Caricatures of Charles Darwin
Caricatures of Darwin are recognizable to everyone and a lot has been a written about them. But only about a dozen are familiar and another 14 have been reproduced rarely. This is by far the largest catalogue of caricatures of Darwin ever published (over 100 to 1939) including 33 unknown ones uncovered during the many years of research behind this catalogue. (Marked with * below.) Some of them are very exciting and interesting- see for example the bizarre Darwin caricatures in Monkey versus Man (1878), the 'Sapient Ass' carnival costume (1873) or Darwin as a monkey on the cover of a book printed in Japan (1881). Others are very unexpected uses of Darwin's image.
Caricatures referring to Darwin, his theories and publications are in: Caricatures of Evolution.
See also: The Complete Photographs of Darwin.
What difference to our understanding of the history does such a large collection make? These catalogues show how slow caricaturists were to make fun of Darwin himself and draw him as an ape or monkey- 12 years after Origin of species. We can see that although a lot of fun was made of Darwin's ideas about human descent from earlier species, almost none of the pre-1920s caricatures show actual outrage or angry rejection. When a magazine like Punch was outraged by something in politics or a great moral injustice, the tone is radically different from the teasing that Darwin and evolution received. The 19th-century caricatures were not the place (or the publishers not the people) to make serious religious objections either- because there essentially are none. These were less mainstream than the traditional story of a supposed uproar against evolution.
These caricatures show us so clearly how very late the fundamentalist or creationist critiques are, only in the second decade of the 20th century. The caricatures reveal that attitudes and language of "war" against evolution also began only in the late 1920s. (For example 1929 "ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS!" Evolution magazine) And we can also plainly see that while this combinative theme emerged in the USA, at the same time in Britain and Germany there was head scratching and not a little ridicule of the backward reaction to people who doubted evolution any more.
This is an illustrated enlargement of the list of caricatures in Darwin: A Companion (2021). In addition to the illustrations, this catalogue provides more details and historical context on where the caricatures originally appeared and what they originally meant, including the accompanying text or poems that appeared alongside them. The American geologist J. D. Hague recalled speaking to Darwin about the caricatures of him in 1881:
The humorists have done much to make Mr. Darwin's features familiar to the public, in pictures not so likely to inspire respect for the author of The Descent of Man as they are to imply his very close relation to some slightly esteemed branches of the ancestry he claims; but probably no one has enjoyed their fun more than he.... 'Ah, has Punch taken me up?' said Mr. Darwin, inquiring further as to the point of the joke, which, when I had told him, seemed to amuse him very much. 'I shall get it to-morrow,' he said: 'I keep all those things. Have you seen me in the Hornet?' (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1884, in Darwin Online here.)
Probably the largest physical collection of Darwin caricatures is that in the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University Library (CUL-DAR140.4, CUL-DAR141, CUL-DAR225 and CUL-DAR251), much of it Darwin's own collection. The largest online collection in the past was probably Mark Aldrich's excellent Cartooning Evolution, 1861-1925 which includes 16 caricatures of Darwin and very many of evolution.
Some brief corrections to what has been written about caricatures of Darwin should be mentioned. It has often been claimed that caricatures of Darwin were very common once Origin of species was published. This seems to be a great exaggeration. It is extremely difficult to find any beyond the famous dozen or so.
Secondly, no known caricatures of Darwin were published in response to his Origin of species (1859). They appeared only with the publication of Descent of man in 1871. This startling fact was overlooked until Companion (2021) because we did not have all the caricatures laid out before us as in the 150-page catalogue here. By bringing them all together, we gain a useful overview of what was going on and when.
Another claim has been that caricatures were a or the primary means by which Darwin's evolutionary theories and also his likeness become widely known to the Victorian public. This too seems to be going too far. The number of Darwin's own publications is far greater than all of the caricatures combined. And this number in turn pales in comparison to the incalculable thousands of book reviews, critiques and commentaries published about Darwin in the 19th century. Of course most caricatures appeared in periodicals, some of which had circulations in the tens of thousands.
Nevertheless, Darwin's likeness was far more widely available in engraved portraits and photographs (see Companion) Indeed, it has recently been shown that there were more than 340 printed variants of the photographs of Darwin produced. Caricatures of him were few and far between in a period in which there were thousands of periodical publications worldwide, including satirical ones. One can go through thousands upon thousands Victorian caricatures without finding any of Darwin. Most were of political and other celebrities and on social issues of the time. James S. Dearden's John Ruskin: A life in pictures (1999) listed 331 likenesses of the famous art historian and critic from 1822-1998. A catalogue of the caricatures of Gladstone or Disraeli would be colossal compared to the few of Darwin. See Gary L. Bunker, From rail-splitter to icon: Lincoln's image in illustrated periodicals, 1860-1865. (2001)
Textual satires such as jokes, comic poems or mock scientific reports on Darwin and evolution were also far more numerous than caricatures- they are just less conspicuous today and are not endlessly reproduced now.
See for example: 'Darwinism and dogma.' Punch (31 August 1878): 85. McGill-CA-OSLER0-P110[.90] with satirical verses.
Another is "Darwin, not dogberry" Punch (December 1872): McGill-CA-OSLER0-P110[.91]. And this charming anonymous example by Punch writers E. J. Milliken and Tom Taylor: 'Dirt v. dirt.' Punch (27 January 1877): 34 about the rumour that eminent author Thomas Carlyle had called Darwin's theory of evolution 'the gospel of dirt':
Dirt v. dirt
GREAT THOMAS of Chelsea, by Darwinites hurt,
Declares Evolution 'The Gospel of Dirt.'
Nicknames sting and stick, but they scarcely confute,
Though conferred by a censor of splendid repute.
Truth's proof 'gainst hard names,—has true THOMAS to learn it?
If the New Gospel's false, by hard reason o'erturn it:
Therewith our true THOMAS hath dealt many a stinger—
But scorn and invective recoil on the flinger.
Leave the parsons to ply the polemical squirt at it;
Dirt's Gospel it won't kill or cleanse to throw dirt at it.
See Darwin's clipping from The Times in CUL-DAR132.3a - the source of a purportedly forged letter from Carlyle where 'gospel of dirt' originates.
Another important point needs to be stressed. As Jim Secord has pointed out, the meaning of historical caricatures is usually totally unclear to or misconstrued by modern readers without a close understanding of the context. Many of those of Darwin await more detailed study to make these original meanings clear. They are full of references to things happening at the time that are now unknown.
For more on Darwin caricatures see: Janet Browne, Darwin in caricature. Proc. of the American Phil. Soc., (Dec. 2001); revised in B. Larson & F. Brauer eds., Art of evolution; Darwin, Darwinisms, and visual culture, 2009, pp. 18-36; Janet Browne, Charles Darwin as a Celebrity. Science in context. (2003) 16; Betty Smocovitis, Singing his praises, Darwin and his theory in song and music. Isis 100(3): 590-614; John van Wyhe, Iconography of Charles Darwin, in Darwin: A Companion, 2021 and Diana Donald's important and detailed 'Portraits of Charles Darwin: a catalogue' which is found on the website of the Darwin Correspondence.
No doubt there are many more caricatures of Darwin yet to be found. I would be grateful to be informed of any not listed here.
c.1828 Two humorous ink sketches of Darwin riding giant beetles by fellow Cambridge undergraduate Albert Way, with captions "Darwin & his hobby." and "Go it Charlie!". The joke in this instance being Darwin's obsession with collecting beetles as an undergraduate at Christ's College, Cambridge. See Diana Donald's entry on this here. See some of Darwin's beetle captures here.
1832? Purported watercolour caricature of Darwin and men of the Beagle entitled "Quarter Deck of a Man of War on Diskivery or interesting Scenes on an Interesting Voyage" attributed to the Beagle's first artist, Augustus Earle- who left the Beagle in November 1832. The speech bubble for the character said to be Darwin reads: "Observe its legs are long, and the palpi are strongly toothed on the inner side. I think the whole insect appears of a dark chestnut brown colour with a yellowish cast on the abdomen its history is but little known but there can be no doubt of its being of a predacious nature."
This is in fact a modified quotation from G. Gregory ed., A new and complete dictionary of arts and sciences, 1819, vol. 3 on Phalangium, a genus of harvestmen, the order of arachnids- which Darwin did not collect. Gregory's work is not known to have been in the Beagle library which is reconstructed in Darwin Online. 2015 the caricature sold at Sotheby's for £52,500. Its identity with Darwin and the Beagle should not be taken as established. It is unsigned. Among other problems, the handwriting does not entirely match Earle's and the uniforms are not those of the Royal Navy of this period. The only indisputable drawing of the Beagle's deck and men by Earle (here) is substantially different in style and many other matters of detail are problematic. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
1847 Diana Donald writes: "Apparently Darwin's brother Erasmus had made an equally irreverent but affectionate caricature of him twenty-one years earlier, in 1847, for the amusement of their young nephew, Alfred Allen Wedgwood, then a child of about five. This 'grotesque drawing' was included in an exhibition at the Wedgwood Museum in 1982, but is now untraced". See Diana Donald's mention of this in her entry on Huxley's drawing here.
1866 The Calendar 1866. Punch, [i]. Punch's Almanack for 1866. By Charles H. Bennett. The SciPer Project suggested one of the figures is Darwin: "Darwin appears as St Peter talking to two large fishes, he holds a staff in one hand and a water pot in the other". However, the caption at the top of the page names that figure as: "Father Thames a welcoming PISCES". The figure says to the fish "Glad to see you again". The figure does resemble Darwin except that the figure is fully bald and his nose is not rounded but drops down at the end. Darwin had no connection with the Thames, fish or fisheries. This figure is more likely to be Father Thames, the mythical figure frequently used to represent the river in the newspapers etc. at the time. Seeing the fish again refers to recent measures to clean up the river. This is therefore not taken to be Darwin in this list.
(Autograph Collection of Margaret Elizabeth Keynes, CUL)
1868 Ink caricature sketch by Thomas Henry Huxley of Darwin as a pope with "pangenesis" on his mitre and "selection" and "variation" on his staff. Darwin gestures a blessing to a kneeling figure swinging a censer before him, viz. Wilhelm Friedrich Kühne who, as Huxley humorously put it: "wants to know whether there is any possibility of his paying his devotions at the Shrine of Dr Darwin". Signed "Huxley". The letter and sketch are reproduced in Correspondence, vol. 16, pp. 634-5. Photocopy in CUL-DAR221.4.254. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
(UCL Galton Papers)
1871 "A VENERABLE ORANG-OUTANG. | A CONTRIBUTION TO UNNATURAL HISTORY." The Hornet (22 March): 308-9.
Lithograph by unknown artist. The 2d bi-monthly Hornet was founded and edited as The Hornsey Hornet in March 1866 by Henry S. Sampson (d. May 1871) and renamed Hornet from 15 June 1867 - 11 February 1880. It was later edited by David Anderson. T. H. Huxley was caricatured in the magazine on 1 March and George Cruikshank on 6 December 1871 titled "The Venerable George". All of the Hornet portraits of famous people featured oversize heads on small bodies, Lord John Russell was depicted on the body of a cockerel on 26 June 1872. John Ruskin's 20 March 1878 caricature in the Hornet was by Alfred Bryan.
