Poison pens.

Political cartoonists shape our public imagery, and perhaps even our political thought (Where would Jimmy Carter be today, were it not for Jeff MacNelly?)

Their greatest strength is an appreciation of the grotesque,their greatest danger, seeing the good in a public figure.

MY FAVORITE political cartoonist died 174 years ago, mad, and possibly a suicide.

James Gillray's legacy consists of over five hundred satirical prints. They were etched and engraved on copper plates, printed and colored by hand, and sold individually from a London shop. They deal with the events of the fin du dix-huitieme siecle, roughly the period covered by Winston Churchill's Age of Revolution-though the tone is somewhat different.

Gillray's best-known print today is probably "The PlumbPudding in Danger." Napoleon and the younger Pitt, both in absurdly large hats carve up a steaming, spherical pudding, which is also the world. But if this is Gillray's most famous work, it is also in a way, unrepresentative. The vigor of the lines, the fundamental meanness of the caricature-those goggling, greedy faces-and the simplicity of the concept are all typical of Gillray. The simplicity of detail is not.

For Gillray liked to let himself go. When he went all the way, it was pretty far. The basic scene of "The Apotheosis of Hoche," a cartoon celebrating the death of the French revolutionary general responsible for the Ven

dde massacres, is plain enough-the hero, muscular and handsome, ascends to heaven. But he is surrounded by a swarm of cherubs in revolutionary caps, corpses, skulls, ass-heads, goat-heads, and, as his immediate attendants, dozens of winged decapitated heads, singing his praises (the bodies of the former owners wave palm fronds). Instead of a harp, he strums a guillotine, and the Decalogue that hovers above him, inscribed on bright tablets, has all the "nots" left out. It is, as Gillray's present-day American admirer Draper Hill commented, "probably the most elaborate political cartoon ever published."

Often the excess takes the form of words. Gillray's butts are apt to break out in rambling, nonsense monologues, usually degraded Shakespeare. Tom Paine as Poor Tom, Napoleon as a franglais Richard 111, the Whig politician Charles James Fox as Hamlet. "Zounds! what the

devil is it that puts me into such a hell of a Funk? [Fox, in Gillray's garish fantasy, is about to execute George III.]damn it, it is but giving one good blow, and all is settled! -ah, it's the fear of that which makes me stink so!"-and on, and on.

For many years, Gillray received a pension from the Tory government; his paymaster was George Canning. But there was always doubt, then and since, about his real convictions, if any. Nineteenth-century English liberals liked to think he was a brother under the skin, who sold himself into irksome bondage. Gillray talked of himself as a hit-man for hire. I have read a German scholar who interprets him as a proto-Marxist.

My own hunch is that he was a rare but identifiable type, the Tory nihilist-the conservative who takes his stand, not because he honors the past or hopes for heaven, but because he hates humankind. "The Tree of Liberty, with the Devil Tempting John Bull," makes this plain. Fox appears again, as the serpent, holding out the rotten apple of Reform from his perch on the tree of Opposition (other apples have names like Treason, Murder, and Whig Club). In the background stands a sturdier tree, with its roots

labeled Commons, King, Lords, and its trunk labeled Justice. John Bull in the foreground resists Fox's blandishments. All very Burkean. But alas, Gillray's symbol of his country is fat and slab-faced, an obvious dullard, talking a yokel dialect. "Very nice Napple indeed!-but my Pokes are all full of Pippins from off t'other Tree." On the rare occasion when the inhabitants of Gillray's world choose virtue, it is because they are morons.

There is no doubt about his artistic inclinations. One

English cartoonist called him the last exponent of the baroque. I would say, rather, the greatest exponent of the grotesque. No one is better at simultaneously inflating and deflating; at conjoining the sublime and the contemptible.

Gillray's saturnine view of the world, if I read it correctly, is related to his artistic gift. All political cartoonists are partisans; there is a side they cheer, and a side they boo. But there are limits, set by cynicism. A great critic, writes John Simon of Randall Jarrell, "sees the good in what he dislikes and the faults in what he reveres." A great political cartoonist must see only the latter.

I see a hand in the house. It belongs to a serious soul. "This is all very highfalutin, but isn't the chief purpose of a political cartoonist to be understood at a glance?" We must get pleasure out of a cartoon, as well as a point. Who outside of kindergarten has ever failed to understand a cartoon of Herblock's, and who has ever enjoyed one?

Gillray reminds us, finally, of the importance of words, which also sustain the only other English cartoonist in Gillray's league, Max Beerbohm. Most of Beerbohm's drawings have nothing to do with politics, but those that do are fine. Nothing could be less like Gillray than Beerbohm's gentle, almost shy line. His words are every bit as cutting. When the young G. K. Chesterton, confronting his older, famous self, asks what he means by "the immaculate conception of France," one phrase swipes two dogmas. Even a cartoon as visual as "Mr. Sidney Webb Celebrating His Birthday"-the socialist crawls on the floor, gleefully arranging tin soldiers-depends, in large part, on the contrast between Webb's position and Beerbohm's "Mr."

