The Crimean War and the Caricature War

The Crimean War and the Caricature WarAuthor(s): Anthony CrossSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Jul., 2006), pp. 460-480Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4214321 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 06:11

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and EastEuropean Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic andEast European Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.101 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 06:11:30 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mhra

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucl

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucl

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4214321?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


SEER, Vol. 84, No. 3, July 2006

The Crimean War and the

Caricature War

ANTHONY CROSS

CARICATURE is a genre in which the British have been pre-eminent since the times of Hogarth. Despite significant contributions from the Dutch, French and Germans, there can be little argument that for quality, quantity, variety and, indeed, for precision bombing and outrageousness, the work produced in England from the second half of the eighteenth century through the first quarter of the nineteenth, from Hogarth to the younger Cruikshank, was unparallelled and unrivalled. Towards the end of that golden age, George Cruikshank (I792-I878), barely out of his teens, achieved prominence for his attacks on Napo- leon and his portrayal of the Grande Armee's ignominious retreat from Moscow. And it was Cruikshank who by his imitation and adaptation of similarly directed Russian caricatures brought to the notice of Europe the very existence of Russian practitioners in the genre, notably the talented Ivan Terebenev (i78o-I8I5).1

The sudden flowering of Russian caricature, which built to some extent on the heritage of the lubok, the popular woodcuts and engrav- ings that had been produced in Russia for over a century, was also indebted to an acquaintance with European caricatures, imported into St Petersburg alongside numerous other European consumer goods and artefacts.2 Official resistance to the genre was, however, strong. In i8o8, the well-known painter Aleksei Venetsianov (1780-I847) began to publish his Zhurnal karikatur Journal of Caricatures), but was soon told that 'His Majesty the Emperor has ordered that further publication of the Journal of Caricatures be suspended, noting that the editor might turn his talent to a much better subject and might use his time to greater advantage'.3 Incomprehension at English enthusiasm for caricature

Anthony Cross is Professor Emeritus of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Retired Professorial Fellow of Fitzwilliam College.

1 See Anthony Cross, 'Through the Distorting Mirror: Russia in British Caricature, to I815', Pinokoteka, I8-I9, 2004, pp. 74-82 (pp. 8o-8i).

2 On Russian acquaintance with the work of Hogarth, see Lu. D. Levin, 'Uil'iam Khogart i russkaia literatura', in M. P. Alekseev and R. lu. Danilevskii (eds), Russkaia literatura i zarubezhnoe iskusstvo, Leningrad, I986, pp. 35-6I. The word 'karikatura' or 'karrikatura' is first instanced in a Russian text in I790: see Slovar' russkogo iazyka XVIII veka, vyp. 9, St Petersburg, 1997, p. 258.

A. Novitskii, 'Satiricheskie kartinki kak material dlia istorii Rossii', Russkoe obozrenie, February I894, p. 807.



ANTHONY CROSS 46I

was also widespread. Nikolai Karamzin (I766-I826) had noted in a volume of his Pis 'ma russkogo puteshestvennika (Letters of a Russian Travel- ler), published in i8oi but referring to his visit to London in the summer of 1790, how 'I look at the amusing caricatures displayed on the doors of print-shops and am astonished at the taste of the English', before describing a particular example in which the British government was engaged in bloody fisticuffs with the Spanish over the Nootka Sound.4 In I8I3, Sarah, Lady Lyttleton mentioned in a letter home a conversation she had had with a Russian noblewoman in St Petersburg:

Went yesterday to Mme. Paliansky's and sat agreeably with her and her sister for an hour. No making her understand how English Governments survive the print-shop windows in London. Told her of the Prince of Hessenstein's visit to Mr. Fox when Minister, and of his being desired by Mr. F. to lounge over some caricatures till he was at leisure to attend to him, Mr. Fox himself being the principal figure in each. Mme. Paliansky at this moment in a hopeless puzzle about it.5

When in the last decades of the eighteenth century, Gillray, Newton, Rowlandson and Isaac Cruikshank, to name but the most eminent, pilloried Catherine II and Paul 1,6 there were, of course, no answering salvoes from Russian artists against the British, not that the British caricaturists needed outside help in their own merciless attacks on British royals and politicians. Russian caricature was born during the Napoleonic wars and made, as we have seen, common cause against Boney and there was no hint of Anglo-Russian cross-fire. The reign of Nicholas I, however, ushered in a further period of mutual distrust and hostility that resulted in a few British caricatures against Russia, but once more there was no answering fire, for Russian caricature had faded almost as soon as it had bloomed. Nicholas's mistrust of all forms of criticism was far more pronounced than his elder brother's, and while there were some cautious social genre scenes and caricatures appearing in the I840s, for instance, from the brush of Pavel Andreevich Fedotov (I815-52) or in short-lived journals such as Eralash (Nonsense), it was to be war that led again to the loosening (the term is only relative) of the opposition to caricature in what might be termed

4 N. M. Karamzin, Pis ma russkogo puteshstvennika, ed. Iu. M. Lotman, N. A. Marchenko and B. A. Uspenskii, Leningrad, I984, p. 337.

