Tuesday Boer War Cartoon

Another J.M. Staniforth cartoon from the build up to the Boer War. This is titled SLOW and SURE.

 

The cartoon shows a miner in the foreground who seems to be undergoing instruction from Paul Kruger who is chalking upon a blackboard. Between the two the ghostly figure of Joseph Chamberlain looms disapprovingly. On the blackboard, Kruger has been chalking up the conditions for the Uitlanders – people born outside the Transvaal, primarily gold miners – to be eligible to vote. The figure of 11 years has been crossed out to be replaced with 9. Below it the caption reads:-

PRESIDENT KRUGER (to British colonist) :”There, see what I am doing for you. Ain’t you very grateful. Who is your true friend now?”

The subtext, I should think is that Kruger is by no means being a friend to the Uitlanders, whose real friend was Joseph Chamberlain in the Colonial Office in London. It’s a bit misleading. I firmly believe that his actions show that Chamberlain wanted to annex the Boer Republics all along. Yes, it’s not clear how much he knew about the Jameson Raid, but many have speculated that it was all part of his strategy. The Uitlanders were a convenient cause to adopt as a pretext. The cartoon is misleading as well, because Kruger would have tried to find a way to accept a reduction to 7 years qualification period. But it was also about the oath of loyalty. In order to vote in an election, Uitlanders would also be expected to swear an oath of loyalty to the Transvaal and this proved to be a sticking point for many of them.

Monday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s cartoon is another Edward Linley Sambourne cartoon. This one is from late 1900 at a time when Transvaal President Paul Kruger had managed to leave Africa and was trying his best to raise support for the Boer cause from Europe.

The cartoon shows Paul Kruger, smoking a pipe and reading a paper with a glass of wine by his side. The setting seems to be a bar of some kind, and the waitress, glancing at him, seems rather concerned about him being there. The clue to the meaning is the sing at the top of the wall, that reads “Unter Den Linden”. This is a famous street in Berlin which ran from the Kaiser’s palace to the Brandenburg gate. The significance of this is that Kruger had to cool his heels in a bar, reading the paper and smoking his pipe, because Kaiser Wilhelm II refused to meet him. The waitress’ expression is probably indicative of the fact that his presence is a bit of an embarrassment.

Kaiser Wilhelm II was a complicated personality. His arm was injured in the way he was delivered when he was born, and he suffered from feelings of inferiority . He was at times very proud of his English connection – he was the first grandson of Queen Victoria – yet at the same time he could be very suspicious and jealous of Great Britain. After the failure of the Jameson Raid, Wilhelm sent a telegram of congratulations to Paul Kruger, and then was astonished when this was angrily condemned in Britain, and led to him being ostracised by the British Royal Family for some time. This may be why he distanced himself from the Boers.

After the war he would even claim that he had provided Lord Roberts with the plans and strategy to defeat the Boers!

Sunday Boer War Cartoon

Well, would you believe it? I found another source and managed to find a couple more Tenniel Boer War cartoons. This one was published in Punch on 27^th December 1899.

I think that this one is pretty self-explanatory. We see Father Christmas speaking to the seated figure of Transvaal President Paul Kruger and blaming him for spoiling the Christmas season of 1899.

In one way you have to almost admire Tenniel’s sheer cheek in this. Cartoon. He clearly blames Kruger for having been given no other choice than effectively give up the Transvaal’s independency and ceded sovereignty to Britain, or go to war. Either that or he blames Kruger for the Boer Army not rolling over obediently but instead having the best of the fighting in 1899.

Tenniel would reuse this image of Kruger in his 1900 cartoon Full of Resource. As for Father Christmas, well, Tenniel often made Christmas cartoons for Punch using Father Christmas, and it was this very traditional English version of Father Christmas that he tended to use, compared with the Santa Claus cartoons being produced by his American friend and contemporary, the great Thomas Nast. Tenniel’s Father Christmas is not Santa, the giver of gifts to children who hve managed to stay off the naughty list. He’s the spirit of seasonal good cheer, and this certainly makes sense of why he would be appearing in Punch after Christmas Day.

I’ve copied several of Tenniel’s Christmas cartoons in the past, for example the 1891 Punch cartoon – Awakening Father Christmas.

Saturday Boer War Cartoon

Since I’ve already widened my repertoire of copies of Boer War cartoons to Edward Linley Sambourne, I’ve copied this cartoon which appeared just before the start of the Boer War, by J.M. Staniforth.