It is harder to admire the two most famous English political cartoonists of the mid twentieth century. In fact, it is impossible. Vicky (Victor Weisz), a refugee from Hitler, drew for English papers from the mid Thirties until his suicide (occupational hazard?) in 1966. The great frustration of Vicky's career occurred when a nickname he had bestowed on Harold Macmillan-Supermac-as an ironic jibe was used instead in Macmillan's praise. The story gets told as a goof on the part of Vicky's obtuse public. To me, it is the just deserts of the incompetent. The mistake is all the more puzzling in view of Vicky's unrelieved straightforwardness. He is as plain, pictorially and intellectually, as a party platform.

Vicky's older contemporary David Low was a better artist, but his approach to things is, if anything, even more ten-thumbed. His most famous cartoon, of Hitler and Stalin bowing to each other after their joint conquest of Poland [see page 24], satisfies my criteria for the grotesque, though it strikes me as a lucky hit. The body between them, labeled Poland, almost sinks the piece. It is too solid for this line of work. The dictators' dance-class postures and pleasantries lift the piece back up again. This is not a cartoon about murder, but about hypocrisy and pomposity. The trouble with murder, in the cartoonist's world, is that it leads to bad taste.

IF THE SUCCESS of a political cartoonist is measured by the popularity of his imagery, then the most successful cartoonist in American history is unquestionably Thomas Nast, the German-born Republican workhorse of the late nineteenth century. Tammany Hall is gone with the wind, and so is the Tammany Tiger that Nast invented for

it. But his elephants and donkeys reappear whenever citizens exercise the franchise.

What a disappointment, then, to turn to Nast's actual cartoons and find them so stiff and lifeless. "Who Stole the People's Money? Do Tell-'Twas Him" shows the problem. There they all are, Nast's rogues' gallery of corrupt Democratic politicians (the one with the monster paunch is Boss Tweed, whom Nast's constant lampooning helped bring down). They're all pointing at each other. We see, we understand. We're just not-interested.

Fame is no guarantee of quality. The two worst political cartoonists in America today are among the most famous. The worst, Herblock (Herbert Block) might better be described as formerly famous. Even those who once admired him-and it must be said that he drew better thirty years ago than he does now-have to admit that he is simply going through the motions. And yet he continues to appear on the Washington Post editorial page, consuming space that might be filled by perfectly good letters-to-theeditor. He gave up attempting to amuse so long ago that he has probably forgotten what amusement is like. Actually, I was amazed to see a recent Herblock that was kind of funny-Dan Quayle drawn as Little Orphan Annie. I didn't laugh, exactly; I sort of grunted. But it was the only time in the last 12 years Herblock has made me do anything. I can expect another grunt in the next millennium.

The second worst political cartoonist, Garry Trudeau, is very currently famous. Trudeau, of course, draws comics, not cartoons. His medium is the four-panel strip, and his rhythm is the fourth-panel diminuendo, perfected by Charles Schulz's Peanuts, which Trudeau handles very deftly. But he also wants to be taken seriously as a spectator of the political scene.

The first thing we notice is that Trudeau doesn't draw very well. He never did, but the first incarnation of Dooneshury, which ran in the Yale Daily News as Bull Tales, had an engaging roughness. Since going syndicated, Trudeau has labored to clean up his act, until now he draws like an untalented person who has learned everything an untalented person can learn. The creator of Snuffy Smith once admitted that he showed Snuffy as often as possible with his hands in his pockets. Why? So that he wouldn't have to draw hands. Same with Trudeau. That's why his characters never move, and their expressions never change; why voices so often issue from outside the panel, or from within a distant White House (don't have to draw the speakers); why, in addition to the point it makes, George Bush is portrayed as a bodiless dot.

Trudeau's great downfall is his stable of regular characters-Mike, Zonker, and the rest. Their clean, empty faces radiate baffled goodness. They are so cute and pert. Give me a break.

Two Perspectives

ON THE FALL of France in 1940, Low did this drawing of a British Tommy standing on a rocky shore, shaking his fist at an advancing wave of Nazi bombers. Everyone who saw this cartoon on the day it was published already knew perfectly well that Britain now stood alone against a fearful enemy. Yet Low's representation of Britain's peril says infinitely more than a mere statement of the fact. There is something about the way the lightly armed soldier is shown standing his ground against the bombers, emerging like sinister little crosses from the black sky, which sets the mind racing through a hundred tales of undaunted heroes facing dreadful odds. David slew Goliath; Horatius held the bridge; Nelson ignored the signal ordering him back into line; bullies must be stood up to sooner or later; the resonance of the cartoon rolls on and on to this day.

