Just Tell It Straight

[mtvessel]

Aug 2023
Uproar! - Alice Loxton – Icon Books, 2023
* * *
I have always enjoyed political caricature, particularly when it is imaginatively venomous. Gerald Scarfe's and Steve Bell's drawings of Margaret Thatcher and John Major are engraved on my memory and were a comfort during the long years of Tory rule in my youth. In a functioning democracy, political caricature and satire are essential to express the frustration of those whom the electoral system has left unrepresented, and it is saddening to see that the mainstream expressions of these are becoming increasingly tired and anodyne. While I refuse to accept the definitions of "cancel culture" promulgated by right-wing critics, I do worry that the calling out of violent, racist, misogynistic or homophobic opinions, necessary though that probably is in our social media-dominated landscape, might be inhibiting caricature's crude energy.

This is an interesting history book that is let down by its style. I strongly suspect that it will be unreadable in twenty or thirty years' time. Which is a shame, for its story of the rise of eighteenth century political caricature, and the popular if ultimately unsuccessful rebellion against an overmighty state that it represented, is as relevant today as it was 250 years ago.

The book tells the tale of the three great caricaturists of the end of the eighteenth century - Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray and Isaac Cruikshank. The first two met while studying at the newly opened Royal Academy and developed a rapid flowing style of portraiture which proved useful for taking sketches in the Strangers' Gallery of the House of Commons and working them up into finished engravings to be sold to the public. They were later joined by Isaac Cruikshank, the son of a Leith customs inspector who came to London to make his fortune. They had plenty of subjects, including the rivalry between Charles Fox and William Pitt, the illness of King George III, the revolutionary writings of Thomas Paine, the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon. They had to proceed with caution - too much sedition could have been grounds for arrest - but survived by being even-handed in their targets and by coming up with such marvellously imaginative, surreal and ridiculous imagery that it would, for the most part, be impossible to take offence. For example, The Sphere projected against a Plane shows an upright and angular William Pitt being butted up against by Albinia Holbart, a well-known portly society hostess, who is depicted as a perfectly round ball mounted on a trolley. Flattering it is not, but it is extremely funny.

Unfortunately the lack of drama does mean that the story of the three caricaturists is rather uninteresting. All of them were successful, middle-class and wealthy. Cruikshank met his end from drink in 1811, and Gillray became depressed and demented on losing his sight (the chemicals used in the engraving process probably didn't help). Rowlandson saw out Napoleon and George III but gave up satirical portraiture in 1819 after one of his publishers was imprisoned for radicalism. The work of the three was eclipsed in the prudish Victorian era, although Isaac Cruikshank's son, George, became a famous illustrator who did the drawings for Oliver Twist. But their legacy lives on in the long history of satire - the mocking portraits of society figures found in Gilbert and Sullivan operas would surely not have been possible without Gillray's earlier forays, and modern shows like Spitting Image seem unthinkable without their example.

All this is well told, but I do I wish that Loxton's writing style were not so annoying. She clearly does not trust that her readers will be sufficiently interested in her impressively encyclopaedic knowledge of the period and her eye for telling details. Both of these are very much in evidence, but she feels the need to disguise them with excessive use of "imagine the scene" writing combined with some deeply unfunny comic sketches written in a modern vernacular that is at odds with how eighteenth century people actually spoke and thought. It's frustrating because it is so unnecessary. The story is much more vivid when Loxton lets her sources - the diaries of Rowlandson's friend Angelo, for example - speak for themselves. I have complained before about comedians trying to write history books (and will again in a future review), but historians trying to write comedy is just as bad.

One other thing. This is a hardback, but the pictures are low grade grainy black and white affairs which completely fail to do justice to the detail and colour of the originals. I know that cost-cutting is rife in publishing, but even a cheap paperback can usually manage a colour plate section. It seems that Icon Books didn't have much faith in this one either.