1Punch’s Saturday full-page cartoons, what the staff called their ‘Large Cuts’, were usually intended to illustrate a political point. Drawn by various artists in the early years, including Richard Doyle and John Leech, but after Leech’s death in 1864 almost always by John Tenniel, they used a variety of literary and historical motifs and allusions to popular entertainments to indicate their chosen comic perspective on current events in the public sphere. The ideas for these cartoons came from the lively discussions of the week’s politics around the Punch Wednesday night dinner table, and the resulting images were a form of witty suasion intended to provoke yet more conversation and influence the political opinions of the magazine’s readers.
2Among the chosen subjects from Parliament, Benjamin Disraeli was by far Punch’s most frequent target. In addition to being often featured in Punch’s satirical squibs and lampoons, such as William Makepeace Thackeray’s ‘“Codlingsby” by B. de Shrewsbury, Esq.’ (‘Punch’s Prize Novelists’ April 24, 1847 2), Disraeli was the subject of well over a hundred of their Large Cuts embodying a consistently critical perspective. What at first in Punch’s opinion was merely Disraeli’s absurd presumption as an outsider, which could be represented by comic contrasts of size in cartoon images of a tiny Gulliver in Brobdingnag, or a juvenile boy beside an imposing adult figure of authority, soon became in their eyes a threatening ambition, which could be represented by more overtly prejudicial metaphors of his identity.
- 1 The discussion could easily be enlarged to include more of Punch’s representations of Disraeli, suc (...)
- 2 For nineteenth-century literary representations of the Victorian gentleman, see Gilmour, passim.
- 3 For a discussion of the anti-Semitism Disraeli faced, including Punch’s depictions of him in their (...)
3The following discussion of a small, representative sample of these cartoons shows that Punch consistently portrayed Disraeli as an alien figure in Victorian politics: as, for example, a magician, trickster, wizard, acrobat, juggler, circus act, ballet dancer, musical performer, literary character, or dramatic actor.1 Such tropes are not, of course, unique to Disraeli in the comic satires of the period. But Punch’s use of them grows increasingly darker over time and repeatedly suggests that Disraeli’s alien character is the antithesis of that of an English gentleman, by birth, education, and moral character: that is, he lacks the forthright integrity of a gentleman, and is someone whose motives and intentions are mysterious and possibly malign.2 As was often the case with Punch’s squibs, many of the Large-Cut cartoons are overtly anti-Semitic, which is perhaps not surprising, given the prevalence of racial and religious prejudice in nineteenth-century culture,3 but the intentions and effects of them were almost invariably political.
4In that regard, Punch was never sympathetic in its ‘lampooning’ and ‘constant ridicule’ of Disraeli (Taylor 1992, 116 and Altick 73‒74). Indeed, it would be fair to say that he was one of their favourite butts or bogeys. But, as Disraeli moved from his involvement in the Young England movement of the early 1840s, to the leadership of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons and his eventual climb to ‘the top of the greasy pole’ as Prime Minister in 1868, Punch’s often very witty metaphors of his political identity become more sharply focused on the parliamentary issues on which they see him as vulnerable. When, however, after 1874 Disraeli has the power of leading a majority Government and his initiatives in foreign policy lead to Britain’s great diplomatic triumph at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Punch adopts Gladstone’s and his Liberal followers’ deepest fears about what the ‘oriental wizard’ is really up to and represents him as a sinister threat to British constitutional government. And in that process, ironically, what was at first Punch’s underestimation of Disraeli became an overestimation of his power and intentions. Many of the later cartoons are brilliant and witty in conception and execution; but after Tom Taylor assumed the editorship of Punch in 1874, any intended humour in the daring metaphors of Disraeli’s alien political identity is subordinate to the partisan nature of the visual rhetoric.
5Despite Punch’s hostile interventions, Disraeli’s electoral victory of 1874 and the enthusiastic public response to his success at the Congress of Berlin, suggest that a significant portion of the British public saw him in a different light as the Leader of the Conservative Party. In that regard, J. P. Parry has argued that Disraeli’s ‘underlying concerns were not so far removed from those of other politicians of his generation’ and that ‘his political outlook and behaviour were given coherence by his intense consciousness of England’s history and character, which drove him to define his political career in terms of a heroic defence of national values, traditions, and power’ (Parry 700‒01).
Fig. 1—‘Young Gulliver and the Brobdi[n]gnag Minister’ (April 5, 1845).
University of Michigan
6The first of the Punch cartoons considered here is ‘Young Gulliver and the Brobdi[n]Gnag Minister’ (April 5, 1845) Fig. 1. The essential point of the Swiftian allusion is to represent Disraeli’s criticisms of Sir Robert Peel’s Ministry, which had been growing in intensity over the previous three years, as nothing more than a tiny nuisance. But, as contemporary readers of Punch would know, the cartoon is rich with details from both Gulliver’s Travels itself and the recent parliamentary sessions. In the case of the former, Peel’s astonishment at Disraeli’s presumption, nicely caught in the detail of his adjusting his spectacles and measuring Disraeli’s small stature with his hand, mirrors that of the Brobdingnag farmer’s neighbour when he first sees Gulliver (Part II, Ch. 2), while the inclusion of the winged insect on the table top alludes both to Gulliver’s fear of being stung by wasps (Part II Ch. 3) and to the recent Irish members’ stinging attacks on Disraeli both inside and outside the House of Commons. In addition, the linking of ‘Coningsby’ (the first of the Young England novels) with an item entitled ‘The Jewish Mind’ in the Young Gulliver’s coat pocket captures the suspicion in the minds of Peel and his closest ministers that Disraeli was manipulating the idealism of the other core members of Young England (Lord John Manners, George Smythe, and Alexander Baillie Cochrane) for his own purposes. The particular aptness of the allusion to Jonathan Swift’s work would certainly have been felt by Punch’s politically well-informed readers, for in his election campaigns and in his journalism and political writings of the previous decade, Disraeli had been proclaiming his allegiance to the ideas and patriotism of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, who, along with Swift, was part of the Tory Opposition circle in the early decades of the eighteenth century. This sort of embedded appeal to the reader’s awareness of contextual evidence, upon which effective satire often depends, is a central feature of almost all of Punch’s representations of Disraeli. Part of the enjoyment comes from knowing why the particular metaphoric identity has been applied.
Fig 2—‘A Political Application of an Old Fable’ (May 30, 1846).
Purdue University
7The second cartoon discussed here is ‘A Political Application of an Old Fable’ (May 30, 1846) Fig. 2, which depicts Disraeli as a serpent biting a file, the handle of which is the figure of the Prime Minister, smiling condescendingly and completely impervious to the attack. The direct allusion is to Disraeli’s notorious, satirical attacks on Peel’s character and his leadership of the Conservative Party, which reached their climax at the Third Reading of the Corn Importation Bill (Hansard, Vol. 86, cc. 651‒77), a measure that would repeal the protectionist duties upon the importation of corn (i.e. wheat). Those duties were part of the Conservative Party’s platform upon which Peel’s majority Government had come to office in 1841. They had already been reduced in 1843, so his final abandonment of them in 1846 was felt by most Conservative MPs, especially those with an interest in domestic agriculture, as a betrayal of their trust—a feeling all too reminiscent of how they had felt at the time of Peel’s earlier reversal on the issue of Catholic Emancipation, when on principle he had refused to support George Canning’s favourable policy in 1827, but then, as Home Secretary in the Duke of Wellington’s Ministry, agreed to support emancipation in 1829.
