But the
caricaturists were not merely concerned with the fallen dynasty. One of
the principal cartoonists of the _Charivari_ at that moment was "Cham,"
otherwise the Vicomte Amedee de Noe, an old friend of my family's.
It was he, by the way, who before the war insisted on my going to a
fencing-school, saying: "Look here, if you mean to live in France and be a
journalist, you must know how to hold a sword. Come with me to Ruze's.
I taught your uncle Frank and his friend Gustave Dore how to fence many
years ago, and now I am going to have you taught." Well, in one of his
cartoons issued during the siege, Cham (disgusted, like most Frenchmen, at
the seeming indifference of Great Britain to the plight in which France
found herself) summed up the situation, as he conceived it, by depicting
the British Lion licking the boots of Bismarck, who was disguised as Davy
Crockett. When my father remonstrated with Cham on the subject, reminding
him of his own connexion with England, the indignant caricaturist replied:
"Don't speak of it. I have renounced England and all her works." He, like
other Frenchmen of the time, contended that we had placed ourselves under
great obligations to France at the period of the Crimean War.
Pages:
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186