5 Correspondence of Sarah Spencer Lady Lyttleton I787-1870, ed. Mrs Hugh Wyndham, London, 1912, p. I75. Fox was not the first and certainly not the last politician to collect caricatures. Disraeli and Gladstone, the subjects of innumerable Punch cartoons, had large collections.

6 See Anthony Cross, 'Catherine in British Caricature', in id., Catherine the Great and the British: A Pot-Poumr of Essays, Nottingham, 200I, pp. 29-44; Anthony Cross, "'Crazy Paul": The British and Paul I', in Joachim Klein, Simon Dixon and Maarten Fraanje (eds), Reflections on Russia in the Eighteenth Centugy, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 200I, pp. 7-I8.



462 THE CRIMEAN WAR AND THE CARICATURE WAR

its international political dimension, and to the emergence of Russia's first caricaturist of true stature.7 This breakthrough came, however, only at the end of I854, but Russia had been at war since the summer of I853 against Turkey and against Britain and France since March I854, and it is therefore appropriate to begin our survey of the caricature war from the British side and its biggest cannon, Punch.

Founded in I84I, Punch; or, the London Charivari soon claimed a particular place of affection with the British public, not least for the popularity of what were to become known as 'cartoons', although for a long time they were referred to as 'caricatures', 'pencillings', or 'cuts'.8 These were not the separate coloured copper-sheet broadsheets issued by London print-sellers such as Mrs Humphrys and Ackermann in Georgian times, but uncoloured lithographs or woodcuts that were an integral part of the journal. They have been authoritatively described as 'a large full-page or double-page block of a satirical nature, usually placed in the middle opening of the paper, and for the most part still further dignified by being "unbacked" by other printing'.9

It was on 9 April I853 that Punch published its first such cartoon pertinent to the Crimean War, 'The Turkey in Danger', using images from the bestiary tradition to sound warnings of the approaching crisis (Fig. i). This was followed inJune by 'The Emperor's Cup for I853, or Turkey Rhubarb', which projects for the first time an image of the tsar, complete with jackboots and waxed moustache, that was to become standard. He is being administered a purgative or diuretic by a representative of the very nation he had dubbed 'a very sick man', while in the background we glimpse the shadowy figures of France and England. Over the next few months it was less the tsar than Russia as the bear at bay or, more often, the double-headed eagle, resembling if anything a squashed crow, as in 'A Caution to Imperial Birds of Prey' (5 November I853), which dominated the cartoons.'0 It is, nonetheless, a matter of surprise that Punch did not react to the destruction of the Turkish fleet by the Russians at Sinope on 30 November I853; indeed, the massacre did not provoke the Allies into action for many more months. George Cruikshank, however, produced his biting 'Imperial

For histories of Russian caricature, see S. S. Trubachev, 'Kratkii ocherk istorii karikatury v Rossii' (hereafter, 'Kratkii ocherk'), in A. V. Shvyrov, Illiustrirovannaia istoriia karikatuy s drevneishikh vremen po nashi dni, St Petersburg, 1903, pp. 369-404; L. R. Varshavskii, Russkaia karikatura 4o-5o-kh gg. XIXv., Moscow, I937.

8 They appeared from the very first number of Punch, but only became a constant feature from the summer of I843 when John Leech produced a series of six social satires, which he entitled 'cartoons', mocking a public exhibition of cartoons (in the traditional sense) of frescoes for the new Houses of Parliament.

9 M. H. Spielmann, The Histogy of 'Punch', London, I895 (hereafter, The Histogy of 'Punch), p. I87.

'? As late as 29 September I855 there was a reprise of this motif in 'The Split Crow in the Crimea', Punch, 29, p. 127.



ANTHONY CROSS 463

_ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1{

TURKEY IN DANGER.

FIGURE i: 'Turkey in Danger', April I853. By permission of Punch Ltd.

Piety!, or the Russian "Te Deum", for the Successful Slaughter at Sinope', depicting the tsar with his suite of Orthodox priests singing their praises from the top of a mountain formed out of slaughtered Turks.'1

" A not unbiased English resident in St Petersburg observed that 'All the shop windows in St. Petersburg were filled with plates inscribed "The Glorious Battle of Sinope", as the Russians are pleased to call that fearful act of cowardice. On my arrival in London I found the very same representations, or fac-similes of them, displayed, with the far truer designa- tion of "Horrible Massacre"!'. [Rebecca McCoy], The Englishwoman in Russia: Impressions of the Socie_y and Manners of the Russians at Home, London, I855 (hereafter, The Englishwoman in Russia), p. 296.