8The ‘Old Fable’ alluded to in the cartoon’s caption is ‘The Viper and the File’ from The Fables of Aesop, the well-known, illustrated English translation of which by Samuel Croxall, D. D. (1690‒1752), with ‘Instructive Applications’, had recently been reissued in 1843 (# 23, 35‒36): ‘A VIPER entering a smith’s shop . . . and seeing a File, fell to gnawing it as greedily as could be. The File told him, very gruffly, That he had best be quiet and let him alone; for he would get very little by nibbling at one, who, upon occasion, could bite iron and steel’. It is, indeed, Croxall’s ‘Application’ of this Fable (35‒36) that fits perfectly with Punch’s own deliberate political use of that word, which turns out to be a more complex allusion to Peel’s and Disraeli’s antagonistic relationship, and which had been the subject of controversy in the newspaper press for the past fortnight. At its simplest, the ‘Application’ of the Fable is a caution to anyone thinking of ‘censuring the actions of those who are, in the opinion of the world, not only of an unquestioned reputation, so that nobody will believe what we insinuate against them, but of such an influence, upon account of their own veracity, that the least word from them would ruin our credit to all intents and purposes’ (35). Punch’s hostile intention is evident from Croxall’s continuation of his ‘Application’: ‘If wit be the case, and we have a satirical vein, . . . let us be cautious at whom we level it: for if the person’s understanding be of better proof than our own, all our ingenious sallies, like liquor squirted against the wind, will recoil back upon our own faces, and make us the ridicule of every spectator’ (35‒36). The perfect congruence of these respective ‘Applications’ becomes apparent when one knows the immediate context of this cartoon, which was Peel’s response to Disraeli’s accusations, in which he used a third sense of the word ‘application’ to raise the question of Disraeli’s character and motivations.
9Peel had tried to diminish the significance of Disraeli’s attacks when he began his response by saying that it would be ‘an insult to the House’ and ‘to the country’ if he were to ‘condescend to bandy personalities upon such an occasion’. He had foreseen, he said, that the course he had taken ‘from a sense of public duty’ would, as its inevitable result, ‘forfeit friendships . . . most highly valued’ and ‘interrupt political relations’, in which he felt ‘a sincere pride’. But, he added, ‘the smallest of all the penalties’ he had anticipated were the ‘continued venomous attacks of the Member for Shrewsbury’ (Hansard Vol. 86, c. 689). Punch, it is clear, was quite willing to take up both the condescension and the insult that the Prime Minister eschewed, as it took these issues of the parliamentary debate into the wider public sphere. In response to Disraeli’s charge that the Prime Minister had betrayed the trust the Party had placed in him, Peel had also said it was ‘surprising that in 1841 he [Disraeli] should have been ready—as I think he was—to unite his fortunes with mine in office, thus implying the strongest proof which any public man can give of confidence in the honour and integrity of a Minister of the Crown’ (Hansard Vol. 86, c. 690). The implication was that Disraeli had been an applicant for political office at the time the Cabinet was being formed, and that the real motive for his ‘venomous’ attacks upon the Prime Minister arose from his disappointment at not receiving an appointment.
10As a point of privilege, Disraeli then felt obliged to correct what he felt was the Prime Minister’s misinterpretation of their correspondence in 1841, and to counter the malevolent rumours that his current opposition arose from personal motives. He denied that he had ever been an applicant for office: ‘I can assure the House nothing of the kind ever occurred. I never shall—it is totally foreign to my nature—make an application for any place’ (Hansard, Vol. 86, c. 707), and he explained that, on the basis of conversation not initiated by him, with someone he took to be in the Prime Minister’s confidence (i.e. Lord Lyndhurst), he had been assured that his services to the Conservative Party would be recognized once they returned to power. He pointed out as well that it was only later, after it was evident that no such recognition was forthcoming, that he had written to the Prime Minister, detailing his services to the Party and expressing his feelings of an ‘intolerable humiliation’ (Hansard NEED VOL # c. 708, Vol. 85, cc. 245‒48; Vol. 86, cc. 675‒76).
- 4 For a discussion of this controversy in John Bull, the Morning Post, the Standard, the Nonconformis (...)
11Appearing after the two weeks of controversy in the newspaper press over whether or not Disraeli had lied to the House in denying he had applied for office, and whether or not Peel had betrayed his Party,4 the ‘Political Application’ of Punch’s cartoon is clearly intended as a concluding intervention in the public discourse on the matter. Its visualization of the Fable draws a decisive contrast between Peel, the gentleman of unquestioned reputation, and Disraeli, who (metaphorically the venomous serpent) gains nothing by his attack and finds that his wit recoils upon himself to destroy his own reputation. In that regard, this cartoon (drawn by John Leech) is especially important, for it establishes the negative perspective that would be embodied in all of Punch’s subsequent metaphoric invocations of Disraeli’s identity.
12Peel’s decision to introduce a Bill to repeal the Corn Law in 1846 and Disraeli’s motives in attacking him were, however, more complex than the newspaper press and Punch made them out to be. Both men were caught in the moment’s crux of expediency and altruism. Peel thought it was his duty to act on his apprehension the previous November (which had proved all too true) that there would be a severe scarcity of food in Ireland and a resultant famine. Two of his closest colleagues in Cabinet (Sidney Herbert and Sir James Graham) knew, however, that Peel’s conversion to the principle of free trade had occurred almost two years earlier. And Peel, knowing that it would be an explosive issue within his Party, and hoping for a more propitious moment to announce it, had kept his new opinion a closely guarded secret. By 1846, the failure of the potato crop in Ireland in 1844‒45 had brought widespread starvation among the people there, and that crisis, combined with the economic collapse caused by a disastrous decline in the wheat crop in England, had generated a public sense of urgency in finding some relief for those stricken. Accordingly, Peel presented the Bill as a response to the crisis, even though it was clear that the passage of the Bill would be too late to alleviate the worst effects of the famine, and was thus not seen as a convincing reason for suddenly repealing the remaining protective duties.
13Disraeli’s malicious attacks on Peel were also more than just revenge for a personal rejection. The new strength of his own ambitions was also a significant motivation. Since first officially becoming a Conservative candidate in the Taunton by-election of 1835, Disraeli had used his rhetorical skills to advance both his and the Party’s interests. And once elected to Parliament in 1837, he had worked assiduously to earn Peel’s respect for his abilities. By 1841 Disraeli was convinced that Peel valued his contributions in debate, for the Prime Minister had often complimented his efforts and recently invited him to a caucus of close advisors and a small dinner attended by senior colleagues. Thus, it was that—supported by what he took to be Lyndhurst’s confidence in such a result—he had great expectations that Peel would recognize his service and his abilities with an appointment to office; and he was devastated to find himself left outside the Cabinet circle of influence. (O’Kell 201‒06).
14By 1845 Disraeli had achieved some real measure of fame and political importance, the result of his rhetorical skill in parliamentary debate and the publication of his immensely popular Young England novels, ‘Coningsby; or the New Generation’ (1844) and ‘Sybil; or the Two Nations’ (1845). Moreover, he had come to realize that his hopes of preferment and subsequent success in the Tory Party necessitated the destruction of Peel’s Conservative Ministry. Disraeli had made his hostile intentions clear in the debate on the Maynooth College Bill, when, in speaking against it, he laid out the requirements of a principled Opposition, and said that he did not think ‘the Gentlemen . . . now seated on the Treasury Bench’ (Hansard Vol. 79, cc. 561, 568‒69) were morally entitled to bring forth such a measure. Thus, he urged his Tory colleagues to put an end to this ‘dynasty of deception’ and ‘the intolerable yoke of official despotism and Parliamentary imposture’. The introduction of the Bill repealing the agricultural duties on corn in 1846 thus gave Disraeli the weapon with which he could ensure the destruction of Peel’s leadership of the Party by fanning the flames of Tory anger. He knew, just as Peel had foreseen, that this measure would irrevocably split the Conservative Party into Peelites and Protectionists, and that, though the Bill would pass with the Whigs’ support, the outraged Tory MPs would vote to defeat their own Government on the next measure (an Irish Coercion Bill) that did not have the Opposition’s support (HC Deb., 11, 13, 18, 23 April 1845, Vol. 79, cc. 501‒77).