Darwin's head with orangutan body. The Darwin cartoon is a reference to his recently published Descent of man. This is perhaps the most famous and certainly one of the finest caricatures of Darwin and has been reproduced and imitated countless times. Darwin purportedly said of it "The head is cleverly done, but the gorilla is bad: too much chest; it couldn't be like that." Hague 1884. See further recollections in Brace, Life of Charles Loring Brace, 1894, pp. 319-22; 376-7. Text Darwin's copies are in CUL-DAR141.6 and CUL-DAR141.5. George Darwin's copy is in CUL-DAR251.1822. See the fine copy in the UCL Galton Papers: PDF
The accompanying article to this famous Hornet caricature on p. 308 is usually forgotten. The editor seems to be aware that Darwin had not been drawn as an ape before.
"A VENERABLE ORANG-OUTANG.
(See Cartoon.)I HAVE to apologize once more for the wild flights of my incorrigible artist. I told him most clearly and positively to draw me a life-like portrait of that profound philosopher, Mr. Darwin, and threatened him with instant dismissal if he dared to meddle for comic effect with the sober lineaments of the original thinker. I did more. I gave him sixpence to study the monkey tribe on a Monday at the Zoological Gardens, with an additional penny for a bun for the elephant, and I made him take a solemn vow that he would read Mr. Darwin's new work right through, so that he might draw inspiration before he drew the portrait. Need I say he has deceived me; grossly, vilely deceived his faithful and generous patron. I believed he misused the sixpence I gave him, or the penny, and made a beast of himself. I don't believe he read a word of the work, and I emphatically deny his unblushing assertion that I told him Mr. Darwin was a tailless monkey, an orang-outang, and that he would find him in Regent's Park. On the contrary, I took the greatest pains to enlighten him on the Darwinian theory. I demonstrated the possibility of our progenitors having played 'possum up a gum-tree,' and cracked cocoa-nuts, leaving their great descendants to account for the milk. I even entered into an hypothetical dissertation on man's loss of his tail—presuming that he lent it out in weekly numbers and never got it returned, or had the copyright stolen by the early Americans. I said everything and did everything I could to impress upon him the dignity of the subject, but—as the disgraceful cartoon he has produced so unhappily proves—in vain. The scamp has got confused; jumbled memories of the philosopher's face with monkey's till he didn't know t'other from which, and now has the effrontery to say I told him to! More, he wants to prove, as a student of physiognomy, that man has good grounds for believing himself a descendant of the ape tribe; and, with unseemly levity, offers to bet me a farthing cake—with a reservation as to the first bite—that he once saw Mr. Darwin on an organ. I scorn the mean shuffle, and ask my readers again to forgive a disappointment of which I am so guiltless; promising by the sacred memory of the tails and pouches of my venerated ancestors to give them a portrait of Mr. Darwin as soon as I can bring my rebellious son of a twopenny crayon to his senses."
See Diana Donald's entry on this caricature here. She speculates that it is was based on a photograph. The more tidily trimmed and pointed beard of the Edwards photographs of the 1860s that she suggested do not seem to match this caricature as well as Rejlander 1871b.2 or Cameron 1868b. The heavier shadows and wrinkles and the direction of the gaze in the Rejlander photograph resembles the caricature most closely.
 |
|
|
| Edwards 1865a.2 | Rejlander 1871b.3 |
Cameron 1868b.1 |
All known photographs of Darwin are described and discussed for the first time in John van Wyhe, Iconography of Darwin, in Darwin: A Companion (2021) enlarged and fully illustrated in Darwin Online as The Complete Photographs of Darwin.
1871 "THE WEDDING PROCESSION." Fun (25 March): 126. Signed by Dalziel engravers.
"THE WEDDING PROCESSION. | 1. The British Lion as he appeared on this occasion only. 2. The Master of the Horse. 3. The Privy Seal. 4. The Standard. 5. The Hornblowers. 6. Dr. Darwin and our distinguished ancestor. 7. The P .... of W .... And Mr. J. L. T. 'Yet we are not happy!' 8. The Dowry. 9. The Groom. 10. The Dougal creature, indispensable. 11. Cock-à-leekie. 12. The British Beadle. 13. The Bride. 14. The Bridesmaids, dissolved in tears. 15. The Mistress of the Robes. 16. The Matron Majesty of Great Britain. 17. German sausages, cut out by haggis. 18. The Public."
Darwin and an ape or ape-man ancestor (in kilt) march together. The two resemble one another as part of the humour. A Darwin family copy is in CUL-DAR140.4.2. The wedding referred to here is that of Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Louise to the Scottish Marquis of Lorne, later the Duke of Argyll on 21 March. The scene is imbued with comic references to the Scottishness of the groom. Argyll was a respectful critic of Darwin's evolutionary theories, preferring a more God-driven view of nature, though not in the modern sense of a dichotomy between evolution and religious belief. Argyll said: "I have never thought, and I do not now think, that his theory is in the least degree inconsistent with Divine Purpose and Design." See Argyll's fascinating recollection of a conversation with Darwin about this here. Argyll was a pall bearer at Darwin's funeral in Westminster Abbey in 1882. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
1871 "A LITTLE LECTURE BY PROFESSOR D——N ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HORSE." By John Gordon Thomson (1841-1923), engraved by Dalziel. Fun (22 July): 38.
The 1d weekly Fun first appeared on 21 September 1861 and ran until 1901. It was a competitor with Punch. By 1870 Fun was owned by the engravers and publishers George and Edward Dalziel. Fun is said to have been more youthful and bohemian in its early years and reached a lower middle class audience than the older and more successful Punch. Darwin's copy is in CUL-DAR140.4.5. The full caption reads:
"A LITTLE LECTURE BY PROFESSOR D——N ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HORSE. | FELLOW MONKEYS,—We commence with the fiery untamed horse-radish, No. 1. We then come to the horse-chesnut, No. 2. whence I need hardly say—the chesnut horse. No. 3. The clothes horse, giving to the modern charger its quality of standing fire. No. 4. The horsey-porsey of childhood, and the origin of the post-horse. No. 5. The progenitor of the high mettled racer (sensation). No. 6. The horse in its mood of 'would,' which accounts for its obliging disposition. No. 7. The oss. | We then come to the horse proper. No. 8. The Louis Cart-horse of the French. No. 9. The Hunter 'den Linden' of the Germans. No. 10. The well-known 'horse de combat,' with others which I shall not insult you by describing (hear hear). No. 11. You will not be surprised to hear is the highly developed race-horse of the future, with jockey and everything complete. I will now retire, feeling a little hoarse myself. (Tumultuous applause, brickbats, &c.)"
The phrase "development of the horse" means "evolution of the horse" in modern English. Leaving Darwin's name partly omitted was a sign of respect as well as the conventional way to pretend one was not naming a famous person. See Diana Donald's entry here. She notes that Darwin did not give public lectures on the horse but his supporter Huxley did.
(Yale University Library & Falvey Library, Villanova University)
1871 "MR. BERGH TO THE RESCUE." At the door of the "SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. PRES. BERGH". Harper's Weekly (19 August): 776.
Wood engraving after German-born American caricaturist Thomas Nast (1840-1902). A 10 cent American political magazine, Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization was owned by Harper & Brothers in New York and ran from 1857-1916.
The caption reads: "THE DEFRAUDED GORILLA. 'That Man wants to claim my Pedigree. He says he is one of my Descendants.' | MR. BERGH. 'Now, Mr. DARWIN, how could you insult him so?'" The joke that Darwin's theory was an insult to the apes was repeated for many years and in many guises. Of course many people felt exactly the opposite, that it was insulting to suggest that humans are related to apes.
Henry Bergh (1813-1888) was the founder and President of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He ran the society as a non-sectarian, apolitical animal welfare lobbying organization. From his frequent letters in the press and to scientific bodies associated with vivisection, he had gained the reputation (in modern language) of being an extreme animal rights activist.
This caricature is discussed by Julia Voss, Darwin's pictures, pp. 242-3 and in Voss, Monkey, apes and evolutionary theory, In Donald and Munro eds., Endless forms, 2009, pp. 227-8. She describes Nast as a "celebrated cartoonist, Radical Republican and abolitionist". See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
1871 "DARWIN ECLIPSED". Part of a series of eight in: "THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT EDINBURGH.— HUMOURS OF SCIENCE." The Graphic 4(91) (26 August): 5.
The Graphic: An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, a 6d weekly first published from 4 December 1869, was founded by William Luson Thomas and Lewis Samuel Thomas as a competitor with the popular Illustrated London News.
An apelike Darwin as the sun with the dark bust of physicist William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, rolling in to cause an eclipse.
Thomson was President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1871 and had attacked Darwin's theory of evolution again in the President's Address. He believed that a cooling sun implied a cooling Earth and used this as an argument to contradict Darwinian evolution because the Earth should be too young for Darwin's slow process to have occurred. His religious antipathy to Darwin's theory came from his belief that the Christian god must be ever active and guiding in the natural world- whereas Darwin's theory could explain species changing and adapting without supernatural intervention. (See it here, esp. from p. cv [105]) The figure standing on the globe seems to represent a shocked Scottish public at the meeting in Edinburgh. If this is reproduced at all nowadays, it is on its own so that its place as only one of eight illustrations is lost. The entire page was reprinted in Harper's Weekly (23 September 1871), p. 884. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
1871 "MEN OF THE DAY, No. 33. | 'Natural Selection.'" Vanity Fair 152 (30 September): facing p. 307. Unsigned chromolithograph by James Jacques Tissot (often attributed to Carlo Pellegrini) part of a series on 'Men of the day'.
Vanity Fair was a weekly genteel general interest magazine that began in 1868. Darwin seated on a hassock in a small armchair, laughing. T. H. Huxley's son Leonard later recalled "I well remember his arrival now and then at my father's house, somewhere between half-past nine and ten, and the special preparations made for him by placing a hassock in the biggest armchair, for, with his long legs, he found sitting low uncomfortable." Huxley, Charles Darwin, 1921, p. 115. Freeman 1978 noted: "For sale in two sizes, 31cm and 18cm, the former much better coloured." John Murray persuaded Darwin to appear there after a request by the editor of Vanity Fair, Thomas Gibson Bowles. See letter from John Murray to Darwin 10 May 1871, Correspondence, vol. 19, p. 363. Darwin family copies are in CUL-DAR141.7 and CUL-DAR141.8. See a higher-resolution image courtesy of the collection of Angus Carroll: Image. Compare Darwin's with the caricatures in the same series of Richard Owen, T. H. Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, courtesy of Angus Carroll and the Huntington Library. With thanks to Dan Lewis.
The accompanying article signed 'Jehu Junior' (i.e. Thomas Gibson Bowles, founder of Vanity Fair) is on p. 107:
"MEN OF THE DAY.—No. XXXIII.
MR. CHARLES R. DARWIN
In all times, and among all peoples, whenever and wherever the faculty of thought has existed, men have asked the question: "How come we here?" and there is scarcely a form of society but has produced one or more kinds of answer to the inquiry. Up to within the last hundred years these answers have one and all been presented in the form of a Revelation from an Authority entirely outside the men and the world to whom and to which the matter relates. The fables that have thus been presented to mankind have been of the most various and the most conflicting character, and have been referred to the sanction of the most dissimilar Authorities. They have agreed in one only respect—that they have all been of the most childish invention, and that the elaboration of the systems built up thereupon has been of the very rudest kind.