The clamour of the war party grew and the Prime Minister, Lord Aberdeen's appeasement policy was targeted throughout December in a series of cartoons that included 'Aberdeen in His Un-Popular Act of the Courier of St. Petersburg' (io December) and 'Aberdeen Smoking the Pipe of Peace' (I7 December), but it was the Peace Society headed by the Manchester manufacturers John Bright and Richard Cobden that was the object of unrelenting attacks not only in cartoons but also in articles, poems and satirical squibs and lampoons. Attacks against Bright and Cobden, reflecting not least the Londonocentric orientation of the journal, had begun in fact as early as I85I but obviously assumed particular momentum during the war. In November I855, for a typical example, a so-called 'Poem for a Political Primer' begins:

Cobden is a Muscovite, Ditto set down Mr. Bright, Ditto Gladstone, ditto Graham, LordJohn Russell much the same.'2

Following the declaration of war, the tsar had re-emerged in traditional guise. The cartoon of 8 April I854, 'The "Montagne Russe" A Very Dangerous Game', uses a Russian diversion described for Western readers in countless travellers' accounts to show Nicholas on his sledge marked 'despotism', sliding obliviously but irrevocably towards the abyss (Fig. 2). England, inevitably, made claim to the moral high ground in a war which was paradoxically interpreted as a crusade in cartoons depicting Britannia as a chivalrous and self- sacrificing knight, "'Right against Wrong"' (8 April) and 'England's War Vigil' (6 May).' 3 Committed to the war, Punch reflected the nation's impatience at apparent inaction in the war zone during the early summer months, with Aberdeen continuing in his role of whipping-boy. Punch amused itself meanwhile with exposing what it held to be the falsehoods and misrepresentations in the Russian press. Its particular target was Russkii invalid, a weekly journal founded in St Petersburg in i8i3 to provide support for the wounded during the Napoleonic Wars, the very title of which invited heavy-handed jokes, beginning with the remark that 'One would think that the Russian journal, the Invalide Russe, was so called by reason of its statements being continually invalidated'.14 Cartoons making direct reference to the journal include 'Another Russian Victory (Vide Invalide Russe)' (8 July) and 'The Real "Invalide Russe"' (22 July), recalling 'The

12 Punch, 29, 1855, p. I96. 13 Amusingly, it is the tsar who is branded as a hypocrite for 'pretend[ing] that he is fight-

ing the battle of the Cross against the Crescent': 'The Modern Crusader', Punch, 25, I854, p. IIO.

14 'The Muscovite Romancer', Punch, 27, I854, p. 7. See other items on pp. 24, 47, 50.



ANTHONY CROSS 465

TIIE "IONTAGNE '1IIJSSE."-A VERY DANGEROUS GAME.

FIGURE 2: 'The "Montagne Russe" - A Very Dangerous Game', April 1854. By permission of Punch Ltd.

Emperor's Cup' of the previous year by its portrayal of a sick tsar and his Turkish 'doctor' (Fig. 3). 15

It was on 22 September 1854 that the first great engagement took place, but, given the inevitable delays in the communication of news, it was nearly a month before the journal responded with its flag-waving

15 A later example is 'Cruel Treatmnent of Russian Prisoners in England Vide "Invalide Russe"', Punch, 27, 7 October I854, p. I37.




THE REAL 'INVALIDE RUSSE."

FIGURE3 : 'The Real "Invalide Russe"', July I854. By permission of Punch Ltd.

'Victory of the Alma', showing British, French and Turkish soldiers raising together their respective colours, published in the same issue (I4 October) as 'Bursting the Russian Bubble'. A week later, the bond between the British and the French was emphasized in 'Brothers in Arms', but its accompanying full-page cartoon introduced the theme of loss in 'Britannia Takes the Widows and Orphans of the Brave under Her Protection'. Within days, there followed the series of battles and charges connected with Balaklava. The 'thin red line', the 93rd



ANTHONY CROSS 467

~~ V 11R

ENTHUSIASM OF PATERFAMILIAS, On Reading the Report of -the Grand Charge of British Cavahry on the 25th.

FIGURE 4: 'Enthusiasm of Paterfamilias, on Reading the Report of the Grand Charge of British Cavalry on the 25th', November i854.

By permission of Punch Ltd.

