Friday Boer War Cartoon

I will be honest. I cannot think of a more appropriate cartoon with which to bring this series of copies to a conclusion than this Linley Sambourne cartoon published in Punch on 29^th November 1899.

 

We see three British soldiers outside their tents, raising their mugs and toasting Queen Victoria. The caption is “The Queen! God Bless Her!” It’s difficult to figure out exactly what the context of this cartoon might be. Or rather, it’s difficult until you look more closely at the cartoon. Look at the soldier on our left, and in particular, look at what he’s sitting on. It’s a packing crate, and it’s marked with the Queen’s seal flanked by the letters V R and underneath it has the word chocolate. Now it becomes clear. These soldiers are toasting the Queen because she has sent them her gift of Cadbury’s, Fry’s and Rowntree’s tins of chocolate! The very same tins that were the start of my interest in the Ber War back in March.

Now, of course it is possible to criticise the sentiment behind this cartoon. The idea of these simple minded Tommys toasting the Queen for her gift , and being grateful despite the fact that they’re being poorly paid and poorly led and will be treated like dirt if they survive and come home after the war is not, I think, what Linley Sambourne wished to put forward, but there is certainly some truth in it. And I have said all along that for all the faults of the Boers and the Boer Republics – and these were serious – for all of that it was an unjust war. But I don’t blame the ordinary British soldiers for that, nor do I blame them for being people of their time any more than we can be blamed for being people of ours. As Kipling wrote:-

We aren’t no thin red ’eroes, nor we aren’t no black-guards too,

But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;

An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints;

Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints.

While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Tommy fall be’ind’;

But it’s ‘Please to walk in front, sir,’ when there’s trouble in the wind,

There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, etc.

 

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all;

We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.

Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face

The Widow’s uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’

But it’s ‘Saviour of ’is country’ when the guns begin to shoot;

An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ everything you please;

An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!

Thursday Boer War Cartoon

This is one of the few British cartoons I’ve found which seems even a little critical of the Boer War. It’s Edward Linley Sambourne again and it appeared in Punch on April 24, 1901.

 

We see Master John Bull, standing in frustration next to what appears to be a very ornate vending machine, presumably like an Edwardian chocolate vending machine. The machine has S. African War on the top, and the word Peace. Young John Bull seems frustrated. The title is PAY! PAY! PAY! and beneath it the caption says “MASTER JOHN BULL”I’VE PUT A LOT OF PENNIES INTO THIS MACHINE AND I HAVEN’T GOT ANYTHING OUT. BUT” (with determination) “I’M GOING ON TILL I DO!” (In consequence of the South African war expenditure Master JOHN BULL has to meet a deficit of fifty five millions.)

This reflects that although Lord Roberts had annexed the two Boer republics the previous year and declared the war won, the Boers had fought on and were still fighting when this cartoon was published. On the one hand it is showing Britain’s determination to fight to a successful conclusion whatever the cost, but on the other hand there’s a clear criticism here. The War is compared to a chocolate machine that does not provide the chocolate that John Bull has paid for. The war, by implication, has not provided what Britain promised itself, despite the huge amount of resources poured into it.

It’s one of my favourite Linley Sambourne cartoons, in fact one of my favourite British cartoons of the Boer War. It can be very hard to find any British cartoon that is at all critical. It can also be very hard to find a Boer War cartoon from any other country that is not.

Wednesday Boer War Cartoon

The cartoon shows Transvaal President Paul Kruger being greeted by a figure who seems at the very least inspired by Marianne, the allegorical representation of the French Republic. The caption calls her Madame La France. In the background behind the two figures we see a number of shadowed buildings, one of which must be the Eiffel Tower, although one to the left of Paul Kruger has an almost Russian appearance, topped by an onion dome. He has a carpet back and there are a couple of packing crates between them.

Madame La France is apologising to him saying that the French International Exhibition is closed, to which Paul Kruger replies, “Just my luck. So is the Transvaal.” That’s a surprisingly modern and punchy punchline.