ONE FAMOUS Low, "Very Well, Alone," is all wrong. Low shows a Tommy after Dunkirk, shaking a defiant fist at the incoming Luftwaffe. Maybe you had to be there. From here, Low's cartoon looks like fascism. Paint Stars of David on the wings and reshape the helmet, and you have a fine submission for Der Sturmer, c. 1944. We're grateful that Low's feelings of determination were widely shared and expressed. They just don't fit his medium. He should have taken the day off.

Cartoonist's-Eye View

POLITICAL CARTOONS are not so much rapier thrusts (which they Pare often called) as they are missiles, which, although quite small, carry at least three explosive warheads. First, caricature-the humorously or maliciously distorted representation of politicians; second, the actual political comment, criticism, or stance communicated in the drawing; and third, the vehicle or image chosen to convey the political point. When brought together, the effect-at its best-is formidable. The apparent joke can contain a reverberating, subversive power.

How does a caricature become established? When a new political figure takes his or her place on the stage, the cartoonists first of all carefully produce fairly academically accurate likenesses of the newcomer. Gradually, certain features become established as standing for the individual. Mrs. Thatcher's bouffant hair and pointy nose, for instance, or Mr. Heath's wide smile. The fact that when you meet them

you notice that Mr. Heath's mouth is rather small and pursed, or that Mrs. Thatcher's hair is no longer all fluffed out, is neither here nor there. They have been reinvented by the cartoonist and are perfectly recognizable in their transmogrified form.

In its directness and simplicity, caricature does not allow for fine degrees of criticism. It has an awful bluntness. Writers can elaborate clear distinctions between various aspects of a man's life: so-and-so is an absolute swine to his colleagues but a devoted father and husband. Caricaturists cannot go in for such fine degrees of criticism even if they wish to. They pursue a different kind of truth.

Annibale Caracci, the Italian who in the sixteenth century first practiced this subversive form of portraiture, observed: "A good caricature, like every other work of art, is more true to life than reality itself."

The truth that caricature reaches for has, I think, to do with the transitory nature of all political power and the vulnerability of even the most mighty. Carictures can therefore even be oddly

comforting as well as very funny. A monster such as Hitler or Stalin is suddenly less terrifying; fear, anxiety, and a sense of paralyzing hatred cannot easily co-exist with laughter. I imagine this is why Pravda does not feature daily caricatures of the members of the Russian governing class.

Caricature thus lies at the heart of political cartooning. But there is more to it than that. The characters form part of the dramatization of the idea itself, the point the cartoon is making. The comment or attitudes underpinning the cartoon is the simplest part of the whole. The cartoonist notices that the government is heading for a showdown with the unions, or that the current East-West talks are going frightfully well. This is a necessary part of the creation of any political cartoon; but it is not sufficient. The invention or discovery of a scene or tableau that will convey the political point of a cartoon is the most difficult part of the process.

I write as though "the idea" were somehow separate from the vehicle or image that carries it, whereas of course

they are inseparable. Let me try to illustrate what I mean. Cartoonists may cast their leaders in the role of almost anything, from a guttering candle to a nuclear blast. The point is that the choice of candle as opposed to nuclear blast is the idea, an integral part of it: it says "weak and providing little illumination" as opposed to "powerful and deadly."

"Getting an idea," therefore, is finding the right vehicle for an opinion, one which simultaneously expresses and illuminates it. On good days an "idea" pops up complete with cast, props, and setting. On a difficult day, the political thought has to be struggled with in order to find the right image to convey it, which involves a search for analogies. Thus a politician ignoring the unhappy consequences of some act claps a telescope to a blind eye. A minister dithering between several options will appear as Hamlet gazing at an appropriately labeled skull. Overweening ambition in one of our leaders may have him flying too close to the sun, and plunging from the sky like Icarus.

Gradually, in the hunt for ideas, one learns to engage in a process of high

Iy deliberate wool-gathering. When the Labour Party was walloped by Mrs. Thatcher in 1983, I thought it would never recover. Thoughts of death merged in my mind with the personality of the elderly leader of the party. The fact that Michael Foot carried a heavy responsibility for his party's plight was made more poignant by his obviously profound love for it. An old man and a dying thing, An old man and his ailing child. A dead daughter. King Lear speaking:

She's dead as earth. Lend me a

looking-glass. If that her breath will mist or stain

the stone, Why, then she lives.

Lear, and perhaps the audience, are unwilling for a moment to believe that Cordelia is quite dead. Was the Labour Party dead? Is this a real tragedy? Will not all the actors survive and stand before us taking their bow? The scene contains all these possibilities and expressed my own attitude pretty well; that is, "The Labour Party has

probably had it-but I hope not."

Put together, all this means that the best, the most striking cartoons can be read at a glance. It probably requires that the idea contained in a political cartoon must not only be easily understood but even be already widely established before the cartoonist uses it. It could reasonably be argued that political cartoons are merely telling people what they already know in a highly simplified form. But the paradox is that cartoons express very simple ideas or attitudes through a medium that allows them to be extremely complex.