Highlanders' heroic opposition to the Russian cavalry, was not celebrated in Punch nor, surprisingly, was the successful charge of the Heavy Brigade under SirJames Yorke Scarlett: both were over- shadowed by twenty minutes of madness, the heroic and chaotic charge of the Light Brigade under the Earl of Cardigan in the 'valley of death'.16 It was again almost a month before Punch published a half-cut in praise of the Earl of Cardigan, who led the charge, together with an item entitled 'A Trump Card(igan)' (i8 November). A week later, on 25 November, a month to the day after the charge, Leech produced one of the most famous of Punch's Crimean cartoons, 'Enthusiasm of Paterfamilias, on Reading the Report of the Grand Charge of British Cavalry on the 25th' (Fig. 4). The father, who is seen reading the report in a London newspaper, brandishes a poker in bellicose delight, whilst the various members of his large family react, some with enthusiasm, but more with the grief manifested by the mother.

16 The extent to which the charge fired the imagination of British poets and poetasters, to say nothing of others writers and the general public, is painstakingly recreated in Patrick Waddington, 'Theirs But To Do And Die': The Poetty of the Charge of the Light Brgade at Balaclava, 25 October i854, Nottingham, i995.




Punch, however, was in no way consistent in its support for Cardigan, or indeed, his superior Lord Lucan. Criticized long before the charge,17 they were subsequently the butt of satirical poems, rising to a crescendo in the early months of I856. In March of that year Cardigan was described as:

Cardigan-hero, rode a horse tall; Cardigan-zero, got a great fall; Ten blundered charges, with all their dead men, Can't set Cardigan-hero up again.18

The previous month, along with other incompetent commanders, he had been pilloried in 'Pour encourages les autres':

Simpsons, Cardigans, Lucans, and Aireys, and all, On whose backs our Crimean discredits must fall, Bless your stars, you have fallen on days when the Times, Not Court-martials and Commons, judge you and your crimes.'9

On the occasion of Punch's jubilee in July I89I 7The Times was to remark: 'May we be excused for noting the fact that he [Punch] has generally, in regard to public affairs, taken his cue from the "Times"?' ? During the Crimean War, Punch's stance on many issues was inevitably influ- enced by the dispatches of The Times's renowned correspondent, W. H. Russell (i820-1907).21 It was Russell's reports that triggered the wave of public outrage both at the ineptitude of commanders in the field, from Lord Raglan down, and of home-based politicians and administrators, beginning with the Prime Minister, Lord Aberdeen.

Punch greeted the fall of Aberdeen and the installing of Palmerston as Prime Minister with 'Seeing the Old Year Out and the New Year In' (6 January i855). The following month, Palmerston's welcomed belli- gerence was the subject of 'Now for It! A Set-to between "Pam, the Downing Street Pet", and "the Russian Spider"' (17 February), but it was an untitled half-cut in the same issue that reflected the concern for the plight of the ordinary soldier. During a snow-storm in the Crimean winter two British soldiers, virtually in rags, offer the following interchange:

'Well, Jack! Here's good news from home. We're to have a medal.' 'That's very kind. Maybe one of these days we'll have a coat to stick it on!'22

'7 See, for instance, 'Oh! Pantaloons of Cherry', Punch, 26, 6 May I854, p. I82. 18 'Nursery Rhymes for the Camp', Punch, 30, i March I856, p. 83. '9 Punch, 30, i6 February I856, p. 67. 20 Quoted in Spielmann, The Histogy of 'Punch', p. 2ion. 21 'The Pen and the Sword' is a fulsome tribute to Russell: Punch, 30, 9 February i856,

P 49. 22 Punch, 28, I855, p. 64.



ANTHONY CROSS 469 In October of the previous year, when the first references to Florence Nightingale and the parlous situation of the hospital at Scutari appeared, there was also an ironic cartoon entitled 'How to Get Rid of an Old Woman', alluding to the need for nurses (28 October). Nightingale herself was never to appear in a cartoon, but the situation she was pledged to alleviate was addressed in the heavily satirical article 'The Queen's Visit to the Crimean Imbeciles', followed by a full-cut with a similar title, depicting Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, inspecting representatives of the Medical Department, the War Ministry and the Commissariat (I4 April). The turn of the so-called 'ageing field-marshals' was not long in coming: 'Nursery Rhymes for Field Marshals' was followed by the cartoon 'Grand Mili- tary Spectacle', in which the real heroes of the Crimea confronted the commanders who embodied the outmoded structures, inefficiency and inadequate equipment and supplies of the army (3 November).