Fig. 3—‘“The Game of Speculation” (As Performed at the Theatre Royal, St. Stephen’s.)’ (March 6, 1852).
University of Michigan
15With ‘“The Game of Speculation” (As Performed at the Theatre Royal, St. Stephen’s.)’ (March 6, 1852) Fig. 3, Punch offers a comic deflation of the political moment, which nonetheless embodies a serious moral critique of its subject. The subtitle, defining the recent change of Government (by which Disraeli had become Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Derby’s first Ministry) as political theatre, is obvious enough. But Punch’s readers at the time would also have known that ‘Speculation’ was the name of a card game in which the players compete to obtain the highest trump card (a game that is referred to in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) and Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby (1838‒39), and that the very popular play, ‘The Game of Speculation’ (written by George Henry Lewes and published under the pseudonym Slingsby Lawrence), was just finishing an unparalleled run of nightly performances at the Royal Lyceum Theatre from October 2, 1851 to Easter, 1852.
16In all likelihood, Punch’s metropolitan readers would also have known that the central character in this comedy, Mr Affable Hawk, is an unprincipled confidence man who gulls his greedy acquaintances into investing in his fraudulent schemes, or into lending him money that he has no intention of repaying. The most magnificent of these investment schemes is ‘Conservative Pavement’, which he describes as ‘a pavement upon which and with which it is impossible to erect barricades’. Mr Hawk justifies his actions by asserting that ‘nothing but selfishness exists’ and that ‘all our morals lie in dividends’. He insists, indeed, that ‘credit is the wealth of commerce, [and] the foundation of the State’: ‘if my tradesmen refuse credit’, he says, ‘it is proof that they have no respect for the British Constitution, our safeguard and our pride! They are radicals and Chartists of the worst description. The man who would refuse credit would erect a barricade! Don’t distract me anymore about people who are in open revolt against the vital principles of Government’ (Act I). From this, one would gather that the humour of the play is heavy-handed. But even more significant is the detail in the cartoon that refers to an action on stage where, after gulling one of his pressing creditors into loaning him even more money, Mr Hawk imitates for the audience the action of pulling the strings of a puppet (Act I). The cartoon in replicating this action as performed in Parliament, thus suggests that Disraeli, now the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons in Lord Derby’s first Conservative Ministry, is the moral equivalent of the play’s unscrupulous impostor whose financial dealings are completely dishonest. In the mention of Hawk’s large debts, his extravagant living arrangements, and his evasions of his creditors and the Sheriff’s Officer, there are direct allusions, not just to the principles on which a new Conservative Government’s budget might be created, but also to public rumours about Disraeli’s very large personal debts arising from speculation on the stock market in the 1820s and his extravagant, immoral life on the fringes of the aristocracy in the 1830s. The central point of the cartoon, though, is that Disraeli thinks he is now pulling the strings that animate the Prime Minister.
Fig. 4—‘Dressing for an Oxford Bal Masqué’ (December 10, 1864).
University of Michigan
Fig. 5—‘The Political Egg-Dance’ (June 29, 1867).
University of Michigan
Fig. 6—‘The Political Leotard’ (June 13, 1868).
University of Michigan
Fig. 7—‘Paradise and the Peri’ (February 28, 1874).
University of Michigan
17In surveying some more of Punch’s cartoons that appeared in the 1850s, 60s, and 70s, it is important to notice several features of them that recur. The first, as mentioned above, is that the representation of Disraeli, through actions, facial features, costumes, and settings, is usually antithetical to that of an English gentleman. Many of the images present Disraeli in outlandish, foppish or effeminate costumes as part of a metaphoric role that, whatever it demonstrates in astonishing skill, lacks forthright English probity and manliness. Some typical examples of this representation present Disraeli in the costume of an angel, ‘Dressing for an Oxford Bal Masqué’ (December 10, 1864) Fig. 4; as a ballet dancer, ‘The Political Egg-Dance’ (June 29, 1867) Fig. 5; as an acrobat, ‘The Political Leotard’ (June 13, 1868) Fig. 6; and as the nymph gaining admittance to Eden in Thomas Moore’s poem, ‘Lalla Rookh’, ‘Paradise and the Peri’ (February 28, 1874) Fig. 7. The second notable recurring feature of Punch’s cartoons is their emphasis on deceit and trickery. And this, too, is often (and increasingly over time) associated with a foreign, or un-English metaphoric identity. The common features in all of these images are the imputation of Disraeli’s duplicity and Punch’s cynicism about Disraeli’s actions and accomplishments. With respect to the last of these four cartoons, that cynicism is also manifest in the Peri’s serpentine curls and Tom Taylor’s accompanying poem, ‘Punch’s Peri in Paradise, at Last!’ in which the majority that ‘Ben, Punch’s Peri’ has won in the general election is attributed to the ‘Triple Talisman’ of ‘Ballot and Bible and Beer!’ rather than to any dissatisfaction with Gladstone’s previous Ministry.
Fig. 8—‘The Political Topsy’ (October 23, 1852).
University of Michigan
- 5 Lord George Bentinck actually appeared in December 1851. In the next 20 years it went through eight (...)
18Nothing is more obvious in regard to Punch’s insistence on Disraeli’s alien nature than ‘the political topsy’ (October 23, 1852) Fig. 8, which identifies him with the irrepressible, mischievous black slave girl who is always ‘raising Cain’ in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sensationally popular Uncle Tom’s Cabin, just recently published. Much of the material describing Topsy’s ‘wild diablerie’ creating a ‘perfect carnival of confusion’ (II XX 47‒8), though humorous, is focused on the moral discrepancy between her and her white owners that is attributed to racial difference—‘the fair, high-bred . . . noble . . . Saxon’ and the ‘keen, subtle, cringing, yet acute . . . Afric’ (II XX 43). This cartoon suggests that Disraeli, like Topsy, enjoys the distinction of being considered troublesome, an impression that is caught in the not quite accurate quotation from the novel as a caption. What Topsy actually says, with an implicit tone that resonates with mockery, is, ‘I’s so awful wicked there can’t nobody do nothin’ with me’ (II XX 50). But by conflating these words with Topsy’s other idiomatic phrases, ‘I spect I grow’d’, (II XX 38), ‘I spects cause I’s so wicked’ (II XX 49), and ‘I spects I,’s the wickedest critter in the world’ (II XX 50), Punch avoids actually calling Disraeli wicked in print, while nonetheless suggesting strongly that he is. The destructiveness of ‘The Political Topsy’, which includes trampling on both ‘Free Trade’ and ‘Protection’, mirrors the inconvenient domestic disruptions of Beecher’s Topsy, which are described as like the work of a ‘practised conjurer’ and a ‘perfect carnival of confusion’ (II XX 46, 48). The cartoon thus recalls both Disraeli’s central role in the defeat of Peel’s Ministry in 1846 and his more recent success in gaining the House of Commons leadership of the Protectionists himself, while at the same time weaning them from the policy of protective agricultural duties. Both of these matters had just been brought back to public attention in Disraeli’s biography, Lord George Bentinck (1852),5 which, though it took the form of an idealized treatment of its subject, could not help but revive suspicions among Disraeli’s critics that his friendship with Bentinck was fraught with manipulation and self-interest. The widespread sense among Disraeli’s opponents, including at this point many of the staunchest Conservatives, that Disraeli was deceptive and untrustworthy, is made explicit in the cartoon by Topsy’s use of the con-man’s signal of touching a finger to the nose to suggest that Disraeli is always scheming and that his motives are dishonest, hidden, or mysterious. This detail, like that of the arbitrarily symbolic serpentine curl on the forehead, also draws attention to Disraeli’s Jewish heritage and the prejudice he faced throughout his parliamentary career.