While the vulgar many of all countries have universally received the local Fable as it was presented, the stronger-headed few have as invariably rejected it. For hundreds of years, as we know, and as we may infer, for thousands, the few were fain to content themselves with the conclusion that they knew nothing whatever about the earth and its inhabitants. In modern times, however, the method has been adopted of interrogating that earth and those inhabitants themselves without reference to any real or supposed external Authority; and although in so vast a field of labour it has as yet not been possible to achieve any very great results, certain new theories have been built up of which it can at least be said that they are more presentable than any of the old fables.
Among these theories one of the most striking is that which Mr. Darwin has given to the world with reference to the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection. Mr. Darwin, who was born sixty-two years ago, has spent the whole of a most laborious life in close converse with the material world in which we live, and the beings that it has from time to time seen upon its surface. He has thus become one of the most accomplished naturalists now in existence, and any theoretical structure that he builds upon his researches must be regarded with great respect. His books are written to a large extent for and appeal to ordinary men. This, indeed, it is which gives them their great importance. This, however, makes it also allowable to say that to ordinary men the chain of inferences seems to be very loosely hung together by which he seeks to establish that the various species of animals now existing on the earth inherit all their immense dissimilarities from a common ancestor, and that they have acquired their wide differences of development simply from individual aberrations. Nevertheless, so unknown to us are our fellow-beings that even for ordinary men his writings have all the charm of romances; while they will remain to all time, if nothing else, at least a record of earnest and honest devotion to the solution of the most momentous of the problems by which mankind are surrounded.
JEHU JUNIOR"
(Christ's College, Cambridge)
The original lithographic outline with watercolour and pencil of this caricature (31.7x19.7cm) sold at Christie's in 1912, Lot 197. The sales catalogue explained "Sixteen of the drawings by Tissot were partly drawn in outline by him on lithographic stone in black; one copy of each was then printed, and that copy was completed and coloured by Tissot". Now at the Old Library, Christ's College, Cambridge. See Diana Donald's entry on this here and her entry on the preliminary study.
1871 The "learned gorilla" Woodcuts by 'Stephens'. In [Richard Grant White] The fall of man: or, the loves of the gorillas. A popular scientific lecture upon the Darwinian theory of development by sexual selection. By a learned gorilla. Edited by the author of " The new gospel of peace. New York: G. W. Carleton, pp. 7, 47. The anonymous author, White (1822-1885), was a New York Shakespeare scholar, literary critic and essayist.
Darwin's head with gorilla body addressing "my hairy hearers" in a 48-page satirical booklet with scandalous undertones.
This appeared by 16 October 1871 (American Literary Gazette and Publishers' Circular, vol. 17). The title page noted that it was written by the same anonymous author as The new gospel of peace according to St. Benjamin (1863), a satire of the American civil war and Lincoln in mock biblical language (available online at the Library of Congress)
The tone of The fall of man sounds shocked and insulted by Darwin's Descent of man. The figure with Darwin's head in the illustrations as a character in the book is not actually Darwin but a "learned gorilla" lecturer who refers to Darwin's Descent of man, focusing on the shocking comic implications of sexual selection. See Diana Donald's entry on this here. This work is also mentioned in Jane Munro, 'More like a work of art than of nature', in Donald and Munro eds., Endless forms, 2009, pp. 255-6. The book is now online at Google Books and Project Gutenberg.
1871 "A DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS." The Figaro (28 October): 9.
At bottom "(See p. 4." Darwin's copy is in CUL-DAR140.4.6. Diana Donald writes of this: "The image survives in a torn page in the Darwin archive, but it has so far proved impossible to find an extant copy of the London edition of the journal for this date. 'See p. 4' at bottom right of the plate suggests that a commentary was provided. The rather inexpert caricature is signed with a monogram, which awaits decipherment and identification." The monogram seems to be GST or CST. See Donald's entire entry here.
The commentary is, in fact, in the same folder of papers in the Darwin Archive, a few numbers away, in CUL-DAR140.4.23, though it is a clipping missing the page number and it is not identified as such in the Darwin Archive. (The Darwin Online manuscript catalogue has corrected and supplemented thousands of these records.) The entire article from "Figaro" was reprinted one month later in the Tralee Chronicle and Killarney Echo (10 November 1871), p. [4]. So, the accompanying article can now be read together with the caricature:
"THE HUMBLE PHILOSOPHER.
SEE CARTOON.
Dr. Darwin puts a pair of monkeys at the root of his genealogical tree; and, with rare humility, owns that his ancestors were apes. It appears that one person believed in the Darwinian theory, which we hold to be evidence that man is descended from a certain long-eared quadruped. The transformation is easily explained by the Darwinian method. In past ages, thistles grew on high bushes, and, to reach their favourite food, donkeys were obliged to stand on their hind-legs. This begot a habit of walking on two legs; and, as the fore-legs were not wanted for locomotion, they were, in the course of ages, converted by use into arms. If we had the space, we could support the donkey descent of man quite as well as Dr. Darwin supports his monkey descent. The unfortunate young man who would not live any longer because he believed that man was descended from a monkey, was evidently afraid that the process might be reversed, and man again become monkey. He could not bear the idea of being led about by an organ-grinder, or being put into a cage and poked by ladies' parasols. He did not reflect that, if the human race returned into monkeyism, there would be no ladies to poke him with their parasols, and no organ-grinders. The burlesque tragedy at Carlisle shows that Charlatanism as well as Science has its victims."
(American Museum of Natural History)
1871 'The youthful Darwin expounding his theories', oil painting by American artist William Holbrook Beard (1824-1900) who painted fantasy animal paintings. His 1891 oil painting 'The Discovery of Adam' showed apes dressed as gentleman on a pre-historic beach looking at a primitive creature, 'Adam'. (Toledo Museum of Art) See Caricatures of evolution.
A young anthropomorphic ape shows two older primates a line of animals from fish to amphibian. Engraved by the artist's nephew, Thomas Francis Beard, and reproduced as albertype prints published by the American Photo-Plate Printing Co., New York. Obviously this was not a likeness of Darwin. He was given a copy by Asa Gray in 1872. In a letter to Gray from Ogden Nicholas Rood we learn "The artist assured me that it was executed in a purely neutral spirit, and without any intention of casting ridicule—on either side." (Correspondence, vol. 20, p. 252.) See Diana Donald's entry on this work here.
c.1871 Watercolour drawing of Darwin inspecting a painting of an ape-like man with large brow ridges and beard in the "GALLERY OF ANCESTORS" by George Montbard (Charles Auguste Loye 1841-1905) a French artist who left France after the Paris Commune uprising in 1871. Signed "Montbard." Apparently never published, the original is in CUL-DAR225.178, which includes items owned by the Darwin family. On verso it has been annotated "Charles Darwin | caricature". See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
(Case Western Reserve University, Robert M. Stecher Collection)
c.1871 "DARWIN'S ORIGIN OF SPECIES", signed "CROWQUILL DELT" (artist Alfred Henry Forrester (1804-1872)). Published by W. H. Mason of Brighton. By 1896 a printseller and publisher to the Queen. In the late 1860s Mason was experimenting with reproducing drawings photographically.
Anthropomorphised animals dressed in respectable clothing greet Darwin in the garden of Eden(?) under a serpent. The animals may be congratulating Darwin for proclaiming that they are relatives of humanity. This is a familiar theme in jokes about Darwin around this time both in word and image. There is a copy in CUL-DAR221.4.267. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
c.1871 "COMPARATIVE ANATOMY A LA DARWIN". Source untraced.
At the top an ape-like Darwin shakes hands with an orangutan (with a tail added). Numerous other caricatured humans look like the animals next to them. The publication where this presumably appeared has never been identified. The original drawing is in CUL-DAR225.181. On verso: "By George Cruikshank the younger" (1792-1878). There is a faint line of instruction at the top to the engraver "reduce slightly to this width exactly". There are, it seems, copies of two others in a collection of 16 "Prints of Darwin Caricatures Dr Robert Stecher 1960" sent to Geoffrey Keynes in 1960. (CUL-DAR251.1835, CUL-DAR251.1819-1834) See Diana Donald's entry on this here. The elongated figures and skinny legs are typical of Cruikshank's style at the time as in this example from Judy in 1871:
(Wien Museum Online Sammlung)
*1872 "Darwin und Büchner." Die Bombe (Vienna) 11, no. 12 (24 March): 57, front cover. By 'Laci' László Frecskay (1844-1916); engraved by Carl Angerer. The humoristic 15kr. weekly periodical Die Bombe was published between 8 January 1871 and 1925.
Darwin's head on an ape body perched on a tree branch with a much smaller ape with the head of German physician, atheist and materialist Ludwig Büchner (1824-1899). The accompanying text is on p. 58 and provided here. The editors claim they do not want to take sides on Darwinism but as the clergy rail against it, there are some who think there must be something true about us coming from chimpanzees.
"Unser Titelbild zeigt Darwin, den Altmeister, und Büchner, seinen Jünger, in der Gestalt ihrer Urväter." (The cover image shows Darwin, the old master, and Büchner, his disciple, in the form of their ancestors.) Die Bombe was more interested in lampooning Büchner than Darwin. The fruit Büchner holds reads "Kraft v. Stoff" (force and matter), the title of his 1855 book advocating materialism.
See: Büchner, 1901. [Recollection of Darwin's religious views]. Last words on materialism and kindred subjects. Text and Aveling, 1883. The religious views of Charles Darwin. Text and Aveling, Charles Darwin and Karl Marx: a comparison. Text Darwin had several works by Büchner in his library. See the 1882 caricature of Darwin in the same periodical below.
1872 "'NATURAL SELECTION.'" Once a Week (8 June): [521].
Wood engraving after Frederick Waddy, by William James Welch. Darwin with giant head and walking stick emerging from a tropical forest. This was also in response to the publication of the Descent of man.
Once a Week was an illustrated literary magazine that ran from 1859 to 1865. It barely had more than one caricature of a celebrity per week and a couple small illustrations. See an article on the magazine by Simon Cooke here. See Diana Donald's entry on this here. She notes that "Little is known about Waddy (c. 1848 – 1901), who seems to have been primarily an illustrator rather than a cartoonist."
Almost all the reproductions of this caricature that one sees come from the book version (below). The differences being natural selection is in quotation marks and the issue date and name of the magazine printed under the illustration in Once a Week and the lack of those and added red frame in the book version. The accompanying biographical text on pp. 520 & 523 is headed "CHARLES DARWIN, F.R.S."
For comparison, see Waddy's style of giant head caricatures of other men of science in 1872 from Once a Week:
Richard Owen, 6 July 1872 "riding his hobby", a Megatherium.
Thomas Henry Huxley, 31 August 1872 lectures on fossils.
1873. Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day. The drawings by Frederick Waddy. London: Tinslely Brothers, pp. 6-7. Darwin is in the table of contents (the second figure) as "C. R. Darwin, F.R.S." The accompanying text in the book was slightly edited from that in Once a Week with an additional sentence appended on Expression which had appeared in the interim.