The beginning of I855 had seen a change of British Prime Ministers and Secretaries of State for War and it was soon to witness a change of tsars. News of the death of Nicholas I was greeted by the famous cartoon 'General Fevrier Turned Traitor' (io March), in which Leech used against the tsar his assertion that winter was Russia's faithful ally. It was a worthy successor to Isaac Cruikshank's merciless farewell to Nicholas's grandmother, Catherine II, 'The Moment of Reflection or a Tale for Future Times', some fifty years earlier. A week later, it was followed by the eloquent 'The Young Czar Coming into His Property', manifesting Punch's belief that there would be no change in Russian conduct of the war: Alexander II is depicted as not only pulling on the jackboots of his father but also assuming the facial features Punch had bestowed on him (Fig. 5). During the remaining months of the war, however, the new tsar was not himself the target of further cartoons.

Events in the war zone were nonetheless not forgotten (see, for instance, the trumpeting of Mr Punch himself at the 'Defeat of the Russians at Home and Abroad' [9 June]). The siege of Sevastopol had begun on I7 October I854 with high hopes for its rapid capitulation but it was only on II September i855 that it fell. For a full three months prior to this event there had been no full 'cuts' devoted to the war, but there now came a veritable deluge of poems and other pieces, including the inevitable attempts to show the falsity in Russian reporting. 'The Harvest of the War' (22 September), 'The Split Crow in the Crimea' (29 September), 'A Day's Fishing at Sebastopol' (6 October) and 'The Men in Possession Taking the Inventory' (13 October), as well as several half-cuts, celebrate the events. 'All But Trapped', the cartoon of 3 November, shows the jack-booted Russian bear being chased back into his lair by allied soldiers, but the 'all but' was somewhat prema- ture. The war was to drag on for a further six months until the signing of the Peace of Paris on 30 March i856. The cartoons appearing




; -e

S~~~~4

THE YOUNG CZAR COMING INTO HIS PROPERTY.

FIGURE 5: 'The Young Czar Coming into His Property', March I855. By permission of Punch Ltd.

during this period reflected the feeling that the British were not getting all they deserved and should remain vigilant against Russian duplicity, manifest in 'Negotiations. Peace if You Like - but No Tricks This Time' (26 January) and 'The Gun-boats' (3 May), at which Britannia, peace treaty by her feet and unsigned, looks with suspicion.

In the space of three years Punch devoted over IOO full-page cartoons, almost all drawn by Leech, and about twenty half-cuts to events, home and abroad, connected with what became known as the Crimean War. They form the visual complement to the numerous prose and verse items in different genres that appeared in the journal and in some cases



ANTHONY CROSS 47I

they are hardly to be understood without the accompanying com- mentary. For anyone accustomed to the ribaldries and extremes of Georgian caricature Punch's offerings seem almost mild and decorous. When they are not sententiously patriotic, they can be humorous and gently amusing; even the anger directed at home-based incompetents is relatively muted. The Russian bear is always well portrayed, placed in predicaments familiar from fable, while the tsar (Nicholas or Alexander) is a generally unmenacing figure of fun. There is no attempt to depict other Russian personalities, even Prince Aleksandr Menshikov, the Russian commander-in-chief, although Russian names were always good for a laugh in verse or prose.

Punch was, of course, perused with keen interest not only in Britain but also in the many capitals of Europe, including St Petersburg. Mr Punch himself took delight in drawing the attention of his English readers to the attempts of the Russian censors to interfere with the journal's contents. In an item entitled 'Pranks of Pumice-Stone at St. Petersburgh' in April I854 it was alleged that 'the under censor of the Russian Government is, it seems, Pumice-stone. What the principal censor Scissors spares, the smaller functionary Pumice-stone, visits with erasure. Thus, between cutting and scratching, poor Punch arrives in an awful condition among his St. Petersburg readers'.23 Over a year later, readers were informed 'How "Punch" is treated in Russia' in excerpts from an account by a James Carr, an English workman', recently returned from Russia, who asserted that 'I have seen Punch so much disfigured, that the owner has not had as much reading left as the breadth of his hand for his money'. 24 Interestingly, there is no specific mention of the cartoons, which would have been cut out without difficulty. It is, however, apparent that Russian caricaturists were very conversant with Punch's cartoons which they were able to adapt for their own ends. In what remains the most detailed discussion in English of Russian caricature during the Crimean War Henry Sutherland Edwards suggested in his 7he Russians at Home (i86i):

As for caricatures, the print-shops, until shortly before the coronation [of Alexander II], abounded with them. It is true that some few of these, relating to our conduct of the war, were mere facsimiles of the large cuts in Punch; for whenever that journal's attacks on the executive were particularly good, they were adopted by the Russians as applying to the country at large; so prevalent is the belief on the Continent that, owing to our representative system, the acts of the English administration may be regarded as those of the nation itself.25

23 Punch, 26, I854, p- 127. 24 Punch, 29, I855, p. 65- 25 H. Sutherland Edwards, 7The Russians at Home, London, i86i (hereafter, The Russians at

Home), p. 41, see also pp. 38-5o. Edwards produced a second expanded edition in 1879 entitled The Russians at Home and the Russians Abroad.