Fig. 9—‘Fagin’s Political School.’ (November 9, 1867).
University of Michigan
19These details recur in many of the cartoons, including the most notorious example of the anti-Semitism in Punch’s treatment of Disraeli in the one entitled ‘Fagin’s Political School.’ (November 9, 1867) Fig. 9, where Disraeli, as Fagin, is demonstrating to his colleagues how to steal someone else’s Reform Bill. This is a witty, but obvious allusion, not just to Dickens’s Jewish master thief in Oliver Twist (1837‒39), but to the defeat of Lord John Russell’s Liberal Reform Bill in 1866 and to, what seemed to many, Disraeli’s unscrupulous willingness to entertain (except from Gladstone) almost any amendment to his own subsequent Reform Bill to ensure its passage. Certainly Disraeli’s 1867 Conservative Bill was more radical than anything the Liberals had proposed, though it was carefully crafted to ensure that most of the expanded enfranchisement brought on by the radical amendments would result in yet more redundant votes in safe Liberal seats.
Fig. 10—Israel in Egypt (1867). Oil on canvas, 137.2 x 317.5 cm (54 x 10.4 ft).
© Guildhall Art Gallery, London
Fig. 11—‘D’israel-I in Triumph; or, the Modern Sphynx’ (June 15, 1867).
University of Michigan
20Another notable example of Punch’s anti-Semitic prejudice against Disraeli is the first of the four Large Cuts where he is identified as, or associated with the Sphinx, the moral antithesis of the allegorical ‘British Lion’. As Patrick Leary has noted, this identification had been first suggested in 1867 by the writer of ‘The Topics of the Day’ column in The Spectator, who proposed that John Tenniel should ‘do a parody of Edward J. Poynter’s painting, Israel in Egypt as a commentary on Disraeli and the new Tory Ministry’ (Leary 48). The original painting, Fig. 10, which had made a sensation at the 1867 Exhibition of the Royal Academy, shows the captured Israelite slaves pulling a huge statue of a Sphinx. In Tenniel’s version of Disraeli’s success in passing the Second Reform Bill that same year, ‘D’Israel-I in Triumph; or, the Modern Sphynx’ (June 15, 1867) Fig. 11, the caption’s apostrophe and hyphen gratuitously isolate the older use and Jewish origin of the family’s name, and the ironic Biblical enslavement is that of the Tory MPs of the Conservative Party, who are forced to pull the Sphynx-Disraeli in triumph. The direct allusion here is not just to Disraeli’s tactical skill in passing the Reform Bill, but also to how very reluctant many of those country MPs were in 1848 to have Disraeli assume the leadership of the Protectionists in the House of Commons, and to how their anti-Semitic prejudice still shaped their view of his leadership of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons in later decades. Sir William Gregory’s graphic recollection of the time reveals how intense the feelings were: ‘It was in vain that the squires and aristocracy kicked at the supremacy of one whom they looked upon as [a] mountebank; in vain their gorges rose at being directed by a Jew’ (Gregory 92). As for Disraeli’s ‘triumph’ in ‘dishing the Whigs’, Gregory (who had followed Peel in 1846) thought that there was ‘no more flagrant instance of unscrupulousness in the annals of public men of this century than Disraeli’s conduct in 1867 in respect to the Reform Bill’. And although Gregory admitted that Disraeli’s ‘disreputable manoeuvres’ (proposing household suffrage after defeating John Russell’s Bill with moderate restrictions the year before) were ‘admirably adapted to the exigency of the moment’, he condemned such expediency in extreme language: ‘There was never a more profligate act, or one which more lowered the character of the great and respectable country party, . . . even I, his personal friend, must confess that from his entrance into public life until his last hour he lived and died a charlatan’ (Gregory 104‒05). Punch’s humour in this instance relies upon the reader’s recognition of how and why Disraeli’s ‘triumph’ is ironic, which depends upon the symbolism of the metaphoric identification. But that identity as the ‘Modern Sphynx’ goes beyond the irony of Disraeli’s parliamentary success to the mysterious, possibly monstrous nature of his power and intentions.
Fig. 12—‘“Mosé in Egitto!!!”’ (December 11, 1875).
University of Michigan
21‘“Mosé in Egitto!!!”’ (December 11, 1875) Fig. 12, yet another allusion to the Old Testament, was inspired by Disraeli’s initially secret purchase (on behalf of the British Government) of the Khedive of Egypt’s shares in the Suez Canal Company in November 1875. To avoid competitive bids and stock market speculation, Disraeli had privately arranged (without the knowledge or sanction of Parliament, which was in recess) a loan of £4,000,000 from the London branch of the Rothschilds’ bank. The caption of this cartoon, which shows that Punch’s prejudice is both sustained and pervasive, is taken from the title of Gioacchino Rossini’s 1818 ‘tragico-sacred opera’, based upon the events of the ‘Book of Exodus’. It is clear that both the humour and the point of the piece lie in the conspiratorial relationship of Disraeli and the Sphinx, caught again in the details of the finger to the nose and in the Sphinx’s responding wink, as Disraeli holds the acquired ‘Key to India’. When the completed purchase of these Suez Canal Company shares was announced, it caught everyone except the Queen and Disraeli’s private secretary, Montagu Corry, by surprise. Both the press and the public reacted with wide acclaim, much to the chagrin of William Gladstone, who, when he was Prime Minister in 1869, had declined the offer of founders’ shares in the Company, thinking them a risky investment and an unwise policy to enter a partnership with a private company. By 1875, however, it was clear that most of the shipping passing through the canal was British and that the canal itself was of great strategic importance in moving troops and material to and from India. But Gladstone’s concerns over the matter were with the highly irregular nature of Disraeli’s actions in obtaining the huge loan from a private source and not having Parliament’s authorization for such an expenditure, both of which fed his fears of his rival’s character and intentions.
Fig. 13—‘“New Crowns for Old Ones!” (Aladdin adapted)’ (April 15, 1876).
University of Michigan
- 6 In a legal sense, the Royal Prerogative is independent of Parliament. The Royal Titles Bill when en (...)
22Perhaps the most famous of all of Punch’s cartoons of Disraeli, ‘“New Crowns for Old Ones!” (Aladdin adapted)’ (April 15, 1876) Fig. 13, where he is characterized as the evil sorcerer in the then popular pantomime version of the story of Aladdin, is similarly focused on Disraeli’s actions in Parliament. Here he is depicted in the act of tempting the Queen to exchange her British crown for an Indian one. The inspiration for this cartoon was the Conservative Government’s Royal Titles Bill, which proposed to make Queen Victoria ‘Empress of India’. Suspecting that Gladstone would be actively hostile to such an initiative, Disraeli failed to consult the Leaders of the Opposition (Lords Granville and Hartington) before introducing his measure, and then insisted (incorrectly) that the proposed change in the Queen’s title was a matter of Royal Prerogative.6 The image of the smiling sorcerer, in his costume decorated with occult symbols, proffering the imperial crown of India to the sceptical Queen holding her British one, thus expresses the Liberal Opposition’s view that Disraeli was trying to flatter the Queen and thereby undermine the British Constitution. Punch here represents Disraeli as offering to exchange an Imperial Crown of the Empress for the British Crown of the Queen; but that was not what the Bill proposed. Nonetheless, in that regard, Gladstone’s greatest fears were that Disraeli’s Bill proposing an addition to Her Majesty’s title in India would lead to the title ‘Empress’ replacing that of ‘Queen’ and entail unknown consequences.
Fig. 14—(Punch, April 15, 1876, 141).
