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece, had won their independence from the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. They were intent on expanding their new states at the expense of the Ottomans, and then each other.

The cartoon reflects fears, correct as it turned out, that the Balkan conflict might spill over and ignite a wider war. In the foreground, left to right, Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary strive to keep the lid on the boiling pot. Behind them, Britain and France look on anxiously. 

Within less than two years these fears had materialized. As is well known, the spark that ignited what became The Great War was the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz -Ferdinand, in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, on August 28, 1914. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was a Bosnian Serb with links to an extremist Serbian nationalist organization. 

Serbian nationalists had long sought to unite the South Slavs or Yugoslavs into a Greater Serbia. The territory they craved included Bosnia-Herzogovina, Slovenia, and Croatia, all currently part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

Austrian leaders sought to use the assassination as a pretext to destroy the Serbian nationalist movement. They issued an ultimatum to Serbia that led to war at the end of July, a war that quickly engulfed all the great European powers. The cartoon below, "The Power Behind" shows the Austrian double-headed eagle about to pounce on the defiant Serbian cock, while the Russian bear emerges from behind a rock. 

Russian determination to protect Serbia brought Germany into the war on behalf of its Austrian ally. Germany also declared war on Russia's ally France, a move dictated by the war plan of the German High Command, the Schlieffen Plan. Meanwhile, Germany virtually assured Britain's entry into the war by invading France through neutral Belgium on August 4. 

The German government had asked Belgium permission to cross their country. Belgium refused. The German Army, committed to its war plan, marched into Belgium. Britain demanded an immediate withdrawal, then declared war on Germany when the demand was ignored. 

Punch applauded Belgium for its defiance in the cartoon, "Bravo Belgium," published on August 12. The farm boy represents "Little Belgium" protecting his farm from the German brigand, identified by the sausages hanging from his pocket.

In order to whip up British support for the war, the British government and media reported many instances of German "atrocities" in Belgium. Some were real; others invented. 

Punch contributed numerous cartoons to the patriotic effort, including the two below. In the first, from August 23, 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II stands over Belgian civilians he has just shot, holding the German Imperial flag. His revolver is still smoking. The illustrator, Bernard Partridge, had long produced unflattering images of the Kaiser and that would continue throughout the war.

The second cartoon portrays Germany as a barbaric ogre who has torn Belgian neutrality to shreds, protesting he had to attack Belgium in self-defense. The sign behind him says: "World Power or Decline," reflecting the view of Germany's leaders that they were encircled by enemies intent on their destruction. Both cartoons feature burning and destroyed buildings in the background. 

Though the Belgians put up stiff resistance, the German Army overwhelmed them. Within days, the small British Expeditionary Force had arrived to aid the Belgians and French. They fought their first engagement at Mons in Belgium on August 23. During the next two weeks, they and their French allies were 

pushed back by superior German numbers to the outskirts of Paris. 

Reinforced by additional French troops, the allies counterattacked along the River Marne on September 6. Over the next week they pushed the German Army back about 40 miles (65km). The Battle of the Marne was a major victory for the Allies, but the Germans reformed their lines along the River Aisne and began to dig trenches. The Allies followed suit. The line of battle would soon stretch from the Belgian coast to the Alps and would not shift significantly for the next four years. A war of movement became a war of stalemate and attrition, with millions of casualties.  

Punch seemingly made light of the horrors of the war in "The Incorrigibles," by Frederick Henry Townshend. A new soldier arrving at the British trench line is greeted by an "Old Hand" in a waterlogged trench, who assures him that he will have a jolly good time at the front. 

This cartoon (and others) show Punch retained some of its old sense of humor. But the humor was becoming darker. Was Townshend simply trying to boost morale in a dire situation? Or was he cynically poking fun at the British stiff upper lip syndrome? Despite the soldiers' words and smiles, it seems hard to believe anyone would consider their situation enjoyable. As the realities of trench warfare sank in over the next four years, the soldiers themselves would produce much dark and cynical humor of their own.