1872 "THAT TROUBLES OUR MONKEY AGAIN." Fun 16 (16 November): [203]. By John Gordon Thomson (as correctly identified by Diana Donald), engraved by Dalziel.
"THAT TROUBLES OUR MONKEY AGAIN. | Female descendant of Marine Ascidian:— 'REALLY, MR. DARWIN, SAY WHAT YOU LIKE ABOUT MAN; BUT I WISH YOU WOULD LEAVE MY EMOTIONS ALONE!'"
Darwin as a monkey taking the pulse of a lady. He has a quill pen tucked behind his ear. This refers to his recently published book Expression of the emotions. Ascidian is a reference to the most famous passage in Descent of man, vol. 1, p. 206 about the primitive type of sea creature that Darwin traced human ancestry back to because of its notochord, predecessor of the spinal column. Darwin's copy is in CUL-DAR140.4.7. An excellent copy courtesy of McGill University: Image. Almost always overlooked in favour of the delightful illustration, is the accompanying poem, "THE EMOTIONS" on p. 200:
As Donald and others have pointed out, the passage in Expression that caught readers' attention begins with "a pretty girl blushes when a man gazes intently at her". Expression, pp. 327ff.
This caricature is discussed in Eveleen Richards, Darwin and the making of sexual selection. 2017, p. 481 amongst many other scholars. See Diana Donald's entry on this here. Janet Browne wrote of it: "The Dalziel brothers, the most eminent team of British wood-engravers of the period, produced the same set of symbolic devices in 'That Troubles our Monkey again' for Fun in 1872. The Dalzeils add a well-bred young woman to accentuate what was to them the shocking idea of apish relatives in the family tree. These pictures of Darwin-as-ape or Darwin-as-monkey readily identified him as the author of the theory, in much the same way as a tricorne hat signalled Napoleon." Darwin in caricature: A study in the popularisation and dissemination of evolution. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 2001.
There has been some speculation about the meaning of the shape of the lady's dress. In this case we can see ladies wearing almost identical dresses (and showing the distinguishing parts best in profile) in Fun in 1871 and 1874. The one below left is Queen Victoria and the one on the right is an imaginary lady, like the one with Darwin above.
(McGill-CA-OSLER0-P110[.93] and Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg)
1872 "EMOTIONAL!" By Ernest Griset. Fun (23 November): 209.
"EMOTIONAL! | 'An open countenance denotes a gentle and good-tempered character.' Still we think if Messrs. D—n, B—d, B—t, and Professor H—Y were to act on that theory and enter the den, their emotion would not be one of unmixed pleasure." Darwin, T. H. Huxley, Frank Buckland and Abraham Bartlett looking with delight at a gaping hippopotamus mother and her newborn baby at the Zoological Gardens, London. A baby hippo had been born there a the beginning of the month which was big news. As much as these men of science might supposedly delight at the birth of this rare creature, they would feel a different emotion if faced by the ferocious mother. Darwin's copy is in CUL-DAR140.4.8. See Diana Donald's entry on this here. The line "An open countenance denotes a gentle and good-tempered character." is not an exact quotation of any known publication. It does paraphrase a line by 'Polylogy' [Samuel Hibbert], 1842, vol. 2, p. 51.
*1872 "EXPRESSION! | SOME EXAMPLES OF DARWINIAN DEVELOPMENT. […] Do you know how DARWIN'S Theory first occurred to him? It was this way." By Marie Duval (Isabelle Émilie de Tessier, 1847-1890). Judy, or the London Serio-Comic Journal 12 (27 November): 60. (HathiTrust)
Judy is the wife of Punch in the traditional puppet shows. This satirical magazine began in May 1867 edited by Charles H. Ross (1835-1897). This artist of this caricature was Ross's French-born wife.
Darwin is depicted as a sitting monkey looking in a hand mirror, reminiscent of the famous Faustin caricature in Figaro which appeared two years later. There are more than fourteen other vignettes making various jokes with expression. The other captions read from top left:
"A Good Woman, who must have come from the Cat Tribe. Won't the Good Man catch it for being out so late!" "A Gentle Shepherdess, some of whose ancestors have had a very Sheepish look about them." "The ancients were very strong in Expression. The worst of it is, Time has taken this one by the nose." "Evidently this one had a rolling eye. Where has it rolled to now, though?" "You can easily read a character by the Expression. This sweet thing let her Mother die in the Workhouse." "This Man had all the earthly virtues; at least, his tombstone said so." "'Oh, smile as thou wert wont to smile!' The way is depicted in the picture on the wall." "EXPRESSION AGAIN! This is love (the rustic style)." "MORE EXPRESSION! These two hate each other like poison."
Title illustration to the completed vol. 12, 1873.
*1872 "ARTISTICAL." Judy, or the London Serio-Comic Journal 12 (24 December): 93. (HathiTrust)
"ARTISTICAL.—Among the most remarkable pictures of the day may be mentioned one entitled 'The Missing Link,' by a promising young artist from Regent's Park." A bespectacled monkey works on a canvas that depicts Darwin as a monkey (the 'missing link'); the painting reads "THIS IS DARWIN". Part of a page of 11 comic scenes titled "THE DEAD SEASON | BY BARRERE". Barrere was a regular cartoonist with Judy. The scene below Darwin mentions Bartlett and Buckland who appear with Darwin in "EMOTIONAL!" By Ernest Griset. Fun (23 November 1872): 209.
1873 Charles Darwin as The Sapient Ass by Charles Briton. Watercolour on paper 20x28cm. Design for a papier-mâché Mardis Gras costume for the Mistick Krewe of Comus (founded in 1856) carnival group under their theme "Missing Links to Darwin's Origin of Species". (Carnival Collection, Manuscripts Collection 900, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. Louisiana Research Collection, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University).
The Swedish-born immigrant artist Charles Briton (1841-1884) became a leading designer of costumes and parade floats; over a hundred sheets survive showing his designs for costumes of bizarre anthropomorphised 'missing links'- creatures that mocked Darwin's theory of evolution- sparked by the publication of Descent of man in 1871- and especially satirised local and national political figures associated with post-Civil War Reconstruction. See further comment and the other 'missing link' costume designs in 'Mardi Gras of 1873' in Caricatures of evolution.
*1873 [Darwin as The Sapient Ass] "THE CARNIVAL. MASQUERADE AT THE VARIETIES THEATRE." Scribner's Monthly 7(1) (November): 30.
Joseph Roach, Carnival and the Law in New Orleans. Drama Review 37(3) (1993): 42-75, wrote "A strikingly vicious tableaux of Charles Darwin, the Sapient Ass (left), Missing Link, and the Gorilla (right), at the Mystick Krewe of Comus Ball, entitled 'Missing Links to Darwin's Origin of Species.'"
Darwin was sent some newspaper clippings about the event and some anti-Darwin articles. See the notes in Correspondence vol. 21 where it is commented "...Merriam probably sent CD two newspaper clippings: a description of the parade and ball held by the Mystick Krewe of Comus to celebrate Mardi Gras in New Orleans, containing a copy of the poem 'The missing links to Darwin's origin of species' (Daily Picayune, 26 February 1873), and an article from the New Orleans Times, 26 February 1873, containing a heated denouncement of Darwinian theory and of CD personally." The Darwin letter referred to is also published here.
(Whipple Museum, Cambridge)
[1873] "OUR NATIONAL CHURCH. THE AEGIS OF LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY. 'A House divided against itself cannot stand.'" Signed "gegeëf" (who has been identified as Gordon E. Flaws). London: Edmund Appleyard, 1d. 51x37cm.
This large print satirized the religious positions in Britain at the time from the perspective of religious scepticism. The dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in the centre. The scene with Darwin is at the top left corner. Darwin as monkey beckoning to his followers Huxley, Tyndall and Biship Colenso. Their 'faith' is listed at the bottom as "Science". The biblical quote linked to Darwin is Genesis 17:2: "Behold, my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man." Adrian Desmond, Huxley, 1997, pointed out that the "atheists" are fenced at the bottom right corner with Darwin and his sect are on the other side. Darwin family copies are in CUL-DAR141.10-11. The 1883 print is below. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
The American writer James Parton commented on this print in Harper's Magazine in 1875 and his 1877 book Caricature and other comic art in all times and many lands:
The old-fashioned penny broadside, all alive with figures and words, has been revived by "Gegeef," to promote the secularization of the schools. In one of them all the parties to the controversy are exhibited—the candidate for the mastership of a Government school, who "believes in Colenso and geology, but don't mind teaching Genesis to oblige;" the minister who holds up the text, "One faith, one baptism," but demands that the baptism taught should be his baptism; Thomas Paine, too, who points to his "Age of Reason," and says, "When you finish, I shall have something to say;" the compromiser, who is willing to have Bible lessons given in the schools, provided they are given "without comment;" and, of course, the radical Bradlaugh, who demands secularization pure and simple. The same draughtsman, whose zeal is more manifest than his skill, has attempted to show, in various penny sheets, that amidst all those sectarian conflicts the one true light for the guidance of bewildered men is Science.
The 1883 re-drawing of this print (see below) states that the original appeared 10 years before. Another print by "Persian civilization company limited. ... Our national Shah-fever", signed 'Gegeëf 1 Aug. 1873' is in the Wellcome Collection: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xm6hbbh3 and shows the other prints in the planned series with Our National Church as no. 1.
No. 7 in the series was this one, "OUR NATIONAL PRESS" which lamented that in the current proliferation of cheap print media of all kinds which entailed: "Daily papers, unavoidably perhaps, contain about equal proportions of Fact and Fiction, (including advertisements;) and sometimes Interest gets the upper hand of Principle." ...
(Huxley archive, Imperial College, London)
1873 "The Battle Field of Science and the Churches". By 'Gegeëf' (Gordon E. Flaws). The Gauntlet 1 (December).2d. 40x25.5cm. London: Edmund Appleyard.
A seated Darwin holds and points to a tiny monkey as his symbol. 'Reason' floats above the scene of conflict between science and religion with the secular "LONDON UNIVERSITY" (UCL) on the left and churches on the right (Church of England, Roman Catholic and Baptist). With c.30 figures from both 'sides'. Also included are Huxley, Lyell, Colenso, Carpenter, Manning, Spurgeon and Moses. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
(Private collection)
*1873 "Knights of Momus 1873 | dum vivimus vivamus | compliments of Momus Dec. 31st 1873". Baltimore: A. Hoen & Co.
Chromolithographed New Year's Ball invitation for the parading Knights of Momus in New Orleans founded in 1872. Its public face was the Louisiana Literary and Debating Society or Louisiana Club. It was named after Momus, the Greek god of mockery. The German-born Ferdinand August Hoen (1852-1914) operated one of the principal lithography companies at the time.
The invitations features (left to right) Humboldt, Agassiz, Darwin, Audubon and Huxley. Darwin with ape body and walking stick holding copy of Origin of species. With thanks to Angus Carroll. See the 1873 Darwin-themed Mardis Gras illustrations in Caricatures of Evolution.
1874 "PROF. DARWIN." Figaro: Politics, Satire, Criticism, Art, Music, Drama 475 (18 February): 1.