University of Michigan
- 7 The publishers of the girl’s schoolbook had a precedent for their assumption, because Debrett’s Pee (...)
23Punch’s sense of the danger and duplicity of Disraeli’s actions is also caught by Robert Bruce Wallace’s smaller cartoon appearing with the ‘Essence of Parliament’ column from the same issue (Punch, April 15, 1876, 141) Fig. 14. There the Prime Minister is depicted as a juggler keeping six daggers in the air, while the Crown rests beside him upon a volume of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and ‘Little Mary’, looking on and holding her geography book, seems puzzled by the stunt. This was an allusion to Disraeli’s defence of the proposed additional title at Third Reading (Hansard Vol. 228, c. 499) in which he said that he had received a letter from a schoolgirl pointing out that in her ‘geography book’ (printed in 1873) the Queen was already referred to as the ‘Empress of India’.7 The Prime Minister’s correspondence with his Cabinet colleagues and the Queen shows, however, that it was Her Majesty who was most eager to have an imperial title that would confer an international status equal to that of the Russian, German, and Austrian Emperors. Disraeli, in fact, talked her out of the notion that she might become Empress of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and he insisted that the addition to her title, ‘Queen’, would only refer to India (Disraeli to the Queen, 11 and 21 January 1876, Victoria II 438‒40). But the Liberals’ opposition to the Bill so angered the Queen and deepened her dislike of Gladstone, that she described their tactics and insinuations as disloyal. Disraeli’s reasons for promoting the Bill no doubt included pleasing the Queen on the subject of protocol and precedence, but more importantly, he believed that British rule in India and the security of the Empire generally would be enhanced by making the Queen a powerful symbol of the justice and fairness with which the British Government should treat Indian customs and institutions.
Fig. 15—‘The British Lion's Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger’. (August 22, 1857).
Courtesy of Patrick Leary
- 8 The strength of this feeling was captured by Punch’s cartoon, ‘The British Lion’s Vengeance on the (...)
24Indeed, within the framework of what he considered a benevolent imperialism, Disraeli’s parliamentary speeches on the subject of India in the 1850s and the 1870s are as insightful and humane as were those on the subject of Ireland in the 1840s (O’Kell 451‒52, 233‒34). In both cases he could imagine the feelings of the native people with respect to their grievances and their hopes. In that of India, this was something he had first articulated at the time of the so-called Mutiny in 1857. The people there ought to be told, he said, that the ‘relations between them and their real ruler and Sovereign Queen Victoria shall be drawn nearer, . . . that the Queen of England is not a Sovereign who will disturb the settlement of property—that the Queen of England is a Sovereign who will respect their laws, their usages, their customs, and, above all, their religion’. ‘Do this’, he added, ‘in a mode and manner which will attract universal attention and excite the general hope of Hindostan, and you will do as much as all your fleets and armies can achieve’ (Hansard Vol. 147, c. 479). While others in England were demanding revenge for the atrocities of that rebellion,8 Disraeli called for major reforms to the British East India Company’s administration of India, and the next year, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Derby’s second Ministry, he brought in the Bill that transferred the Company’s powers to the Crown. The Queen’s Proclamation of that ‘Act for the Better Government of India’ (often called the Indian Magna Carta) embodied Disraeli’s ideas about the role of the Queen in India and for decades thereafter influenced her personal vision of the Indian Empire and the Crown’s administration of it (Taylor 2018, 79ff.). In the 1870s Disraeli continued to believe that the domestic and maternal image of the Queen, when combined with the pomp and ceremony of the monarchy, could be a positive and powerful magnet for the feelings of India’s people. But neither Punch nor the Liberal Opposition in Parliament could see anything positive in the idea of an Empress—only the danger of British traditions and institutions being subverted by the ambitions of an oriental wizard.
Fig. 16—‘The Sphinx is Silent’ (July 15, 1876).
University of Michigan
25In ‘The Sphinx is Silent’ (July 15, 1876) Fig. 16, the third example of this motif, occurring just as reports in the Daily News (23 June and 8 July 1876) of the so-called ‘Bulgarian Atrocities’ against Christians in the Balkan States under Turkish rule were beginning to agitate the British public, the Sphinx-Disraeli remains aloof and mysterious, indeed, cruelly indifferent to the cries of the people clamouring for an indication of his intentions. Disraeli’s initial tepid response to the troubling reports was shaped by his opinion that the publication of these reports in a newspaper that was ‘Disraeli’s consistent foe’ (Blake 604) was designed to embarrass the Government and that they were probably inaccurate and exaggerated. Moreover, he thought it likely that the atrocities, though numerous, were being committed by both sides in the fighting, and that the agitation in England was essentially politically motivated. Subsequent diplomatic investigations as to the nature and extent of the atrocities suggested that, though there were indeed many horrific accounts of murder, rape, and pillage on both sides, the numbers of the victims being reported were often no more than estimates based on projections of the likely number of inhabitants in the affected areas (Millman 146ff). Opponents of Disraeli’s Government were convinced that his response to the Turks’ savage suppression of the rebellion of their Christian subjects in the Balkans was largely shaped by his love of Eastern exoticism and his disinclination to believe the brutal reality of the atrocities committed by Turkish mercenaries as the rebellion of Slavic populations of Herzegovina and Bosnia spread throughout the Balkans to Servia, Montenegro, Albania, and Bulgaria. But Disraeli’s response to these events was not so simple or reductive.
26As the cartoon indicates with the caption ‘The Sphinx Is Silent’ and the partially hidden phrase, ‘EASTERN QUEST…’, Punch is being witty, but again reductive in suggesting that behind the silence of this Sphinx there is Disraeli’s cold, malign, personal quest for recognition and power in his handling of the ‘Eastern Question’. The truth was more pragmatic. Well before the first reports of the Turkish atrocities reached England, Disraeli was anxious to have England take an active role in the affairs of Europe and so protect those British commercial and strategic interests that would be threatened by war. More than a year earlier, on the 6th of May, 1875, he had written to his foreign secretary, Lord Derby, ‘My own impression is that we should construct some concerted movement to preserve the peace of Europe’ (Monypenny and Buckle V 422; O’Kell 458‒59). This was in response to Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s recent aggressive posture towards Belgium and France, which led Disraeli to contemplate even the possibility of an alliance with Russia as well as the other European countries. But by the spring of 1876 he thought that to maintain Europe’s peace, it was essential to counteract the influence of the Dreikaiserbund—the alliance of the Governments of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia—which might lead to their partition of the Balkan States to their own exclusive advantage. In other words, though he had no illusions about the incompetence and brutality of the Turkish Islamic misrule of their Russian Orthodox Christian subjects in the Balkan States, Disraeli still saw the Turkish empire as a bulwark against Russia’s Pan-Slavic ambitions, a strong tenet of Conservative foreign policy since the Crimean War.
27In that regard, the British Government’s rejection of ‘The Berlin Memorandum’ on May 16, 1876 quite clearly indicated Disraeli’s concerns and intentions. That ‘Memorandum’ had been drawn up by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia without consultation with England, France, or Italy, and called for an armistice of two months, financial relief for the survivors, reconstruction of the destroyed villages, and the implementation of religious and administrative reforms. Disraeli knew that such conditions imposed on Turkey would be impossible for the Sultan to fulfil, and that, as a result, the three imperial powers would almost certainly implement the Memorandum’s ‘efficacious measures in the interests of peace’ that would ‘break up the empire’ (Disraeli Cabinet Memorandum 16 May 1876, quoted in Monypenny and Buckle VI 24‒26). Despite the continuing agitation about the fate of the Bulgarian Christians, this rejection of the Dreikaiserbund’s proposal, and the later decision to send a squadron of the British navy to Besika Bay, enjoyed wide public support, and were Disraeli’s way of insisting that ‘England would not accept a subsidiary role in the sorting out of the mess that Turkey had continued to make of her empire since the end of the Crimean War and the Treaty of Paris’ (1856). These assertive responses (which the Liberal Opposition saw not as wise, strategic moves, but rather only as serious mistakes likely to lead to war), also indicated that ‘England was prepared to use all the means at her command to defend her interests in the region’. Not the least of these ‘interests,’ in Disraeli’s view, was ‘thwarting any hopes Russia had of expanding her sphere of influence’ (O’Kell 460).