The exhibition was the 1900 World’s Fair, which had closed on 12^th November 1900. The second ever Modern Olympic Games was held in Paris as part of this exhibition. Indeed, the organisation was a little bit of a shambles and so it is said, some of the winners ended up never knowing that they had in fact won an Olympics.

The cartoon is, perhaps, just a little misleading. Kruger did not end up winning anything much from the heads of state throughout Europe other than sympathy. Kaiser Wilhelm II even refused to see him in Berlin. But wherever he went in 1900 he was received by huge and enthusiastic crowds and European public opinion was hugely in his favour.

Not that it would do him or his country much good in the long run. He did not return home to the Transvaal after the Treaty of Vereeniging, partly because he felt he could serve his people better where he was and partly because he had no wish to become a British subject again. He was becoming quite infirm, nearly deaf and losing his sight and eventually passed away in Vaud in Switzerland in 1904.

Tuesday Boer War Cartoon

I think that this is the last John Tenniel cartoon concerning the Boer War. It appeared in Punch in February 1900.

 

It shows Britannia – bearing a striking resemblance to Athena, the Greek Goddess of War (and Wisdom), congratulating Lord Roberts, ‘Bobs’ as he was affectionately known to the public at large. In December Lord Roberts replaced Sir Redvers Buller as Commander in Chief of the British and Empire forces in South Africa. It certainly seemed to be turning the tide of war in the favour of the Empire forces by the time that this cartoon was published. The next few months would see the sieges raised, both Boer capitals captured and the annexation of the two republics. It wouldn’t bring the end of the war about though. That was just over two long years in the future.

Monday Boer War Cartoon

R.C. Bowman was an American cartoonist who died tragically early at the age of 33 in 1903. He worked for the Minneapolis Tribune and made many cartoons on the subject of the Boer War.

In this one we get comment on the huge rising cost of the war. Joaeph Chamberlain loads another backbreaking package onto the back of John Bull, who is already bent double by the weight of the larger pack he is already carrying. The larger pack is labelled Original Boer War tax, and the second is labelled Additional Boer War Tax. Yet despite all this John Bull is smiling cheerfully and saying “Heavy, of course it’s heavy! But think of the glory!” Of course, the sign reminds readers that the cost of the war so far was $55 million dollars. Whichever way you look at it the Boer War was economically disastrous. The eventual cost was about £210 million – billions in today’s money.

Bow man’s work looks far more modern than the work of Tenniel, Sambourne, Furniss and Partridge. The character figures are more exaggerated and the use of shading is far less heavy. Despite his tragic early death, Bowman’s work pointed to the shape of things to come.

Sunday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s Boer War cartoon is a copy of an original by Harry Furniss, which appeared in The King on May 19^th 1900.

Harry Furniss is an artist illustrator whose work I have copied in the past. Harry Furniss was born in Ireland but worked for the most part of his career in England. He joined the staff of Punch in 1880 and stayed with the magazine for 14 years, before parting company with them after he sold a cartoon that had appeared in Punch first to Pears soap to use in their advertising.

Harry Furniss was reportedly very upset that he was too young to illustrate Alice in Wonderland when it was published. He did illustrate Carroll’s later Sylvie and Bruno books, but found it to be a very frustrating experience. When the Alice books did fall out of copyright, Furniss did illustrate Wonderland, and I made several copies of his illustrations. Here’s my copy of his illustration of Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

I don’t know “The King” magazine and I haven’t been able to find out any information about it. I would guess that it was one of many magazines that came along trying to grab a slice of the popularity of Punch and probably didn’t last very long. When Furniss’ attempts to create his own successful humour magazine floundered he moved to America, becoming a writer and actor in very early movies, and reputedly even making an animated film for Thomas Edison.

To the cartoon, then. I’ve been quite critical of the attitude expressed in many of the cartoons I’ve copied, but to be honest I really find this one quite objectionable. The point of the cartoon is to hail Lord Roberts, whose appointment as Commander in Chief of the British Empire forces had seen the tide of the war turn in favour of the Empire. The method Furniss used to do this was to compare the war to a grand military tournament. It puts me specifically in mind of the Royal Tournament, the world’s largest military pageant and tattoo staged annually from 1880 to 1999. I saw it a couple of times with my cub scout pack in the early 70s.