"Figaro's | London Sketch Book | of | CELEBRITIES. | PROF. DARWIN. | This is the ape of form. | Love's Labor's Lost, act 5, sc. 2. | Some four or five descents since. | All's Well that Ends Well, act 3, sc. 7." Chromolithograph by Faustin Betbeder (1847-c.1914). Known as The London Figaro (because the first magazine of this name was French), the magazine was founded by James Mortimer in May 1870 and ran until 1897. Modern readers are sometimes confused by the fact that the elaborate printed frame around the Darwin caricature and all the text printed below the masthead on the front page is an advertisement for Mortimer's other magazine, the new London Sketch Book (see entry below). Here the chromolithograph has been pasted onto the front page of Figaro, hence different copies are slightly differently seated in the pre-printed frame.
Darwin sits next to another ape (their bodies are the same) and shows it a mirror and the ape is surprised or delighted at the revelation of their relationship according to popular stereotype about Darwin's theories. Although it is not mentioned here explicitly this scene is a reference to Hamlet Act 3, Scene 2 "hold the mirror up to nature". See the accompanying article on p. 3 (below). A Darwin family copy is in CUL-DAR140.4.9 and the text is in CUL-DAR140.4.10. The accompanying text:
"MAN NOT MONKEY. | (SEE CARTOON.)"
The phrase "man not monkey" was used by some zealous Christians at the time who strongly objected to Darwin's Descent of man which showed that overwhelming and overlapping kinds of evidence demonstrated that humans are descended from earlier species.
These lithographic portraits were collectables and used by many people to clip out to keep in albums, such as the example below.
There is another in the Huntington Library's Warren D. Mohr collection of Darwiniana where the lithograph has been pasted onto another sheet and the epigraphs have been clipped and pasted underneath. Another in the same collection has the lithograph pasted onto another sheet with a black rectangular printed frame. The American Philosophical Society has a print with a rectangular black border line around the sheet. Another variant has a crossed border line around the edge. A print in the Victoria and Albert Museum is perhaps trimmed to just around the image itself.
(Wellcome Library)
1874 "PROF. DARWIN." The London Sketch-Book: An Illustrated Newspaper and Magazine 1, no. 5 (May): insert.
"THE | LONDON SKETCH BOOK. | PROF. DARWIN. | This is the ape of form. | Love's Labor Lost, act. 5, scene 2. | Some four or five descents since. | All's Well that Ends Well, act 3, sc. 7." Chromolithograph by Faustin Betbeder.
The London Sketch-Book was a monthly 6d magazine that began in January 1874 edited by James Mortimer which only ran through 1875. It included 4-5 tipped in chromolithograph caricatures of famous people. Most library copies of the magazine are missing the plates. One copy seen for sale in the rare books trade has had the Darwin plate bound in at page 29. The identical chromolithograph as Figaro above, but printed on a larger rectangular sheet and with "PROF. DARWIN" and the Shakespeare quotes (with slightly different abbreviations and punctuation) printed on the same sheet, unlike in Figaro above. There is no corresponding article in the May issue with the Darwin caricature. Only on the first page of the magazine it is announced:
THE present number of the LONDON SKETCH-BOOK is accompanied by Five Chromo-lithographs, as follows:—
H.R.H THE PRINCE OF WALES.
H.R.H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES.
THE PRINCE IMPERIAL (Napoleon IV.). [Mortimer's financial backer]
A. S. AYRTON, ESQ.
PROFESSOR DARWIN.
See Diana Donald's entry on this here. Donald observed that these caricatures were a competition with the Vanity Fair caricatures.
1874? A marked up proof (21.7x13.7cm) is in CUL-DAR225.177 annotated in an unknown hand: "The world has changed its mind since this was 'a joke'" and "Contemporary cartoon Faustin". What was not previously noticed is that this is not for the original Figaro but a later printing. The two Shakespeare quotations pasted at the bottom here are a clipping from the 18 February Figaro- the text of the Figaro article is visible on the verso.
1874? (left) This simplified version with only a single quotation from Shakespeare, appears to be a later printing. (Bridgeman images)
1874? (right) Lithograph pasted on card with a black border. This copy is annotated in ink below "Prof. Darwin. | 'This is the ape of form'".
(Huntington Library Warren D. Mohr collection of Darwiniana) With thanks to Mina Marciano and Daniel Lewis.
1874 "THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION". By Thomas Nast. The Daily Graphic (New York) (12 September): front page.
Caricature of American philosopher John Fiske (1842-1901) flying the kite of "THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION" with Darwin holding the string. A monkey pulls at Darwin's coat tails which appear as if his own tail. The caricature refers to the recent publication of Fiske's, Outlines of cosmic philosophy based on the doctrine of evolution, with criticisms on the positive philosophy, 2 vols., 1874. The caricature was reprinted in John Spencer Clark, The life and letters of John Fiske. 2 vols., 1917, vol. 2, facing p. 56.
See the detailed description by Diana Donald here from whose list this caricature is added here. She writes: "The unknowable is the kite, the string of the ball is evolution, the rolls of paper are the cells, and man, in the maturity of his powers, is the tassel at the end'. The kite tail in fact displays an evolutionary progression from insects through amphibians and reptiles to monkeys and finally an ape reading Herbert Spencer's First Principles. Another ape nearby is reading Descent of Man, while a third in the distance is hanging onto Darwin's (coat) tail." See:
Fiske, 1917. [Recollections of Darwin and letters, 1871-80]. Text
Darwin, 1940. [Letters to Fiske, 1874-80]. Text
Fiske, 1873. Agassiz and Darwinism. Popular Science Monthly. PDF
Fiske, 1882. [Obituary of] Charles Darwin. The Atlantic Monthly. Text
1875 "SUGGESTED ILLUSTRATION. | FOR 'DR. DARWIN'S MOVEMENTS AND HABITS OF CLIMBING PLANTS.'" By Linley Sambourne. Punch 69 (11 December): 242. (Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg & CUL-DAR140.4.15)
"SUGGESTED ILLUSTRATION. | FOR 'DR. DARWIN'S MOVEMENTS AND HABITS OF CLIMBING PLANTS.' | (See Murray's List of Forthcoming Works.) | *** We had no notion the Doctor would have been so ready to avow his connection with his quadrumaneous ancestors—the tree-climbing Anthropoids—as the title of his work seems to imply." This caricature is in response to Darwin's book The movements and habits of climbing plants. Text PDF which had come out just a few months before.
Darwin as an ape placidly smoking a pipe in a tree. A Darwin family copy is in CUL-DAR140.4.15. This caricature is discussed in Jonathan Smith, Charles Darwin and Victorian visual culture., 2006, p. 234. He thought that Darwin's work had not appeared yet- however see R. B. Freeman's introduction. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
1876 "PRIDE OF BIRTH." By 'Spex' (John Fergus O'Hea c.1838-1922). Zoz (Dublin).
Huxley and Darwin sit under framed portraits of their animal ancestors. "HUXLEY'S IMMEDIATE PROGENITOR" is a braying ass. Quite far from the omnipresent modern myth that Huxley was known at the time as 'Darwin's bulldog'. In fact he never was, as revealed in van Wyhe, 'Why there was no 'Darwin's bulldog'' (2019). Darwin's ancestor, labelled rather impolitely "MR DARWIN'S FATHER" is a grimacing monkey. Zoz was a short-lived satirical 3d magazine edited by Edwin Hamilton published from 1876-1878. B. P. Bowen, Dublin Humorous Periodicals of the 19th Century, Dublin Historical Record 13(1), 1952, pp. 2-11.
*1877 Feb. 19 "Drawing of Professor Darwin and the gorilla" by Clement William Smith. Registered for copyright on this date. Artwork not found.
1877 "PUNCH TO DR. DARWIN." Punch 73 (1 December): 241. (Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg)
This caricature refers to Darwin's honorary degree of LL.D. from the University of Cambridge in November 1877. The artist was Robert Bruce Wallace (d.1881). It was said that his "style was modelled on that of C. H. Bennett, and greatly inspired besides by Mr. Sambourne." M. H. Spielmann, The history of "Punch", 1895. Unlike the usual Punch illustrations, this one was meant as a mark of respect and honour to Darwin and is composed of symbolic artistic elements which were presumably plain to Punch's readers but today are quite opaque.
See Diana Donald's entry on this here. She noted "The capital 'O' of the first line of the poem encloses an allegorical figure with a brightly burning lamp". Could the figure be one of the Greek muses, perhaps Calliope who is often represented with a writing instrument? But here she is asleep, perhaps tired from her labours. The lamp seems to represent wisdom and enlightenment. A painter's palette below her is labelled "Ars Longa". This comes from Hippocrates Aphorism i. Latin translation of the original Greek, roughly meaning, "skilfulness takes time and life is short". Punch quoted this in a caricature of the Royal Academy art exhibition on 19 May 1877, p. 217. Suspended from the book under Darwin's arms is a little shield labelled "JAW" with a picture of a human jaw (jaw dropping?).
Donald also noted the "bearded man with an even larger tome; the latter holds a label in his hand, apparently identifying him as the university's orator, who made a celebratory speech at the award ceremony". In fact, the bearded figure is none other than Thomas Henry Huxley. The University's Public Orator, J. E. Sandys, was beardless though his appearance was unknown to the public anyway. It seems only famous people were caricatured like this. Huxley only wore a full beard for a short time, but this carte de visite shows what the artist was depicting and apparently copied from.
The object in Huxley's hand in the caricature is "chalk" to make his identity clear to a contemporary reader. Huxley was well known for his 1868 lecture 'On a piece of chalk'. He used this common substance to tell the history of the British Isles and the history of life on Earth. Huxley was present at the Cambridge degree ceremony and was applauded and cheered when he entered Senate House. Huxley is also referred to in the poem accompanying this caricature as 'Boanerges,' the nickname from the Bible (Mark 3:17) for "a loud vociferous preacher or orator". (OED) So Darwin has also left the fiery talking and action to Huxley the poem notes. What we see in this drawing is Darwin as the patient and wise brains behind the mover and shaker Huxley and the orthodox have come to see the error of their ways and cease to chastise and now praise Darwin and his enlightened science which dispels the darkness of old church superstition in the form of the owls and bat which carries a censor labelled "INK". (Compare with the Puck caricature of 1885.)
According to the Punch archives the anonymous author of the poem was Edwin James Milliken (1839-1897) an editor of Punch from 1877.
Our world's stage footlights flare and fume,
While the clear light that shall illume
The Future's farthest ages,
In quiet santctums few descry,
Still trimmed and tended patiently
By unobtrusive sages.
And when that light begins to show
Its keen but unfamiliar glow
To poor be-muddled mortals,
The dullards blink, the quidnuncs croak,
The zealots fain would
Heaven invoke
To bar those perilous portals.
In vain; that clear and conquering light
Wins as it widens, calms affright,
Dull souls from dread delivers;
Till they who came to curse make shift
To give a welcome to the gift
And honour to the givers.
So comes my DARWIN's turn of praise
And the green honours of their bays
The men who banned you offer;
The smile, of such occasion born,
Might well have had a touch of scorn,
Could wisdom be a scoffer.
But only shallow smartness mocks
The antics of the orthodox,
The dogmatist's wild capers,
Smile, but ne'er lift the heel to spurn;
Trust Truth's asbestos to outburn
Delusion's glimmering tapers.