Fig. 17—‘No Mistake!’ (November 25, 1876).
University of Michigan
28The title of Punch’s last example of the Sphinx motif, ‘No Mistake!’ (November 25, 1876) Fig. 17, with the intensity of its lower caption’s five more exclamation points, can be read as both the British Lion’s eye to eye confrontational challenge to the Sphinx-Disraeli’s policy and an insinuation of his mysterious, evil intentions: ‘Look here! I don’t understand YOU!—but it’s right you should understand ME! I don’t Fight, to uphold what’s going on yonder!!’ This cartoon tries to counter Disraeli’s strategy of threatening war to defend British interests, and to capture the argument for peace through the Lion’s symbolic articulation of the unwillingness to offer any support for Turkey among a significant segment of the British public. Accordingly, the images of carnage and death in the background recall the atrocities that had led to the agitation against Disraeli’s Government. The Lion’s assertion is Punch’s presumption that it speaks for the whole country, just as Gladstone and his Liberal supporters had assumed during the debates on the Royal Titles Bill. As such, the cartoon is Gladstonian, in terms of both its assumption and its intensity.
29When Gladstone had somewhat belatedly taken up the cause of the Balkan Christians in early September 1876, his doing so only confirmed Disraeli’s opinion that the ensuing moralistic crusade against his Government was entirely a politically partisan affair. The extreme rhetoric of Gladstone’s pamphlet, Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (5 September 1876), in which Disraeli is characterized as an ‘Evil Genius’, combined with Gladstone’s later admission that, for the last eighteen months, he had been playing ‘the part of an agitator’ in his attempts to ‘counterwork’ what he thought was ‘the purpose of Lord Beaconsfield’, suggests as much (‘Mr. Gladstone at Oxford Great Meeting’ The Times 31 January 1878, 10). But with this image of the Sphinx-Disraeli, Punch ignores the politics of Gladstone’s fears and jealous rivalry and presents its own version of the Prime Minister as a mysterious and sinister foreign figure. As such, the cartoon is a strong endorsement of the public agitation against Disraeli’s Government, and it is an equally emphatic endorsement of Gladstone’s belief that resisting Disraeli’s plans was a moral imperative (Hansard Vol. 228, 491‒92). This idea was the core of his fulminations against the wickedness of the Government’s complicity in the horrors of the ‘bestial’, ‘lustful Turk’ in his pamphlet and subsequent speeches (Gladstone 33, 53, 62; see also, O’Kell 463‒66).
30For Punch, Disraeli’s reluctance to condemn or respond with outrage to the massacres in the Balkans and his view that the Islamic Turkish empire remained a necessary bulwark against Russia’s Pan-Slavic ambitions, was proof of his alien identity. But Disraeli’s concerns about Russia were greater and more serious than his critics assumed. He (as did Queen Victoria) saw Russia as a threat to British supremacy worldwide. He knew from sources in the Balkans that General Nicholas Ignatieff and other Russian agents had been instrumental in fomenting the insurrections against Turkish Islamic rule there (Millman 153). And he wanted to prevent any settlement of that portion of the ‘Eastern Question’ by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia that would exclude Britain and damage British interests in the whole Ottoman Empire. These interests included significant investments in the Porte’s securities, which would suffer huge losses were the Turkish Empire to collapse in chaos.
31With that in mind, it is clear that Britain’s policy of neutrality after Russia declared war on Turkey in April 1877 was by no means a matter of indifference. Disraeli knew that Russia would inevitably defeat Turkey and, as realpolitik, he was determined that, once the fighting was over, Britain should play a major role in settling the terms of peace and thus circumvent any provocations that would lead to a wider European war. In addition, Disraeli believed that were Russia to gain control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, and of the Balkan States, that expansion might ultimately pose a threat to Britain’s access to India via the Suez Canal and there would be disastrous political consequences for his Government in England. All of these cartoons of Disraeli’s metaphoric identity as a Sphinx are visual political rhetoric embodying direct partisan commentary designed to reinforce in the minds of Punch’s readers the idea that Disraeli is an alien figure in English politics with a mysterious, but evil intention.
32In this cartoon there is also an allusion to the disagreement within Disraeli’s Cabinet, and among the public, over his strategy of suggesting that Britain would, if necessary, go to war with Russia to defend its interests in the Ottoman Empire (O’Kell 461‒82). Three members of the Cabinet, Lords Derby, Carnarvon, and Salisbury, thought this was a dangerous tactic, and so they were aligned with Gladstone and his followers in promoting a counter policy of avoiding any provocations that might lead to war. Thinking to strengthen the case for peace, Lady Derby was, by the fall of 1876, sharing the secrets of the dissension in the Cabinet with Count Shuvalov, the Russian ambassador in London. In doing so, she often characterized both Disraeli and the Queen as warlike, a view that was seconded by prominent members of Gladstone’s circle of avid supporters also in touch with the ambassador. As such news was passed on throughout 1877 to Prince Aleksandr Gorchakov, the Tsar’s Foreign Minister in Moscow, it would have the ironic effect of strengthening Disraeli’s hand, for the finances of the Tsar’s Government were in terrible shape and the Russian army, weakened by casualties and disease by the Russo-Turkish war, was in no shape to fight a new war with Britain. Meanwhile, public awareness of Gladstone’s support for Russia led to jingoist manifestations of anger from demonstrators in London who thought his words and actions to be treason. This, combined with the movement of some British troops from India to the Mediterranean and the Sultan’s transfer of Cyprus to British control, made Disraeli and his imperialist policy more popular in England and gave him the leverage to insist that the terms Russia had imposed on Turkey in the Treaty of San Stefano (ending their war and giving Russia effective control of a greatly expanded Bulgaria) must be considered and modified by the Congress of Berlin when it met in the summer of 1878.
Fig. 18—‘Figures from a “Triumph.” (a Relief—on the Road to Berlin)’ (June 15, 1878).
University of Michigan
33Of the six Large-Cut cartoons related to Disraeli’s role in the Congress of Berlin, two are discussed here. The first, ‘Figures From A “Triumph.” (a Relief—on the Road to Berlin)’ (June 15, 1878) Fig. 18, is drawn very much in the style of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. A smiling and gesturing Disraeli (by then ennobled as Lord Beaconsfield) in procession toward the Congress of Berlin, shares his thoughts with his Foreign Secretary, a sober, perhaps doubtful Marquess of Salisbury. Both are shown in ancient classical dress with rose garlands, leading the allegorical ‘British Lion’ and a submissive ‘Asian Tiger’ on a leash of flowers, while Mr Punch, also with a rose garland, is miraculously flying overhead, accompanied by his dog Toby with head collar and wings. This watchful presence of Mr Punch signals the editors’ and the nation’s intense interest in Disraeli’s role at the Congress, which led Punch to five more Large Cuts on the same subject. As the lower caption shows, this first one refers to the announcement that Disraeli and Salisbury would be Britain’s Plenipotentiaries at the Congress. The Liberal Opposition, fearful of what Disraeli might do without Parliament’s oversight (and no doubt remembering his extraordinary initiative in the Suez Canal business), thought the decision to make Disraeli and Salisbury Britain’s Plenipotentiaries was controversial and worrying. But Disraeli had defended it on the grounds that only he and Salisbury were familiar enough with the details of the issues to be discussed and that they were also the only ones capable of deciding which issues might be considered a cause for war. He had also pointed out that Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia would be represented by similarly powerful plenipotentiaries, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Count Andrássy, and Prince Gorchakov. The classical setting and the miraculous details in this cartoon, combined with the caption’s anticipatory ‘TRIUMPH’ in quotation marks, cast a satirical light upon Disraeli’s intentions in going to Berlin and mocks his vaunting but (in their view) implausible ambition to be seen as the leading figure at a historically important imperialist occasion that would be recorded in permanent form, thus ensuring his lasting fame.