Comparing the bloody business of war to a military pageant is not something I can get in board with. But far, far worse than this is the central image of Lord Roberts, on horseback, plunging his sword into what one can only hope is an effigy of the head of a Boer soldier. It’s pretty horrible.

Technically, I do think it’s a brilliantly executed cartoon. If you look at my copy of the Alice in Wonderland illustration above, I think you can tell that the rabbit and horse images were composed by the same artists. I do like the back view of the large soldier in the foreground, almost a silhouette. It’s remarkable to think that ten years earlier, Furniss, Tenniel, Linley Sambourne and Bernard Partridge were all contributing to Punch at the same time. What a talented team.

Saturday Boer War Cartoon

J.M. Staniforth here again. This one appeared in June 1899 in Wales’ Evening Express. It’s another cartoon published during the few months leading up to the outbreak of the Boer War.

What we see is John Bull, seemingly with toothache having bitten hard on something too tough to bite through. He stands before what looks to be a lushly forested area, and bears a piece of paper in his right hand, which seems to refer to President Paul Kruger’s ultimately fruitless meetings with Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner for Southern Africa and Governor of the Cape Colony. On the floor is a roll with the words Uitlanders Petition. The caption is A Hard Nut To Crack.

What I like about this is that it doesn’t seem to lay the blame at the feet of supposed Boer stubbornness, but admits that the whole situation is extremely difficult. If anything, it seems as if the cartoon is saying that Uitlanders’ petition is the problem. The cartoon seems a pretty good forecast of what the next couple of years would bring. Yes, eventually the Boers did have to surrender, the Transvaal and Orange Free State were annexed and eventually would be part of the Union of South Africa. But it was very difficult for the British Empire, with all the huge resources at its command, to accomplish and cost a staggering amount in terms of money and lives. A hard nut indeed.

Friday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s cartoon appeared in a French magazine during the early months of the war, drawn by Jead’Aurian.

It shows Transvaal president Paul Kruger, with a sickle in his right hand and his left arm around a young lady, who has an armful of flowers. Slightly behind and to the left is Queen Victoria, with a wounded left arm and a worried expression on her face. The young lady has Republique d’Orange written on the hem of her dress. The sling around Victoria’s left arm has the word Ladysmith upon it, and the bandage on her head has the word Glencoe. The inscription below is:-

“Nous n’irons pas aux Boers, les lauriers sont coupés, la belle que voila vient de les ramasser!” – which is a pun on the first line from an old traditional French rhyme. If you substitute bois for Boers you get, - we will not go to the woods, because the laurel trees have been cut down and the beautiful girl has come to gather them up - . Which pretty much seems to have the meaning that the best peas have gone to farrow. The meaning when applied to the images are basically that the Transvaal has embraced the Orange Free state, and together the two Boer republics have wounded Britain with the siege of Ladysmith and the heavy casualties inflicted upon the British forces at the Battle of Glencoe, also called the Battle of Talana Hill, the first major engagement of the war.

What strikes me about this cartoon is how modern it looks stylistically. In terms of the modelling of the main figures it might easily have been made in the 1960s or after. If anything, this is a pointer towards the future. In Britain, though, the more realistic tradition of Tenniel would continue to be dominant for some time yet.

Thursday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s cartoon is copied from an original by Clifford K. Berryman. Berryman was a cartoonist who worked extensively in Washington D.C. and this cartoon appeared in the Washington Post on March First 1900.

 

The cartoon shows a very large John Bull-ish British soldier looking down on a diminutive Boer soldier, between which are the words Paadeberg Drift. Paarderberg was a hard fought battle in February 1900 in which the Boer forces of General Piet Cronje were besieged and then surrendered to the British force commanded by Lord Roberts.