Edwards, however, went on to say that 'the most interesting caricatures that appeared were those directed against the allies in general', but he also noted that 'a far larger number of them were directed against England than against France; while Turkey was scarcely deemed worthy of insulting at all'.26 This animosity towards England was also emphasized by the anonymous 'Lady, ten years resident in that country' (Miss Rebecca McCoy), who published some years before Edwards her own Impressions of the Society and Manners of the Russians at Home (I855) and alleged that 'the English in Russia have always been much more respected than liked; and latterly they have become most intensely hated, from the political position in which Great Britain stands towards that country'.27 She had already left 'that country' by the time Russian hostility towards England and the Allies found an outlet in caricature.

It was in October I854, the time of the first great military clashes in the Crimea, that the merchant publisher A. K. Beggrov in St Petersburg sought permission to publish an album of ten caricatures. Permission was initially refused, but was then granted after the personal intervention of the tsar on 20 December. 'His Imperial Majesty has graciously commanded that caricatures of a political content which are directed against states hostile to us may be published but only if they portray with due propriety the humorous side of a subject and do not contain any abuse in the captions.'28 The Moscow censor had in fact already passed for publication at the very end of September a collection of lithographs by I. Chuksin, said to be 'a copy from the latest London and Paris editions' and translated from the French. It is also claimed to be 'an edition which has been revised, corrected and significantly increased'.29 Stseny iz zhizni vremen proshedshikh, nastoaishchikh i budushchikh (Scenes from Life in Past, Present and Future Times) sought to high- light the uneasy alliance of their enemies. In one amusing example, apparently from a French original, Napoleon Bonaparte looks down from the sky at his nephew Napoleon who is sticking to a wall the declaration of war against Russia, while a docile bulldog sits alongside, with a bag of leaflets in his jaws. The caption reads: 'Well, well, little nephew! Quite a fellow, must admit! War with Russia! Alliance with England! So he is going to avenge me! I said that whoever makes friends with those bulldogs should be cursed, and his best friend is an Englishman!'

Two of the caricatures and several more from the Chuksin's next publication from the same year, Izbrannaia kollektsiia karrikatur [sic]

26 Ibid. 27 McCoy, The Englishwoman in Russia, p. 29I. 28 St Petersburg, Otdel Rukopisei, Rossiiskaia Natsional'naia Biblioteka, f. 83I, ed khr 3,

1. 720b. This and the other archival reference (n. 3I) were kindly supplied by D. V. Solov'ev of the Department of Prints in the Russian National Library in St Petersburg.

29 Stseny iz zhizni vremen proshedshikh, nastoaishchikh i budushchikh, Moscow, I854, title page.



ANTHONY CROSS 473

noveishikh vremen (A Select Collection of Caricatures of Most Recent Times), were aimed specifically at Sir Charles Napier, the admiral of the English fleet sent to blockade Russian shipping in the Baltic and possibly attack Cronstadt. Although the British public were naturally interested in the activities of the fleet, there was not much coverage in Punch of naval matters, and certainly not in cartoons. The one full cut devoted to Napier appeared on 23 September I854, when the fleet was about to return to England and an attack on Cronstadt was still in theory contemplated. Napier is transformed into the British Lion, who suggests 'I must just leave a card at Cronstadt' before departing. In contrast, Napier and his fleet were subjects of intense concern to Russians by their very presence in the Gulf of Finland and proximity to the Russian capital. After Palmerston, Napier was the most represented and pilloried Englishman in Russian caricature. According to the 'Eng- lishwoman in Russia', 'women used to frighten the children by saying that the English Admiral was coming'.30

It was the activities of the British fleet in the Baltic and the Black Sea that provided the subjects for the first set of ten caricatures by Nikolai Aleksandrovich Stepanov (I807-77) that was eventually published in April i855.31 They had in fact been prepared much nearer to the time of the events, the journal Moskovitianin (The Muscovite) noting in the spring of the previous year that 'We have recently heard that Mr. Stepanov wishes to renew the inheritance of the caricaturist Nevakhovich [M. L. Nevakhovich (I817-50)]; we announce that it is a rumour which is remarkable and pleasing at the present time'.32 Author of a popular novel and endless verse, brother-in-law of the composer Aleksandr Sergeevich Dargomyrzhskii (I813-69) and friend of the noted artist Karl Pavlovich Briullov (I799-I852), who dubbed him 'the irritable cabinet' (zhelchnyi shkap), Stepanov began his career as a caricaturist in the i840s in Eralash, edited by Nevakhovich, and over his career he was to produce some 3000 social and political caricatures.33 It was the Crimean War that brought him to prominence, when his artistic talent saw him tower over his fellow caricaturists.