Fig. 19—‘A Blaze of Triumph!’ (July 27, 1878).
University of Michigan
- 9 The negotiations before the opening of the Congress between London, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Ber (...)
- 10 The image of Disraeli as Mephistopheles was popular amongst his detractors: ‘no one could look at h (...)
34The fifth of the six Punch cartoons alluding to the Congress of Berlin, ‘A Blaze of Triumph!’ (July 27, 1878) Fig. 19, seems to acknowledge Disraeli’s success there in protecting British interests, limiting Russia’s sphere of influence in the Balkans, and securing peace, while at the same time it represents his bold strategy and the complex diplomatic negotiations as the dangerous stunt of a circus tight-rope walker, who has carried a now smiling, heavy Turkish man on his back across the rope labelled CONGRESS, using a balancing pole labelled PEACE at one end and WAR at the other. Both the cartoon and the caption allude to the effect of the revelation two weeks earlier that Britain and Turkey had signed the ‘Anglo-Turkish Convention’ by which the British Government contracted to defend the Turkish Empire in Asia against any further Russian aggression, albeit conditionally upon the Sultan’s adoption of agreed administrative reforms. In return, as noted above, Turkey had ceded the island of Cyprus to Britain, so that it could become a garrison for British troops.9 The deliberately delayed publication of this diplomatic coup on the 7th of July, combined with the recognition that the terms of the Treaty of San Stefano would be modified by the Congress—to keep the straits at Constantinople open under Turkish control, to create a much smaller, at least nominally independent Bulgaria, and to limit Russia’s acquisitions from the Turkish war to Batum and other ports on the Black Sea—gave Disraeli the recognition and influence he sought among the great European Powers. He was, indeed, the ‘lion of the Congress’ (Blake 646, quoting B. H. Sumner). Public support for his Government in England had begun to increase during the Russo-Turkish war and the harsh terms of the concluding treaty had led to much Russophobia in England. But it was the triumph of the aggressive British diplomacy before and during the Congress of Berlin in stopping the Russian plans for an expanded Pan-Slavic sphere of influence in Europe, that gave Disraeli enormous popularity at home. His reception upon his return to London by train was indeed a ‘triumph’ in the ancient classical sense, for the platform for his arrival was crowded with dignitaries, and thousands of cheering people lined the streets that his carriage would take to his residence in Downing Street, where he announced that he had brought them ‘peace with honour’. The Queen was so thrilled by Disraeli’s success that she wanted to make him a Duke, or at least a Marquess, honours he wisely declined, accepting instead the Order of the Garter, provided that Lord Salisbury receive it as well. As perhaps it is needless to say, Gladstone was appalled at his rival’s success. He had thought that in defeating the Turks, the Russians were doing God’s work and that the Treaty of San Stefano was a glorious result (Millman 411, O’Kell 480). And he now described the Cyprus Convention as ‘an insane covenant’ and an ‘act of duplicity’ (The Times 22 July 1878, 10), while his supporters were by this point convinced that Disraeli was the ‘Mephistopheles of statesmanship’ (Clayden 233, O’Kell 458, 480, Blake 650).10
- 11 For example, the genial comedy of ‘Critics’ (Punch May 14 1870), where Gladstone thinks that Disrae (...)
35In conclusion, it is true that even the most egregiously reductive of Punch’s political Large Cuts are very amusing, and much of the humour comes from the daring metaphoric identities that form the satirical critique of Disraeli’s actions. The imaginative range of these identities, even in the few here discussed, is truly remarkable. And there are dozens more; for only in relatively few of Punch’s Large Cuts is Disraeli given the dignity of being himself.11 Collectively, Punch’s metaphoric visions of Disraeli develop to the point where in the later 1870s they seem to share the worst fears of Gladstone and his most zealous supporters. Certainly, all of the cartoons of Disraeli as a Sphinx are visual political rhetoric embodying direct partisan commentary that will reinforce in the minds of Punch’s readers the idea that Disraeli is an alien figure in English politics, one with a mysterious but evil intention.
36In that regard, it is worth noting that at the Third Reading of the Royal Titles Bill in the latter part of March 1876, just a few weeks before ‘New Crowns for Old Ones’ appeared, Gladstone had justified his continued resistance to the Bill with Manichean language that was extreme for parliamentary debate, especially so given his usual careful adherence to the parliamentary convention of referring to his rival as the ‘Right Honourable Prime Minister’ or the ‘Right Honourable Gentleman’: ‘In the proceedings of Government you must allow much for the weakness, much for the fluctuation of the public mind, and not a little for the designs and intrigues of evil-minded men; and if you do not guard against these designs and intrigues, though you may not share with these evil-minded men the guilt which they bear, you will share the responsibility for what ensues’. Gladstone then went on to say, ‘I do not prophesy that evils are certain to arise from the adoption of this measure—I hope they will not arise. What I perceive is that we are making room for them; and that if they do not arise, it will not be owing to our prudence and judgment, but to the beneficent influence of a Higher Power that we trust watches over the destinies of this country’ (Hansard Vol. 228, cc. 491‒92). In his frustration at facing divisions with a steady 60 per cent Conservative majority in favour of the Royal Titles Bill, Gladstone seems to have been overwhelmed by his revulsion at, or jealousy of his rival’s success, so much so that he went on to insult both the Prime Minister and the Queen by adding:
I feel, and feel deeply, with reference to the Sovereign on the Throne, that this proposal loses, by the fact of its having been made under a Queen, a very large proportion of what might seem invidious in our eyes . . . I doubt very much whether if, instead of having Her Majesty upon the Throne, we had upon the Throne a King—and one of the best Kings that ever adorned the Throne—there would ever have been found a Minister either rash enough or bold enough, I will not say which, to lay such a Bill before Parliament, or bring such a proposal before the country. (HC Deb., 23 March 1876, Vol. 228, c. 492)
37These remarks would intensify the Queen’s dislike of Gladstone and complicate their future relationship, when the Liberals won the next general election in 1880 and reluctantly she had to accept the fact that he was the inevitable successor as Prime Minister (Blake 605‒06). But in turning back to the caption, ‘New Crowns for Old Ones’, and Tenniel’s cartoon of the oriental wizard offering to exchange the imperial one for the English one, it cannot but seem that Punch had adopted Gladstone’s fear and was presenting a visual image of it.
- 12 Ragussis also discusses the fear and paranoia attached to the anti-Semitism Disraeli faced over his (...)