The message of the cartoon seems pretty clear to me. American public opinion, like that of much of the rest of the world, was pretty hostile to the war and in this cartoon the relative sizes of the soldiers are reinforced by the two banners proclaiming the sizes of the relative armies in the battle. The overweight, sneering British soldier – and John Bull was a figure commonly used to depict Britain by American cartoonists – looks like a swaggering bully

Wednesday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s cartoon is a very interesting one. It was drawn by Bernard Partridge and it was published in Punch on May 15^th 1901.

Bernard Partridge was the artist who became the chief cartoonist in Punch after Edward Linley Sambourne in 1909. He had trained as an architect and then gone on to design stained glass windows for churches, having also acted on stage under the name Bernard Gould. Partridge joined the staff of Punch in 1891, so worked for the magazine at the same time as Tenniel and Linley Sambourne. Partridge, like Tenniel before him, would produce work for Punch for over 50 years, continuing right up until his death in 1945. He’s probably better known for his work during world war I than he Boer War, when he did design posters for the Government as well, and again, like Tenniel before him, he would receive a knighthood, in 1925.

In some ways Partridge seems to have been less reactionary than Tenniel was. For example, he supported the cause of women’s suffrage. And you can maybe make out a case that this cartoon is less conspicuously anti-Boer than many I’ve copied. But. The cartoon presents the stage of the war as a cricket match. A Boer general – I’m not sure which one it is meant to represent – stands at the wicket, steadfastly ready to block the next delivery. Herbert Kitchener, in the guise of a wicketkeeper stands ready to make a catch. Beneath the cartoon is the title The Last Wicket, and underneath that the caption ‘Kitchener (Captain and wicket keeper) “He has kept us in the field a deuce of a time; but we’ll get him now we’ve closed in for catches.” To me this is commenting on Kitchener’s policy of using block houses and concentration camps – the block houses restricting the Boers’ opportunities to range wide and strike strategically and the concentration camps preventing the Boer families imprisoned there from providing aid to the fighters. And in one way, the cartoon is right in as much as Kitchener’s policies would , eventually, result in the Boer surrender.

But. Although you might say that the cartoon does seem to acknowledge the Boers’ tenacity, to a modern eye it’s just a bit obscene comparing what was really happening to a cricket match. It’s all very ‘playing fields of Eton’. I cut Partridge a little bit of slack here since Emily Hobhouse had not yet delivered her report on the conditions in the concentration camps to Parliament – that would happen in June, so he probably had no more idea of exactly what was going on than the rest of the country.

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.

Tuesday Boer War Cartoon

Sorry, somehow I just didn't manage to get my act together yesterday morning. Tuesday’s cartoon was published on September 27^th 1899, just a matter of days before the outbreak of the Boer War.

 

The title is “All a Toss Up” and the scene is an aging matador facing nervously up to a huge, angry bull with a human face. The matador is president of the Transvaal Paul Kruger – you can see the word Transvaal written on the cloak he is waving in the bull’s face. The bull itself is a visual pun, for it has the face of John Bull, the allegorical personification of Middle England. The title, all a toss up, strikes me as a little bit of a pun too. We know that the phrase has the colloquial meaning of something that could go either way. However, I think it also has the idea behind it that if the matador puts a foot wrong, he will end up being tossed up into the air on the bull’s horns.

In the events behind the cartoon, Kruger was as sure footed as anyone could have been in his manoeuvring and negotiations with the British over Uitlanders rights, until given no choice, really. So, if Tenniel was suggesting that war might have been avoided he was either ignoring or severely underestimating the intransigence of the British.

Monday Boer War Cartoon

I’ve backtracked a little for today’s cartoon. This is called THE BOER AT BAY and it appeared in July 1889, a couple of months before ethe outbreak of the war.

So we have a rather strangely dressed hunter, with a spear and a pack of dogs, having cornered a wild boar. It’s a visual pin, the cornered boar representing the Boers who were being forced into an impossible position by the British government, using the pretext of the cause of the Uitlanders as the pretext. If we look a little closer we can identify the main figures. The hunter’s hounds helpfully have Uitlanders written on their backs. The uitlanders were the people who had come to settle in the Transvaal, the majority being brought by the gold rush. They believed that the taxes charged them by the government were exorbitant especially considering that they were ineligible to vote until they had lived in the Transvaal for 14 years.