30 IcCoy, The Englishwoman in Russia, pp. 294-95.

31'o rassmotrenii i ne razreshenii k pechataniiu desiati karikatur, narisovannykh g. Stepanovym na deistviia Anglo-Frantsuzov v Baltiiskom i Chernom moriakh', Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv, St Petersburg, f. 777, op. 2, I854g., d. 102.

32 Moskvitianin, 3, I854, section 5, p. 142.

3 Trubachev, 'Kratkii ocherk', pp. 388-95. Apart from a brief survey in Rosalind P. Gray, Russian Genre Painting in the Nineteenth Centugy, Oxford, 2000, pp. 56-57, there is nothing in English on Stepanov; in Russian, there is the lightweight monograph by L. Varshavskii, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Stepanov i807-i877, Moscow, 1952, and a few pages in other general surveys.




It was only, however, after the intervention of the tsar, following the petition of the publisher, as mentioned earlier, that the first tetrad' or fascicle was published, together with two further fascicles, under the title Karikatugy N. A. Stepanova and brought him wide recognition not only in Russia but in the lands of the enemy. The copy I was fortunate to acquire some twenty-five years ago has contemporary English trans- lations pasted in opposite each caricature. Stepanov himself said that 'all the subjects were based on printed information in our journals and in the captions every literary propriety has been observed', an admis- sion which would have pleased the tsar and brought a smile to readers of Punch for whom the Russian press was simply the manufacturer of propaganda lies.

The first fascicle opens with a caricature that establishes the image of Napier, who, sitting in the crow's nest, spies upon impregnable Cronstadt through his telescope and decides he will leave it to the French to breakfast there. Napier was to appear in no less than six of the first ten caricatures and often in the company of the other bogey man, Palmerston. In the first of the latter he is offering in fact to breakfast in Cronstadt, lunch in Petersburg and dine in Moscow. Palmerston was, according to Sutherland Edwards and the anonymous English lady, the most hated man in Russia and certainly he was a most frequent target for Russian caricaturists, including Stepanov. Palmerston is often shown with the French emperor, most amusingly perhaps in Stepanov's 'Kak izobreli Napoleona III' ('How Napoleon III Was Invented'), in which he attempts to make Louis Napoleon resemble his fearsome predecessor, the great Napoleon, while com- menting 'I suggest that even he will be frightening like this' (Fig. 6). Stepanov had a great sense of theatre and the ability to produce well-drawn scenes, largely self-explanatory without long captions. An excellent example is 'Angliiskaia artilleriia v Krymu' ('The English Artillery in the Crimea') (Fig. 7), in which he seizes upon the barely concealed contempt of the British towards their Turkish allies which, incidentally, is apparent in several of the cartoons in Punch (see, for instance, 'The Giant and the Dwarf [5 August I854] and 'HowJack Makes the Turk Useful at Balaklava' [6 January I855]). The English officers use the Turks as horses both for themselves and for pulling the cannons.

Stepanov prepared two further fascicles for publication, but only one under the title Sovremennye shutki (TopicalJokes) appeared in the summer of i856. It is mainly the situation at Sevastopol that dominates the caricatures which form an effective counterpoint to Punch's version of the events. The seventh caricature, which also appears on the cover, is entitled 'Nakonets to ia v Sevastopole' ('At last I'm in Sevastopol') shows the endlessly targeted Palmerston grasped by the scruff of



U40~~~~~~~

-.ia a '2v: b (i tpaineHb.

FIGuRE6: Nikolai Stepanov, 'Kak izobreli NapoleonallI, April 855

.-.' <' E S W W | S S | _ ~~~~~~~~~~~,-I



tT1

i' .. . .. . . . -... .. .. .

FIGURE : Nikolai Stepanov, 'Angliiskaia artilleriia v Krymu', March 1855



ANTHONY CROSS 477

t nc n n i y a i i (g . The s

_11 i | W11 iSi S l 6 zi | | i | i~~~~~~~~~~~~~.161. 013

fascicle, although printed, was held back because of the peace negotiations and when the Peace of Paris was signed, it was suppressed: a nice example of Russian sensitivity to the situation -or, if you wish, of the rigid censorship.

