Etched with vinegar

This year is the centenary of Sir Francis Carruthers Gould’s death. One of Britain’s most successful and respected political cartoonists, he was completely self-taught and enormously talented. He illustrated books and magazines, and ran his own monthly publication. He made no secret of being a Liberal (the old-fashioned kind) but did not attack those whose politics he satirized viciously, whatever their allegiance, pleading “I etch with vinegar, not vitriol”. He was the first staff political cartoonist at a British daily evening newspaper.

Alas, unlike his Victorian contemporaries Sir John Tenniel, Sir Max Beerbohm and Harry Furniss, Gould and his body of work have largely been forgotten. He is neglected as an exponent of the artistic discipline that defined his life’s work. Colin Seymour-Ure took it upon himself to change this regrettable perception. A professor of government at the University of Kent, he specialized in the history of political cartoons and caricature, and helped to found the British Cartoon Archive. He didn’t construct this study as a “comprehensive biography”, detailed history or chronological analysis, but rather as an essay “about why Gould seems to me interesting and important and to need rescuing from relative oblivion”.

Seymour-Ure died in 2017, before the culmination of his final project. The freelance writer and editor Mark Bryant, who had worked with him before, put the finishing touches to this personal “miscellany”. The result is a powerful, illuminating analysis of a forgotten master of political cartooning.

Gould was born in Barnstaple, Devon, on December 2, 1844. He started doodling and drawing cartoons at school. His first caricature was of the local Conservative politician Sir William Fraser, drawn during the by-election for Barnstaple of 1855. While he enjoyed comics and satire, he began in banking and stockbroking, and joined the London Stock Exchange at the age of twenty. He married Emily Ballment, also of Barnstaple, in 1869 and started a family.

During his tenure at the Exchange, Gould sketched important financial figures and events, and sold them as lithographs to private collectors. The success he achieved drove him away from finance and back to his true artistic passion. The Picture Politics of Sir Francis Carruthers Gould depicts the evolution of a budding political cartoonist. Flashes of genius appeared in Gould’s first published cartoon, in the weekly magazine Truth in 1879. Illustrations of a young Winston Churchill, homages to Alice in Wonderland and collections such as his Struwwelpeter parodies (1899–1901) stood out for wit, charm and artistic brilliance. His contributions to the Pall Mall Gazette and, later, as assistant editor at the Westminster Gazette, while launching his 16-page penny monthly, Picture Politics, showed a cartoonist at the top of his game.

“What made Gould’s cartoons so good?” Seymour-Ure asks. “His skill at catching a likeness, his ability to get to the nub of an issue, and the balance he kept between these two.” While many political cartoonists aim to achieve this, the author argues that Gould was “special” by virtue of “getting the right few strokes”, while his “lack of malice made people, including his victims, love the results”. He drew leading Liberals (Joseph Chamberlain, William Gladstone, the Earl of Rosebery) and Conservatives (Churchill, Lord Salisbury, Arthur Balfour) with dignity and reverence. The Pall Mall Gazette and the Westminster Gazette were both independently Liberal and didn’t believe in “knee-jerk support”. Hence, Gould utilized “clear party commitment” and “good humour” as his pen-and-ink calling cards, since “malice would be counter-productive”.

Gould was well respected in his lifetime, but his lack of an “afterlife” is worth considering. Colin Seymour-Ure suggests some possible reasons. Many of the publications he worked for have since folded. He didn’t contribute frequently to legendary publications such as Punch, which would probably have led to him being “anthologized”. He also “championed a political party that was about to go into long-term decline”. These are all valid points, but shouldn’t have taken away from his status as an early pioneer of modern political cartoons. This book will hopefully establish a new political picture of Gould that lasts for generations.

Michael Taube is a columnist for the National Post, Troy Media and Loonie Politics. He was a speechwriter for the former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper

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