 

Joseph Marwood Staniforth started publishing cartoons, mainly in the Wales and West of England Western Mail newspaper in the late 1880s. His cartoons often focused on social arrest in these areas, and he would continue as the Western Mail’s principal cartoonist until his death in December 1821.

Staniforth made a significant number of cartoons on the subject of the Boer War.This one appeared in the immediate period leading up to the outbreak of the Boer War. The editorial accompanying this cartoon spoke of what it called the very reasonable terms and conditions put forward by Joseph Chamberlain and the Colonial office  and the – as they saw it – intransigence and delaying of tactics of the Transvaal President Paul Kruger, pictured here as the Sphinx.

I’m not an expert ln Staniforth, but generally of his cartoons that I’ve seen they seem to be rather less detailed than either Tenniel or Linley Sambourne and make less use of shading. 

Friday Boer War Cartoon

I confess that I’m running out of Tenniel cartoons about the Boer War to copy, and so this is another Linley Sambourne cartoon, that appeared in Punch on December 13^th 1899.

The title is Disillusioned!. The cartoon is split in two parts by an uneven vertical line. On the left-hand side of the line, which is captioned What they thought Tommy was – it depicts disorganised British soldiers falling around and panicking when an artillery shell bursts overhead. On the right-hand side of the line we see a much larger, more close up British soldier scaling a near vertical cliff face, undaunted by the slumped figure of a comrade to the right.

The message is that, in the view of Linley Sambourne at least, the Boers expected the British army would be easily beaten, especially following what had happened in the first Boer War, but that they soon found out that the British soldiers were a lot tougher and more determined than they expected.

The unintentional irony of the cartoon is that when the cartoon appeared, the British and Empire forces had suffered by far the worst of the fighting thus far, so much so that the same week in which this cartoon was published was nicknamed 'Black Week' after the reverses that they suffered.

Thursday Boer War Cartoon - Edward Linley Sambourne

You know, I’ve been running out of Tenniel cartoons about the Boer War. So I’ve made a copy of a Linley Sambourne cartoon. Who?

Edward Linley Sambourne was born 24 years after Tenniel, in 1844. His original career was as an apprentice engineer, but he was moved into the drawing office when his aptitude was discovered. His work came to the attention of Punch editor Mark Lemon, and he had his first drawing published in the magazine when he was 23 in 1867.Within 4 years he had become a staff member, although he was not to provide his first political cartoon until 1884. Ten years later he began to regularly draw the magazine’s second cartoon. Finally, upon Tenniel’s retirement in 1902 he became the principal cartoonist for Punch.

You have to feel for him a bit. After waiting so long for Tenniel to step down, Linley Sambourne could only enjoy the position as top dog for 8 years, passing away in 1910.

I think it’s fair to suggest that working for the same magazine for which Tenniel had been principal cartoonist for so long must have rubbed off on Linley Sambourne a bit. His personification of Ladysmith in this cartoon, for example, is very similar to the Britannia that Tenniel himself used so often. However, I do feel that there is usually a little less of the caricature about Linley Sambourne’s work than there is with Tenniel. This may be his legacy as an apprentice engineering draughtsman. There’s even a precision about his hatching and shading, compared with Tenniel’s.

I have actually copied one of Linley Sambourne’s drawings before – this one which hailed Tenniel’s knighthood.

Wednesday Boer War Cartoon

This cartoon appeared in Punch in September 1900. It depicts Transvaal President Paul Kruger in a rowing boat, sadly abandoning a sinking ship called the Transvaal and it has the title THE SINKING SHIP.

 The meaning is fairly obvious, although the connotations are a little unfair to Kruger. The Transvaal Government, Pretoria having been captured in June, decided that they would not risk Paul Kruger being captured and so sent him first to Laurenco Marques in Portuguese Mozambique, from which he would eventually embark to Europe, where he would spend the rest of his life until his death in 1904.

When I say the connotations, what I mean is that when you look at the phrase “sinking ship’ you can’t help thinking about the saying ‘rats leaving a sinking ship’. Well, I’m sorry but I don’t see Paul Kruger as being any kind of rat. But also there’s the connotation of him fleeing from his country and leaving it to its fate to save his own skin. Unless you believe that the man was a total hypocrite, it just wasn’t the case. Kruger believed that he could do the best job for his country by not being caught and imprisoned and raising as much international support as he could.