Science should be the last to claim
Infallibility's false fame,
Which only Folly urges.
The truth to seek with patent quest
Is hers, content to leave the rest
To blatant Boanerges.
So have you done; the road you tread,
As free from rashness as from dread,
You follow without swerving,
Fame meets you fairly on the way,
And where's the duffer who to-day
Dare question your deserving?
Punch cracks his jokes at you sans ruth;
His honest fun wars not with Truth,
But rather serves to test her;
And, serious now, he bows respect,
Sure that the Sage will not reject
The tribute of the Jester.
Another caricature, on the following page of Punch, delivered the usual silly take on Darwin's honorary degree 'Great International Quadrumanous Congress' but without depicting Darwin himself. See Caricatures of Evolution.
1878 "SKETCHES IN THE NEW YORK AQUARIUM.—(BY FRANK BELLEW.)" Harper's Weekly 22(1115) (11 May): 368.
A bearded gentleman looks surprised as "The Chimpanzee" asks "HOW ARE YOU DARWIN". The figure does not resemble Darwin. Perhaps the joke is that the chimpanzee mistakenly assumed the bearded visitor was Darwin. The captions visible "Flirtation" and "Sentiment" refer to the cartoon scenes above. Frank Henry Temple Bellew (1828-1888), was an illustrator and cartoonist for several American magazines. The New York Aquarium was established in 1876 by the showman William Cameron Coup and included over 100 iron and glass tanks of many sizes for white whales to fish, seals as well as cages for land animals. It was more of a circus or freak show than a museum and by 1878 was struggling with reduced visitors as the novelty wore off. In 1881 it was dismantled. The animals fared no better and the whales, fish and chimpanzees died regularly.
1878 "DARWIN". La Petite Lune no. 10 [August], front page. (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
Darwin as a monkey hanging from the "arbre de la science" (tree of science). Stencil-coloured wood engraving after André Gill (Louis-Alexandre Gosset de Guines, 1840-1885). The Parisian satirical magazine La Petite Lune (The little moon) was produced and illustrated by Gill from 1878-1879. This caricature is one of a series of illustrious persons. Darwin's copy of the whole issue is in CUL-DAR140.4.20. It is reproduced as a facsimile in John van Wyhe, Darwin (2008/National Geographic 2009, and some subsequent editions and translations). Dated letters to the editor in earlier issues show that no. 10 appeared in mid-August 1878. See Diana Donald's entry on this here. There is a brief article on Darwin on p. 2:
"LES HOMMES ILLUSTRES Bien des gens ignorent ce qu'est Darwin. |
(Illustrated Men Many people don't know who Darwin is. |
1878 "DARWIN!" By André Gill, engraved by Yves & Barret. La Lune Rousse (Paris) no. 89 (18 August): [2-3].
"DARWIN! — PAR GILL | Où s'arrêteront les magnificences de l'Hippodrome? On y parle de l'engagement du célèbre Darwin qui viendrait fournir la preuve de sa généalogie en exhibant l'agilité prestigieuse qu'il tient de ses aïeux (les singes). — M. Littré, qui partage la foi et les ancêtres du savant Anglais, le seconderait dans ses exercices."
(Where will the magnificence of the Hippodrome end? We talk about the commitment of the famous Darwin who would provide proof of his genealogy by exhibiting the prestigious agility that he inherited from his ancestors (the monkeys). — Mr. Littré, who shares the faith and ancestors of the English scholar, assists him in his exercises.)
Darwin as monkey leaps through circus hoops labelled credulity, superstition, errors and ignorance. These are held by lexicographer, medical writer, materialist and populariser of Auguste Comte, Émile Littré (1801-1881), also drawn as a circus monkey. Darwin family copies are in CUL-DAR141.9 and CUL-DAR226.2.21. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
This illustration has been very widely reproduced- but its original physical context has been forgotten. The weekly La Lune Rousse (The Red Moon), edited by the cartoonist André Gill, was only 4 pages long. This illustration is a two-page spread over the unnumbered pages 2-3. All issues had such a large centrefold illustration. There is an article on the first page which seems never to have been reproduced along with the caricature:
The author of this, Louis Ferdinand de Gramont (1854-1912) was a French journalist, dramatist, and librettist. Once again- although now most viewers look only at Darwin in this caricature- originally it was just as much if not more about poking fun at Littré. He had been caricatured as an ape at least since 1873. Not only was the sourpuss lexicographer often made an ape with a stick but apes carry his dictionary or he sported a monkey tail. Darwin was not the first or the only person to be caricatured as an ape or monkey.
Front cover, frontispiece, p. 27 and p. 65.
*1878 Monkey versus Man: a case hitherto not reported. By Trebla Revorg (Albert Grover, a writer of textbooks, the pseudonym is his name spelled backwards). Illustrated by Mug. London: Arthur H. Moxon, vi, 116pp. Darwin as a monkey with a very short tail with Dr. Kenealy.
The second in the series of Moxon's Illustrated Library. The projected third was The groves of the churchyard by 'Belart Grover' also Illustrated by Mug. It seems never to have been published. The judge is an ape to hear "If man was an ape, or ape was a man?", p. 2. There is a jury of apes and monkeys. A sample of the satirical verses:
I mean no offence, you know it, kind sir,
When, in words that are few, truth I aver.
That you were monkey is more than I know,
More than I wish, or attempt, now to show;
Or that from the spawn of a toad you sprung-
Some cycles ago, when Earth was but young, [...]
There's wisdom in what these sages avow,
And, if they can once, but prove what they hold,
The truth, for themselves, is best soonest told :
"Man came from monkey:" monkey his mother,
Monkey his father, uncle, and brother,
Monkey his aunt, his sister, no other,
And monkeys the lot, we can but agree,
The whole human race is naught but monkey.
The person making the claim is called Monboddo, not Darwin. (Lord Monboddo (1714-1799) had notoriously claimed that humans came from monkeys.) Darwin's head in the main caricature of him appears to be based on the Elliott & Fry 1874 photographs. The book is now in Google Books here.
The Tichborne case was notorious in the 1860s and 1870s. A man known as either Thomas Castro or Arthur Orton (1834-1898) claimed to be the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy. He became widely known as 'the claimant'. He was convicted of perjury and went to prison. His counsel Edward Kenealy was disbarred because of his conduct in the trial. He continued to lobby for the claimant for several years.
These previously unknown caricatures of Darwin were found via this description in The Bookseller: A Newspaper of British and Foreign Literature (3 May 1878), p. 399:
"With burlesque portraits on the cover of Mr. Darwin and Dr. Kenealy, and the Monkey and the Man; and with figures inside more or less resembling the Claimant, the Lord Chief Justice, Earl Beaconsfield, and others we have here a laughable skit, in verse, on the argument of man's original place in the world. Mr. Albert Grover, with the assistance of his friend 'Mug,' also introduces various other topics, together with a few songs, quite up to the average of what are known as Society verses."
With many thanks to David Clifford for photographing these.
|
|
Edward Kenealy |
The Claimant caricatured in Vanity Fair, June 1871. |
(The Royal Collection Trust)
c.1875-1880 Watercolour caricature of Darwin standing, lecturing with a scroll entitled "SPECIES" in his back pocket. Darwin's shadow creates the silhouette of a monkey on the wall. The caricature is titled "Science- Proffr Darwin" and signed by Frederick Sem (c.1835-1881). (25.4x18cm). (The Royal Collection Trust. RCIN 928408). With thanks to Alice de Quidt, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings, The Royal Collection.
Sem produced a series of 26 caricatures of politicians and other celebrities, including Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin. Tennyson's caricature, for example, casts a shadow of a lyre, the symbol of a poet. These were apparently not published. The art critic John Ruskin, on the opposite page of the album to Darwin, skewers an artist and painting with his quill. These became part of an album belonging to Queen Alexandra (1844-1925). As a Danish princess, she married Queen Victoria's heir, Edward, in 1863. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
(Royal Horticultural Society, Lindley Library LIB0006240)
1870s? Graphite and watercolour sketch of Darwin seated in a chair pointing at a manuscript by an unknown artist. Royal Horticultural Society, Lindley Library, LIB0006240. The table and chair legs are certainly clearer than Darwin's here.
1870s? Anonymous etching. Source unidentified. Described as 'Simian, savage and savant' in the Darwin Archive catalogue. Darwin with an ape-man (shedding his skin/fur) pointing to a shouting ape. See Diana Donald's entry on this here. Such a sequence of three figures with an ape at one extreme is a genre of its own and appears in other evolution caricatures that do not contain Darwin, see Caricatures of Evolution. It is reminiscent of the 'man monk monkey' illustration in Monachologia, or, handbook of the natural history of monks, 1852.
1870s? Darwin as the figure at the end of a circular evolutionary sequence starting from an oyster to a sea star, leading to fish (a flying fish leaves the water and becomes a waterfowl), an amphibian, a chameleon, a primate, a monkey, an ape and finally to Darwin who is holding an oyster shell near the start of the sequence. Each creature holds the 'tail' of the creature in front of it, and from the fish onwards they hold the tail of the next animal in their mouth. The primate however has broken off the tail of the monkey so that the ape following it has no tail. Source unidentified. (Reminiscent of "Man is but a worm" Punch, 1881.)
Appeared as frontispiece to David Lack, Evolution theory and Christian belief: the unresolved conflict. London 1957, with the note: "This drawing, without title, signature or date, but presumably Victorian, is in the Department of Zoology, Leicester." I am very grateful to Stuart Desjardins of the School of Biological Sciences, University of Leicester, who made extensive enquires also Muriel Paterson (via John Bailey) but the drawing can no longer be traced.
*1880 "HOBSON'S CHOICE RECEPTION. | A FAMILY PARTY." The Entr'acte and Limelight: Theatrical and Musical Critic and Advertiser (4 September): 9.
The sign above the caged orangutan reads: "OURANG | THE OLD WOMAN OF THE WOOD". By Alfred Bryan (Charles William Grineau (1852-1899)). This one penny weekly magazine of theatre criticism, news and caricature was established in 1869. Entr'acte is a pause between acts in a play.
The joke here is Darwin introducing politicians to their "family"- apes. Hobson's choice means no choice. The figure on the right is Charles Bradlaugh, the hugely controversial atheist and liberal Member of Parliament repeatedly prevented from taking his seat because he was not could not take the oath which was traditionally sworn on a Bible. The persecution of Bradlaugh and his attempts to take his seat is a long story. But by the time this caricature was published, Bradlaugh had finally taken his seat in the House of Commons. Perhaps the cartoonist is suggesting that Bradlaugh and the more conservative parliamentarians who had so opposed him were all a lot of ape descendants and so none really any better than the rest (hence the reference to Hobson's choice). The other politician with the pointy noise has a document in his pocket "BIGGER" with an inverted 'G' and 'R' which awaits decipherment.
Bryan drew a very similar caricature of Darwin in an unidentified publication (next entry). See Richard Scully 'Alfred Bryan (1852-1899): A Short Biography' With thanks to Dr Richard Scully. Bryan also drew for Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News.
c.1880 "NATURAL HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF." Darwin with long beard and a tail protruding from under his coat. Signed "A.B." Publication unidentified.
