How the Irish fared in early cartoons

How the Irish fared in early cartoons

Caricature and the Irish: Satirical prints from the Library of Trinity College Dublin, c.1780 –1830,

by  Nicholas  K. Robinson

(Four Courts Press, €40.00 / £35.00)

Felix M. Larkin

 

E.B. White, the noted children’s author, for decades a literary stalwart of  the New Yorker, that great home for cartoonists of all kinds over the last century, once wrote that “humour can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process”.  Being a friend of James Thurber,  he knew all about the problem.

The challenge, therefore, for anyone writing about historical cartoons is to provide sufficient context to make the cartoon intelligible,  but then to let the cartoon speak for itself without much further elaboration.

Nicholas Robinson gets the balance just right in this book of 105 cartoons from what is generally regarded as the golden age of British satire, 1780–1830. The book is lavishly produced by Four Courts Press, easily the most beautiful volume published in Ireland this year.

Robinson states in a short introduction:  “My task, about two hundred years after the publication of the prints, is to offer some explanation in substitution for the immediacy long vanished”.

Notes

This he does in pithy notes that accompany each cartoon. He brings to these notes a sensitivity that is grounded in the fact that he himself in his younger days had been an accomplished cartoonist. His work appeared regularly in the Irish Times in the 1970s. He is, however, better known now as the husband of our former president, Mary Robinson – and his role as Ireland’s first ‘First Gentleman’ was explored in a recent book by Bernadette Whelan, Irish First Ladies and First Gentlemen, 1919 –2011 (Cork University Press,  €49.00 / £45.00) .

The cartoons are selected from his own personal collection, which was donated  to the Library of Trinity College Dublin in 1996. Their theme – as the title of the book indicates – is the Irish, and Robinson points out that the Irish began to appear in various guises in London cartoons from about 1780.

The London cartoonists whose work features in this book include the three greatest practitioners of the art of visual satire in the period in question – James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson and Isaac Cruikshank – but there are also many examples of the work of notable Dublin publishers such as James Sidebotham and William McCleary.

Unlike today’s cartoons, cartoons of this period were published and sold as prints on single sheets of about A3 size – artefacts in their own right, as distinct from embedded in a newspaper or magazine.

Prints

These were sold directly from print shops. They were rarely framed, but were usually kept  in large portfolios away from the direct sunlight,  so preserving their bright prime colours, applied by hand at the press. These carefully curated prints are the ones most sought  after by connoisseurs, such as Nick Robinson.

The Act of Union of 1800 and the place of religion in Irish life are the focus of some of the best of the cartoons. I particularly like the cartoon published by W. Holland of Oxford Street, London, in February 1801, entitled ‘The Benediction of St. Patrick’ (no. 51 in this book).

Emancipation

As Robinson points out, the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland had been “negotiated by William Pitt on the promise of Catholic emancipation”. When he failed to deliver Catholic emancipation because of the king’s uncompromising opposition to it, he felt obliged to resign as Prime Minister. The cartoonist’s response to this is to show Pitt kneeling before our national saint – curiously, depicted as representing the Catholic interest despite being claimed also by the other Christian churches in Ireland. St Patrick lays his hands on Pitt’s head and intones: “My son, for your zeal in my cause I bestow on you my Benediction”.

Many Irish personalities feature in the cartoons, most notably Edmund Burke and Daniel O’Connell. Robinson has, in fact, written previously about the caricatures of Edmund Burke in a volume published by Yale University Press in 1996. 

There are also several cartoons poking fun at the legal profession, of which Nicholas Robinson is a member; he practised as a solicitor for some years after his stint as a cartoonist. The arcane and archaic rituals of the law invite ridicule, and so too does the showy – sometimes bombastic – style of many of its successful practitioners. Lawyers and the law are easy targets for the cartoonist.

In a foreword, Dr Linda Doyle, Provost of Trinity College, describes this collection of cartoons as “a timely reminder of the valuable role of satire in a liberal democracy”. She adds that it “should never be taken for granted”.

It would certainly be wrong to take for granted how satire has been tolerated, and enjoyed, in Britain and Ireland since the late 18th century. Such tolerance is not normal in many parts of the world, and never has been – and it is under threat today even in liberal democracies from an ever-increasing emphasis on “political correctness” and political orthodoxy.