Books about antiques.(Gillray Observed: The Earl Earliest Account of his Caricatures in London und Paris)(Review)

James Gillray

Curiously the only contemporary writings about the English caricaturist James Gillray (1756-1815) were published in the German journal London und Paris that appeared in Weimar between 1798 and 1806. His political cartoons, loaded with detailed allusions to ephemeral events and laced with banners full of words, were immensely popular in England and, as it turns out, at the court of Karl August, grand duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in Weimar. The duke was relatively liberal in his outlook, and by the time London und Paris was inaugurated Goethe was the director of the arts at the court, to which he had gathered a number of leading writers including Wieland, Herder, and Schiller:

The proclaimed intent of London und Paris was "to entertain, to amuse and to recount," based on the reports of two "not entirely inexperienced German men" in London and Paris, the "playgrounds of the fashions which rule the world." All subjects were fair game from gossip to sports, from crime to society balls. The magazine was illustrated with expensive hand-colored etchings and engravings, which, in the case of Gillray's caricatures, were exacting copies of the originals. Extensive background was provided of the specific events being satirized in each cartoon down to the minutest detail. This assumed readers with a voracious appetite for news of British politics that is explained in London und Paris by the statement: "Lacking a major metropolis which could focus and project their own dawning sense of national identity, German readers looked longingly to the capital cities, London and Paris, which seemed to epitomise all the political, economic and cultural advantages of the modern unitary state."

The present book comprises translations of some twenty London und Paris commentaries on Gillray caricatures along with reproductions of the relevant cartoons. The extensive introduction puts the man, the journal, and the Anglo-German connection into context. In addition to the footnotes that were provided in the original commentaries, the editors have clarified obscurities in their own footnotes.

It was the very ferocity of English caricatures that made them popular in the more restrained continental countries. Apropos of the Gillray cartoon Visiting the Sick, the commentators wrote: "We should examine this caricature through English eyes, as we must all such caricatures which appear in London, where things that would cause an outcry in Paris, and perhaps any other capital on the Continent, are dismissed with a fleeting smile. Every 'public character'--anyone who appears in the public eye- allows (indeed must allow, if he is not to be regarded as a fool) the Gillrays, Peter Pindards, Woodards and Mathiases of this world to expose him to ridicule, whether in a caricature, a pamphlet, or even in the newspapers, where every day 'public characters' suffer the most lewd and defamatory insults."

The commentaries are both comprehensive and erudite in keeping with the cultural eclecticism of the time. The cartoon Search-Night, for example, shows watchmen bursting into a meeting of plotters against Pitt, who are attempting to flee. The dukes of Norfolk and Bedford are scrambling up the chimney which evokes the following excursion. "And even if they were blessed with all the skills of the famous Lord Montagu, who, we know, loved as a child to play the part of a sweep's climbing boy, they could only survive their ordeal in the still-burning hearth if they were as fire-resistant as salamanders. ...