Diana Donald identified the artist as "Alfred Bryan, who worked as an illustrator and cartoonist in London from the mid-1870s to his death in 1899, employed by Entr'acte, Judy and many other publications." See her entry on this caricature here.
1870s? Mirrored silhouettes of Darwin as a monkey with quill pen in his ear and looking in a hand mirror. Only known copy in CUL-DAR225.180 with a note on the envelope that contained it: "A contemporary silhouette of C. Darwin | [in another hand:] Possibly by Albert Bryan. Obtained by E. Kensley [a dealer] among a collection of the period. GL Keynes Dec. 1937." Geoffrey Keynes married Darwin's granddaughter, Margaret Elizabeth Darwin, in 1917. (Darwin: A Companion, 2021.) See E. Kensley above in the entry for "With Compliments of the Season". The image is reminiscent of the Figaro caricatures by Marie Duval and Faustin. This has appeared on the cover of T. Junker and M. Richmond, Charles Darwins Briefwechsel mit deutschen Naturforscher, 1996. Diana Donald noticed that the mirror images are not exactly the same, as they would be if a stencil was used. See her entry on this item here.
*[1881] Saru no Saiban: Yusho Reppai. Tokyo: Nishimura Tomijiro, Fukuda Eizo. (Judgement of a monkey)
Japanese translation of [William Penman Lyon, 1871.] Homo versus Darwin: a judicial examination of statements recently published by Mr. Darwin regarding "The descent of man". London: Hamilton. (Darwin had a copy of the book in his library PDF link / link.)
This Japanese translation was erroneously attributed to Darwin's friend and supporter, American botanist Asa Gray 'Eisa Gurei'. This was the first rejection of Darwin's theory of evolution in Japanese. It was banned a year later for 'corrupting public morals' according to rare book catalogues. The bearded, bespectacled Westerner caricatured as a monkey on the cover is apparently meant to be Darwin. There is a copy of the book online here. With thanks to Greg Clancey regarding the title translation.
*[c.1880] Chromolithographed cover art for American children's book author Olive Thorne Miller's, Queer pets at Marcy's. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Illustrations by J. C. Beard. The monkey with a beard looks like a caricature of Darwin, although he is not mentioned in the book. This is a printer's proof which has appeared in the collectables trade. This is not the cover of the first edition so may have been done by another illustrator.
1881 "PUNCH'S FANCY PORTRAITS.—No. 54. | CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN, LL.D., F.R.S." By Linley Sambourne. Punch 81 (22 October): 190.
"PUNCH'S FANCY PORTRAITS.—No. 54. | CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN, LL.D., F.R.S. | IN HIS DESCENT OF MAN HE BROUGHT HIS OWN SPECIES DOWN AS LOW AS POSSIBLE—I.E., TO 'A HAIRY QUADRUPED FURNISHED WITH A TAIL AND POINTED EARS, AND PROBABLY ARBOREAL IN ITS HABITS'—WHICH IS A REASON FOR THE VERY GENERAL INTEREST IN A 'FAMILY TREE.' HE HAS LATELY BEEN TURNING HIS ATTENTION TO THE 'POLITIC WORM.'"
Darwin contemplates an earthworm in the shape of a question mark. There are fish hooks on the ground and a box of "worms for bait" and the spine of a book "diet of worms". The caption quotes from Descent, vol. 2, p. 389: "We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World."
This caricature is, of course, a reference to Darwin's last book, Earthworms which appeared just twelve days earlier.
Darwin was told by family friend W. R. Shedden-Ralston in a letter on 18 October 1881: "You will figure tomorrow in Punch. The artist, Linley Sambourne, begs me to express to you his feelings of deep respect. And he will send you a proof". (Correspondence, vol. 29, p. 470) This is now in CUL-DAR251.1823.
There is an anonymous poem below the caricature: "The Worm Turns." The title is a reference to the traditional expression 'Even a worm will turn' meaning the most humble creature will strike back if pushed too far. The anonymous poem is attributed to Henry Savile Clarke in the Punch archives ledger.
THE WORM TURNS.
I've despised you, old Worm, for I think you'll admit
That you never were beautiful even in youth;
I've impaled you on hooks, and not felt it a bit;
But all's changed now that DARWIN has told us the truth
Of your diligent life, and endowed you with fame—
You begin to inspire me with kindly regard:
I have friends of my own, clever Worm, I could name,
Who have ne'er in their lives been at work half so hard.
It appears that we owe you our acres of soil,
That the garden could never exist without you,
That from ages gone by you were patient in toil,
Till a DARWIN revealed all the good that you do.
Now you've turned with a vengeance, and all must confess
Your behaviour should make poor humanity squirm,
For there's many a man on this planet, I guess,
Who is not half so useful as you, Mister Worm!
Ironically, Darwin did mind impaling worms on fishhooks. As he recalled in his Autobiography: "I can say in my own favour that I was as a boy humane, but I owed this entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. … I had a strong taste for angling, and would sit for any number of hours on the bank of a river or pond watching the float; when at Maer I was told that I could kill the worms with salt and water, and from that day I never spitted a living worm, though at the expense, probably, of some loss of success." pp. 26-7.
This caricature is discussed in Jonathan Smith, Charles Darwin and Victorian visual culture, 2006, pp. 272-3. He notes that 'Diet of worms' is "a reference to the 1521 Diet at which Luther refused to recant, defying both the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and the Pope". The artist is making a pun as here fish will have a literal diet of worms. Smith saw Darwin as digging a grave, though the box of "worms for bait" and fish hooks indicate he is digging for fish bait. The dot of the 'question mark' may be the forbidden fruit of Adam and Eve? See Diana Donald's entry on this item here.
1881 "DAYS WITH CELEBRITIES. (19). | MR. DARWIN." By Alfred Bryan, engraved by Charles Hancock. Moonshine: Illustrated Journal of Wit, Humour and Satire 4 (29 October): 205.
This one penny weekly magazine edited by 'Arthur Clements' (journalist and dramatic critic Andrew Clement Baker) was published from 1879-1902. There are twelve caricatures of Darwin in here as part of a series on the daily lives of celebrities.
"Rises. 7 A M." | "Breakfasts. 8 A.M." apparently there is a worm in his breakfast fruit. | "Darwin on the worm" | "The early worms" shows him digging for worms with a spade. Wearing penz nez Darwin indicates a dandy as the "missing link". Darwin plays the piano with a plate of worms nearby "'Are they musical'?" | Darwin shakes hands with monkeys in a cage (at the zoo?). | A gorilla without caption reads a book with a grin. | Darwin looks at worms in a beer tankard through a magnifying glass "Are they teetotallers?" | Darwin and T. H. Huxley [not J. D. Hooker] "Dear old pals" | Darwin triumphantly presents an ape on the left "The raw material" to a modern gentleman smoking on the right "The finished article" [not Darwin].
The caricature also pokes fun at Darwin's Earthworms. Darwin's daily routine would later become well known through his son Francis's Reminiscences in Life and Letters, vol. 1, 108ff. See the original draft of these recollections (CUL-DAR140.3.1) transcribed by Robert Brown in Darwin Online.
This is in some ways the richest caricature of Darwin published in his lifetime but has remained strangely almost completely unknown. It was listed for sale in Darwin's Century: The Jeremy Norman Collection in 1992. Roger Kruger also kindly brought it to my attention. See Diana Donald's entry on this caricature here. T. H. Huxley was caricatured in the same series, as no. 100, on 19 May 1883:
See also the previously unknown 1895 caricature of Darwin in Moonshine below.
1881 "MAN IS BUT A WORM." By Linley Sambourne. Punch's Almanack for 1882 (6 December): [14].
This refers to Darwin's recently published book The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms or Earthworms for short, combined with the circular theme of evolving from a primitive creature to a Victorian gentleman combined with deep geological time. Darwin's name is not mentioned as readers were expected to recognise him. There is a copy is in CUL-DAR225.183. The whole issue is available in Internet Archive here.
Jonathan Smith, Charles Darwin and Victorian visual culture, 2006, pp. 272-5, noted that the "caricature alludes to Job 25:6 in its title, making literal the Biblical text's metaphorical statement of human insignificance and unworthiness…The Biblical creation story is represented in evolutionary terms, with the worm that slithers out of the word 'Chaos' at the lower left spiralling through a series of life forms that leads to apes, primitive humans, and finally to a Victorian gentleman, who doffs his hat to a God-like Darwin seated on a throne."
Another historian of science described Darwin here as sitting in God's chair. Darwin is more likely represented as Father Time. Darwin sits in the middle of a large dial or clock face labelled "TIME'S METER". The smaller inset dial next to his head reads "SANDS OF CENTURIES". An inset dial lower down reads "MILLIONS OF [years]". Often depicted with a scythe, Father Time was frequently depicted with clock faces and hour glasses. The Biblical creation story is not represented here but rather a humorous caricature of an evolutionary story from chaos to Victorian gentleman starting with a humble earthworm and once again tracing a circular metamorphoses- all familiar and very old themes. See Diana Donald's entry on this here. The cover of this almanack:
(Left Bridgeman Images Right Wellcome Collection.)
1881 "Die Abstammung des Menschen | Carl Simon | Verlagshandlung | Berlin W. | 58, Friedrichstrasse." ('The Descent of Man')
Darwin grins at the viewer as a small ape, with almost identical facial features and beard, grins at Darwin while sitting on copies of Darwin's books in English and German. Lithograph by German-born wine merchant and artist Franz Goedecker (c.1840-1884) , who drew for Vanity Fair as 'Goe'. Published by Carl Simon, Berlin (copy in Royal Library of Denmark). Advertised as 'Franz Goedecker's Karricaturen'. It is listed under portrait-caricatures of the Carl Simon music publisher of Berlin in Adolph Russell, Gesamt-Verlags-Katalogue des Deutschen Buchandels, 1881, p. 2299: "Darwin, Charles Rob. Porträtvergleich. m. e. Affen. (5)" Lichtdr. Kab. At 75Pf. (Darwin portrait comparison with an ape.) Darwin's was number 5 in the series. G.-H. Lewes was no. 4 and Richard Owen was no. 5.
In the original, the monkey shows a copy of a book "EARTH WORMS" and sits on "ORIGIN OF SPECIES" on top of "ERDENWUERMER" ('Earthworms' in German) and on the floor a copy of "THE DESCENI OF MAN". Note that either Goedecker or the engraver used a capital "I' rather than a 'T'. In a print from the UK (above right) this is corrected, but the title of ERDENWEURMER is now misspelled as "ERDENWHERMER". See Diana Donald's entry on this here. Entirely redrawn version in Morgen-Post (3 March 1885), cover, but credited in the text as taken from Goedecker's original. (see below)
[c.1882] "With Compliments of the Season". Watercolour caricature of Darwin in tails walking on all fours like an ape, in CUL-DAR225.179, c.5.6x5.6cm. There is an undeciphered monogram in the lower left corner. It may be painted over an underlying "EM". The mount is printed recto and verso with "Harding, 157 Piccadilly W". A London printer whose form of address appeared in this form in publications from 1882-1883. Written on verso: "From E. Kensley Aug 1939", i.e. it was acquired by Geoffrey Keynes who had married Darwin's granddaughter (the daughter of George Darwin) Margaret Elizabeth Darwin in 1917. See E. Kensley above. It is possible, of course, that the mount is not contemporary with the caricature. This may have been the original for a proposed lithographed Xmas card. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
1882 "REASON AGAINST UNREASON." Puck (New York) 11, no. 261, (8 March). Chromolithograph by Joseph Ferdinand Keppler (1838-1894).