The wild boar has the white beard that was one of the most characteristic features of the appearance of the Transvaal president Paul Kruger. As for the hunter, well, the monocle certainly suggests that this is Joseph Chamberlain. Chamberlain, the father of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, was a very interesting man and an important political figure. He was a Birmingham businessman and his background was strikingly different from other top politicians of the day. Originally a Liberal MP, he split with the Liberals over his opposition to Gladstone’s goal of Home Rule for Ireland, creating the Liberal Unionists. They allied with the Conservative party ( to this day their official name is the Conservative and Unionist Party) and following the 1895 General Election he became Secretary of State for the Colonies, and it was from this position of power that he really helped push the Transvaal into the position where war became inevitable.

Chamberlain had been suspected of complicity with Cecil Rhodes in the planning of the Jameson Raid – how much he knew or was involved though remains a matter of speculation.

Sunday Boer War Cartoon

Today’s Tenniel Boer War cartoon is another one depicting Transvaal president Paul Kruger. It was published in June 1900.

 

Its title is SHIFTING HIS CAPITAL. The caption reads :-

President Kruger had abandoned Pretoria on the near approach of the British Forces, taking with him, it was reported, bullion to the value of £2,000,000, which, he said, was simply required for State purposes.

When I read the caption I picture Tenniel rubbing his chin as he wrote it. The ‘he said’ might just as well have been followed by “but I don’t believe him’. By the end of May 1900 British Empire forces were nearing Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal.  They had captured Bloemfontein, the capital city of Orange Free State in March. Paul Kruger left on the 31^st March and the government on June 2^nd, a couple of days before Lord Roberts’ forces entered the city.

By September, Lord Roberts announced that the Transvaal was now annexed to the British Empire, and that the war was over. Yet it wasn’t. The Boers would continue to wage guerilla warfare until the war formally ended on 31^st May 1902.

Kruger did continue the business of the Boer Government despite the scepticism of the cartoon. Only until September, though, when his government voted for him to avoid capture by moving first to Laurenco Marques in Portuguese Mozambique and thence to Europe. He would never return to Pretoria, indeed he never returned to Africa at all. He did in July 1904 in Switzerland, but in December British authorities gave permission for his body to be buried in Pretoria in the Church Street Cemetery.

Saturday Boer War Cartoon

This next cartoon looks forward to possibly the most famous action of the 2^nd Boer War, namely the relief of Mafeking, the raising of the siege of the city. The cartoon was published on 9^th May 1900.

 

The title is THE ELEVENTH HOUR

The caption is

COLONEL BADEN POWELL (TO MAFEKING) “ALL RIGHT! CHEER UP! ‘BOBS’ IS A MAN OF HIS WORD!”

In the cartoon we see the leader of the British defenders of Mafeking, Robert Baden-Powell, yes, the same Baden-Powell who would create the Scouting movement after the war, consoling a thing, downcast lady, the allegorical personification of the city of Mafeking. They are in a ruined townscape, and Baden Powell is pointing to a notice on the war, with Lord Roberts’ promise to relieve the city by the 18^th May.

As it was, the relief came two days earlier, on the 16^th May and this was the trigger for wild celebrations as soon as the news reached Britain. So huge were the celebrations that for a while a word derived from the name of the city – ‘mafficking’ – became a slang verb for making merry.

Mafeking itself was a town in the British Cape Colony where Colonel Baden-Powell chose to keep stores for his cavalry corps. Immediately prior to the outbreak of the war he built up the defences of the town. In the end, the siege of Mafeking lasted longer than either of the other two Boer sieges of the war, those of Ladysmith and Kimberley, 217 days in total.

Baden-Powell became a public hero due to his leadership during the siege, being promoted to Major-General and made a Companion of the Order of the Bath. In more recent times his role had had just a little bit of a reappraisal, in particular the fact that he only made one attempt to break out from Mafeking despite the fact that at times the siege was not committing large numbers of Boer soldiers.

Baden-Powell later said that it was organising civilians and children that would later help him form plans for the boy scout organisation, his lasting legacy.