Throughout the summer of 1855 Russian caricaturists continued to target Napier, although he had been replaced by Admiral Dundas, transferred from the Black Sea. For example, four of the six lithographs in V. Beliaev's Skazani'e v litsakh/ (A Tale in Portraits) feature Napier, two of them alluding to an alleged dispute between the two English admirals. Perhaps the most telling of its caricatures, however, is devoted to the ill-fated charge of the Light Brigade: 'Ostatki angliiskoi




;oA~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1; *11 1 1 1_

FIGURE~ 9 V. Beliaev, 'Ostatki anglii'skoi kavalerui vozvrashchaiushchiisia iz rekognostsirovki pod Balaklav, ,July I 855

kavalerii vozvrashchaiushchiisia iz[sc rekognostsirovki pod Balak- lavoi' ('The Remnants of the English Cavalry Returning from a Recon- naissance near Balakldava') depicts an English cavalry officer with the features of Palmerston seated, the wrong way round, on all that remains of his horse, its hind quarters (Fig. 9). Other collections were

published in the same year by such as Anninskii, Boklevskii and Oznobishin,34 but it was V. Nevskii's album with its English and

34 P. Anninskii, Poslovitsy: ot poslovitsy ne uidesh'. Poslovitsy v vek ne sloitsia, Moscow, 1855; Anninskii, Poslovitsy v karikaturakh, M. I855; P. M. Boklevskii, JVa nyneshniuiu voinu, Moscow, I855; D. P. Oznobishin, Aarikatugy na sovremennuiu voinu, Moscow, 1855.



ANTHONY CROSS 479

_vx' ~ ~ ~ ~ t

I I .e}.g

~~~, WR,..,s,,Sl

~~~~ t ~ ~ ~

.4'

ln Nr t Tl IK n '7E2t'r.'S\'. i

| 7tr>s l

I_~~~~~eyr I ML a "3 kit_ . | I l~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~j MU W -ZI% P ;x-^2 '><t m ";'bi

FIGRio Srge Ste'to, 'Tok uaaa, Jun i I

comman n patte!ntio o itsJE nrle Parn fouisc lon thme Britih.Teny

fourncaicaturs waerae nublshe in fou faces ane mnyexlote

Fum _o Sergei Strel'tsv 'Trik udalaja', Jun 85

internal disputes, such as the unseemly fight between Raglan, Aber- deen and T-he Times, while a bloody-jawed bulldog looks on, fanned by a clown, possibly representing Palmerston."5

Finally, mention should be made of two caricatures that more than any mentioned hitherto hark back to the use of traditional subjects in European caricature. The first was a lithograph by Sergei Strel'tsov (censorship permission I2/24 June i855) which employed the image of the scales or balance, much beloved in the English tradition by caricaturists exposing shifts in the European balance of power or between parties in internal politics, to demonstrate how a sturdy Russian peasant outweighs the combined efforts of British, French and Turks to lift him. It is an expression of Russian defiance during the siege of

35 Palmerston is caled 'the first clown in Europe' in another caricature of the period.




Sevastopol.36 The other is the application of a famous fable by Ivan Krylov to the relations existing between the Allies who, pulling in different directions, managed to remain stationary. The heads of the Swan, the Crab, and the Pike indicate that they represent France, Turkey and England respectively (Fig. I0).37

Russian caricature came of age with the Crimean War. After half a century of fitful starts and suppressions, it enjoyed a greater freedom of reference after Nicholas's intervention and even more under his successor Alexander II into the period of the great reforms. In Stepanov, who went on to produce the influential journals Znakomye (Familiar Faces, I856-57) and Iskra (The Spark, I859-63), Russia found an exponent of caricature, worthy of favourable comparison with Punch's John Leech and the young Gustav Dore, whose Custine-inspired Russophobic masterpiece, Histoire pittoresque, dramatique et caricaturale de la Sainte Russie had appeared in Paris in i854.38

36 The caption expresses in distorted Russian the words of an on-looking British admiral 'O, kho, kho!!! Tiashol rus'ka muzik i kuliakom i vesom' (Oh, oh, oh! How heavy the Russian peasant is with his fist as well as in weight). The caricature was very popular and was much copied. Sutherland Edwards describes a variant which 'shows the Allies throwing fresh weights, or fresh cannon-balls, into the scale, while the moujik still remains unmoved' (Edwards, 7he Russians at Home, p. 44).

37 Edwards was also much taken with this caricature and offered a spirited English version of Krylov's fable that had appeared as the caption to 'Troika udalaia' ('The Bold Troika') (ibid., p. 48).

38 For an English version, see 7The Rare and Extraordinagy Histogy of Holy Russia, with over 500 illustrations by Gustave Dore and translated by Daniel Weissboort, London, I972.



Date post:	20-Jan-2017
Category:	Documents
Upload:	anthony-cross
View:	225 times
Download:	8 times

The Crimean War and the Caricature War

Documents