38In assessing Punch’s cartoons of Disraeli, it is also necessary to return to the conversations that were the source and the result of these visual interventions in the political discourse. As Leary has noted, the conversation around the Punch dinner table every Wednesday night, about what the topic of the next issue’s ‘Large Cut’ should be, was often stimulated by the most recent leader and reporting of political events in The Times, often influencing the visual treatment, and even sometimes the phrasing of the caption of the resulting cartoon (Leary 45). And even though the stars of the Punch staff saw themselves as respectable gentlemen whose published work had to reflect the decorum that separated their comic paper from its low competitors, their high-spirited suggestions at the dinner table were often coarse, vulgar, and prejudiced. With respect to Disraeli, the resultant choice of a motif or theme was almost always designed to express and strengthen what we would now recognize as an oppositional point of view. In itself, that is a legitimate editorial choice, and it is true that neither politics nor satire is a career for the faint of heart. But, as is the case with the many unsavoury satirical pamphlets also directed against Disraeli in the 1870s, many of these cartoons can be seen as articulating and giving further sanction to a prejudice that often had an ugly side to it. Indeed, it is safe to say that the editors and contributors of Punch always saw Disraeli in prejudicial terms as the adventurer and outsider they first took him to be, an opinion shared by his political adversaries, both in the Liberal Party and among his Ultra-Conservative colleagues. As noted above, Anthony Wohl makes this point very effectively when he argues that the anti-Semitism directed at Disraeli in the 1870s was far more virulent and dangerous than that he had experienced in earlier decades. In that regard, it is also worth noting that Disraeli is the only major English political figure of all those represented in Punch’s 19th-century cartoons who is consistently and variously depicted as foreign, deceptive and nefarious.12
39To understand the significance of that characterization, we should adopt Leary’s main point and pay more attention to the context of each cartoon, which involves not just recovering the allusions it contains (what the knowing reader would have known), but also noting the implications of the metaphoric identities in other cartoons in the series. In that regard it is sometimes the case, as might be expected, that subsequent Large Cuts featuring Disraeli reveal the rhetorical limitations of earlier ones. For example, the casting of Disraeli as a presumptuous, but tiny and insignificant nuisance in Young Gulliver and the Brobdi[n]Gnab Minister (April 5, 1845) is revealed to have been a serious underestimation in the light of the popularity of Disraeli’s second Young England novel, Sybil; or The Two Nations, just a month later, and when the context of A Political Application of an Old Fable (May 30, 1846, expressing Sir Robert Peel’s confidence that he is impervious to the serpent’s attack) is the power of Disraeli’s rhetoric that will soon be instrumental in defeating the Government. Another such example would be the mockery of Disraeli in Figures from A “Triumph” (June 15, 1878). In retrospect this Large Cut is seen to have ignored or underestimated the Prime Minister’s aggressive diplomatic strategy in shaping the peaceful outcome of the Congress of Berlin, which is acknowledged (though still not endorsed) five weeks later in ‘A Blaze of Triumph!’ (July 27, 1878).
40As has already been said, the editors and contributors to Punch saw themselves as having considerable influence within the nation’s political discourse shared by members of the middle and upper-middle classes. For example, Shirley Brooks said that he took it for granted that ‘every reader of Punch has read The Times’, which suggests both the intent to reach that audience and the likelihood that they did so (Henry Silver’s diary for 3 August 1864; quoted in Price 105; and Leary 45‒46). There would, of course, have been readers who were not subscribers, but the remarkable success of the magazine, as it became ‘one of the institutions of the country’ also testifies to the success of the editors’ intentions. Indeed, Richard Altick has suggested that, after its first quite ‘Radical’ decade, Punch increasingly adapted itself to the pressures of Victorian respectability and reflected the values and opinions of the conservative middle classes. He also suggested that, because ‘satire works in mysterious ways its mission to perform’, the political effect of Punch’s ‘constant ridicule of Disraeli’ on its readers is unknowable in any precise sense (Altick 732‒34).
41In part by contrast, Leary has shown that Brooks, who from 1852 to 1874 was the most influential ‘suggestor’ of the topics for Punch’s Large Cuts, had an enduring sympathetic interest in Disraeli. For example, Brooks had written a play based on Disraeli’s novel Coningsby (1844) shortly after its publication, though, not being approved by the Lord Chamberlain, it was never produced (Leary 118). After the split of 1846, Brooks was a Peelite Conservative who would have absorbed the widely held prejudices held by Disraeli’s parliamentary opponents. Still, an entry in Brooks’s diary 20 years later says, ‘I like Disraeli, but the fun is too good to be lost’ (12 February 1867, quoted by Leary 121 & n. 6). Perhaps that partly explains why, when Disraeli tried several times to court their sympathy, Punch’s editors never softened their satire. But, as Leary also notes, racial and class prejudice, Conservative politics, and xenophobic nationalism were also significant factors in shaping Brooks’s and his Punch colleagues’ view of Disraeli (Leary 121‒22). Upon Brooks’s death (March 2, 1874, just after Disraeli had again become Prime Minister), a London correspondent of the Liberal-Whig Leeds Mercury claimed that he (Brooks) though ‘by no means a slavish admirer of Mr Disraeli’, had ‘helped immeasurably to smooth the path of that Right Hon. Gentleman to his present proud position. Even had he done nothing else than suggest the subjects of the cartoons so admirably executed by Mr Tenniel, he did what tended very materially to assist the Conservative Party’ (Leeds Mercury 3 March 1874, 5; Leary 120). These claims, while expressed in general terms and perhaps coloured by electoral disappointment, are interesting because they imply that Punch’s satirical treatments of Disraeli, especially what Brooks called ‘the fun’ of the Large Cuts, had the effect of not only being appreciated for their wit, but also seen as embodying in the moment of the visualization, an inevitably simplified perspective on the inspiring action or issue in Tenniel’s cartoons. Readers who had indeed read The Times, or other newspapers carrying parliamentary reports, would not only have seen the newspaper’s leaders, but also the columns devoted to the speeches taken down by parliamentary reporters. In doing so they would have been influenced by Disraeli’s own rhetoric as well as that of his adversaries. In short, many of Punch’s readers may well have been so well informed about the context of the Large Cuts as to see the limitations or distortions of the chosen perspectives, especially the later ones so obviously aligned with Gladstone’s views. And the frequency with which Punch chose to caricature Disraeli might well have been so reinforcing in that regard as to create an admiration or sympathy that became a political preference. That said, given how often the cartoons, especially the later ones appearing after Brooks’s death, aligned with the Liberals’ views, and given the publication in which the claim is made, it seems rather to avoid the clear and obvious explanation for Disraeli’s victory: the unpopularity and internal divisions of Gladstone’s Ministry by the time of the 1874 General Election (Matthew 205‒30).
- 13 Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, K.G. In Upwards of 100 Cartoons from the Collection of ‘Mr (...)
42In any case, paying more attention to the contexts of the cartoons’ satirical humour does enable one to differentiate between a magazine echoing the presumed opinions of its readers and one whose manifest intention is to intensify and sanction their prejudices, which, at least in Punch’s Large Cuts of Disraeli, often appears evident. In that regard, it is worth noting that the usually factual editorial comments added below the original captions in the collected edition of 104 of these cartoons issued by Punch in 1878 became more directly partisan after 1874.13 As noted earlier, in the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, as Disraeli struggled to fulfil his ambitions and gain the leadership of the Conservative Party, he had to overcome, not just the stigma others attached to his Jewish heritage, but also his reputation for immorality, opportunism, and insincerity created by his youthful indiscretions (O’Kell 9‒15, 82‒84). But he nonetheless repeatedly insisted that trust was the basis of all political power. From that perspective, these cartoons seem, not merely a passive reflection of Victorian culture, but rather, as the editors and contributors intended, visual rhetoric constituting a powerful intervention in the political discourse of the day. Just how powerful Punch’s Large Cuts were at the time, and have been since, is reflected in both their popularity with the original readers, and the popular and scholarly interest they have generated in other periodicals and books since Disraeli’s death. But, as Philippe Vervaecke has shown in his quantitative study of British cartoons, Disraeli’s fame and political relevance transcended Punch’s perspective to have an afterlife in cartoons of many 20th-century newspapers, and periodicals, as well as four films, and a TV series. Moreover, he has been a legendary figure for more recent Conservative politicians, who have tried to mould his legacy to their hopes (2‒6).