"REASON AGAINST UNREASON." The "LIGHT OF REASON" streaming down from the sky containing many thinkers admired by secularists and the anti-religious (Huxley, Tyndall, Haeckel, Voltaire, Spinoza, Franklin, Jefferson, Paine, Kant and Kepler) with Darwin foremost, on a beam of sunlight. Cowering behind an umbrella marked "bigotry | supernaturalism | fanaticism" diverse religious figures.
Puck was first published in 1871-1872 and re-established in 1876 in St. Louis, Missouri by Austrian-born caricaturist Joseph Keppler as a German-language weekly comic magazine illustrated with a sumptuous three-colour lithographs rather than the usual one- on the front and back covers and a centrefold. Named after the mischievous fairy in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck was the comic mascot of the magazine just as Mr. Punch was for Punch. From 1877 it was also published in English. The caption of this caricature in the German version was "Vernunft gegen Unvernunft." The editor was Henry Cuyler Bunner. It sold 80,000 copies a week in the 1880s. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s Darwin was frequently mentioned with reverence in Puck, though there was room for humour too. The Puck caricatures which include Darwin are all anti-superstition and anti-established religions. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
1882 "THE LATE CHARLES DARWIN." The Wasp (San Francisco) 8, no. 300 (28 April): front cover.
Chromolithograph, after George Frederick Keller, portrait (a very poor likeness) of the recently deceased Darwin held by two orangutans (one may be a chimpanzee) with a veil. The Wasp was an American weekly satirical magazine based in San Francisco, published 1876-1941. Darwin was not often mentioned in The Wasp from the 1870s-1890s apart from reprinting jokes from other magazines or newspapers.
See Diana Donald's entry on this here. She notes "However, while Puck treated Darwin as a hero, The Wasp was invariably hostile, despite the admiration that its leading journalist, Ambrose Bierce, expressed for Darwin's intellectual achievements....Darwin's supposedly intimate connections with humans' simian relatives had been repeatedly pictured in cartoons ever since the early 1870s, but it is surprising to find an image of this kind at a time when his death and funeral prompted tributes and expressions of sorrow from across the world. A fortnight after the publication of the cartoon, The Wasp's editor noted laconically, 'Darwin and the link are both missing', and in the same issue he told an angry letter-writer, 'There was of course no element of 'ridicule' in our portrait of the illustrious Darwin. We are surprised that your three friends thought the picture in bad taste, when but one of them was a journalist. Perhaps, though, the others were lunatics.'"
In earlier issues one reads: "The Wasp's artist is not quite a follower of the Darwinian theory". (2 December 1876, p. 2) and in an article the following year 'Man and his relatives: How Darwin and others put it' the magazine was non-committal on human evolution. (17 March 1877. p. 337)
*1882 "Darwin." Die Bombe (Vienna) 12 (30 April): cover [p. 141].
Drawn by 'Laci' László Frecskay, the same artist as the other Bombe cover, on the occasion of Darwin's death. Around the portrait of Darwin are two metamorphosing sequences of men- one Mr. Tauner becomes a "most innocent" shining oil lamp and the other, Dr Rewald, an owl "the symbol of wisdom". This is a reference to the investigations into the devastating fire in the Ringtheatre in Vienna the previous year that resulted in the deaths of 384 people.
This satirical magazine first appeared in January 1871 and ran until 1923. The proprietors wanted to call it "Der Bismarck" but this was too problematic so they settled for a new title. It appeared every Sunday for 10 kroners. Like many other magazines in Austria at the time, it sometimes carried anti-Semitic cartoons. The accompanying text on p. 142 reads:
"Darwin.
(Zum Titelbilde.)
Die Lehren eines grossen Geistes gelten für alle Zukunft und für all Fälle. So wenig man im ersten Momente auch geneigt sein kann, an einen Zusammenhang der Darwin'schen Abstammungstheorie mit dem Ringtheaterprocesse zu denken, so wird man nach einem Blicke auf die Titelseite dieses Blattes dennoch das Bestehen eines solchen Gönners zugeben müssen. Trosterfüllt sehen wir da, frei nach Darwin ausgeführt, wie aus Herrn Tauner noch die unschuldvollste Oellampe oder aus Herrn Dr. Newald das Symbol der Weisheit und der Gerechtigkeit werden kann.
Unser Zeichner hätte auch zeigen können, wie sich ein Polizeipräsident zu einem blauen Bogen metamorphosirt, aber er hata es leider unterlassen."
(Darwin. | (For the cover illustration.) | The teachings of a great spirit apply to all and future cases. As little as one may be inclined at first to think of a connection between Darwin's theory of descent and the Ringtheater trial, after a look at the front page of this paper one will have to admit the existence of such a benefactor. With consolation we see, loosely based on Darwin, how Mr. Tauner turns into the most innocent oil lamp or how Dr. Newald can become the symbol of wisdom and justice.
Our artist could also have shown how a police chief metamorphoses into a blue bow, but unfortunately he left that out.)
"Charles Darwin todt? Nein — fügt nicht so verwegen,
|
(Charles Darwin dead? No - don't say so boldly, Dead is a word that doesn't fit this man, Who only lost in the struggle for existence, As the conditions of being are grasped; Charles Darwin lives and will and will not die so long as, As a species from species, children inherit from parents! What Kant, Lamark and Goethe did before He has brought the truth fully to light, The plasmas that that made the primordial soup grow, Made ancestors of our glory. The creation fairy tales and the bigwig's teachings Devoured tiny monothers. Yes, when considering the miraculous forms The living world continually recedes, Has he achieved it: the production of forms, The germ of becoming is laid bare to the eye And surrounded by blind delusional weapons The world created from a cell in turn! The advantage of birth is broken, Once this cell nucleus has matured, The world will smile in diversity The sprout of a worm reaches for the beam, The descent from the same terebratels From now on, be unable to ennoble man before man! The struggle for existence must be fought by those who lead it, From now on they must be brothers in battle, The nobles can choose for better selection The noble thing again only for itself, And if through discipline humanity became divine, Due to Charles Darwin be of the Order of the Redeemer!) |
(Yale University Library)
1882 "A SUN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY." Puck (New York) 11, no. 269 (3 May): [146]/back cover.
Chromolithograph by Friedrich Graetz. Darwin as a shining sun, dispelling the clouds of religion and superstition. On 26 April Puck ran a paragraph of praise for the recently deceased Darwin; perhaps the artwork was already prepared for that issue as none on Darwin appeared there. The full back cover was however given over to Darwin in the following issue here. The front cover illustration is a caricature of the American lawyer and agitator for free thought and agnosticism and against religion, Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899)- lecturing like a showman against a puppet of the prominent Presbyterian preacher, the Rev. Thomas de Witt Talmage for money (the audience in the caricature have coins for heads). The opening article on p. 132 is more of an attack on the purported vulgar second-rate attacks of Ingersoll against religion than it is praise for Darwin, who is described as the opposite of Ingersoll by not preaching against religion but by promulgating the scientific truths he had discovered. There are copies in CUL-DAR215.35d and CUL-DAR216.54. See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
1882 "El homenage a Darwin en el Teatro Nacional". El Mosquito (Argentina), 19 (21 May), front page.
"El homenage a Darwin en el Teatro Nacional | A quien se podia haber elejido mejor para demostrar con que razon ha deho el ilustre naturalista que el hombre desiende del mono?" ('Who could have been better chosen to demonstrate with what reason did the illustrious naturalist say that man descended from the ape?') El Mosquito was a political satirical magazine that appeared weekly from 1863-1893.
Lithographed cartoon of imaginary(?) bust of Darwin to poke fun at Domingo Faustino Sarmiento by Henry Stein(?). See Diana Donald's entry on this item here.
1883 "OUR NATIONAL CHURCH | THE ÆGIS OF LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY. | A house divided against itself—?-Mat. xi., 25." Chromolithograph by Francis Carruthers Gould. Signed "ION" (George Jacob Holyoake, the radical secularist who commissioned the print). Manchester & London: John Heywood. Different types cost 6d to 1s. (46x56cm)
"This Cartoon claims to be an accurate bird's-eye view of the relations of the National Church and its Parties, with outside Sects, Heresies and Schools of Thought to each other." The text can be read in this higher resolution copy: Image
A bust of the recently deceased Darwin stands on the summit of a hill at top left. A monkey bearing a flag marked "DARWINISM" saying "This way to daylight my sons!" leads Huxley "Why missing link?", Tyndall "Why indeed! Thereby hangs a tail!" and Spencer up the stairs (named after geological epochs) towards "Protoplasm ?" and the rising sun, seemingly referring to enlightenment and the origin of life. Their group was defined on the print as "Agnosticism". The American abolitionist clergyman Moncure Conway who became so liberal he left theism behind, is gesturing towards the same hill. He had met Darwin and recounted his experience in his autobiography in 1905. Text There is a Darwin family copy in CUL-DAR141.11.
The version priced 6d was split into 15 parts and glued on cloth backing that allowed the print to be folded into quarter size in black buckram book covers with the title "National Church." embossed on the cover in gold. One in the collection of Angus Carroll has contemporary bookplates "Rev. Richard Covey, M.A." and "Rev. W.W. Covey Crump". See Janet Browne, Power of place, 2002, pp. 380-1 and Diana Donald's entry on this here.
1883 "THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH OF THE FUTURE—FROM THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK." Puck (New York) (10 January). Chromolithograph by Joseph Ferdinand Keppler.
The universal church is represented as combining knowledge of science with major world religions. Most of the symbolic elements refer to science however. The figure giving a sermon on the world is directly under a large portrait of "CHas. R. DARWIN." There are also portraits of Copernicus, Spinoza and Thomas Paine. Diana Donald quotes from the editor of Puck, writing ten years later "The times change and we change with them. When this cartoon was designed, the popular theological fad was the harmonization of science and religion". See Diana Donald's entry on this caricature here.
(Bibliothèque nationale de France)
*1884 "MÉMOIRES D'OUTRE-TOMBE." By 'Lilio' Achille Lemot (1846-1909). Le Triboulet (20 January): 9.
"Où feu Darwin s'est servi d'uin exemple frappant pour prouver que l'homme (le républicain) descendait zu singe." ('Memoirs from Beyond the Grave | Where the late Darwin used a striking example to prove that man (the republican) descended from apes.') Darwin holds a scroll showing the President of France Jules Grévy (1807-1891) descending from a series of six increasingly similar apes. With thanks to Guillaume Doizy for information about the magazine.
(University of Florida Digital Collections)
*1884 "EVOLUTION EXTRAORDINARY." Fun (17 September): 129.
"EVOLUTION EXTRAORDINARY. | The latest think in educational news is the College of Monkeys in London. Half-a-dozen 'evolutionists' are attempting to teach monkeys to talk or express their wants. The monkey is at first taught to select some simple word, as 'pie,' and when he picks out the letters and forms the word, he is given a piece of pie.'—American Paper." By D. MacEcan. A framed portrait labelled "DARWIN" is on the wall. One American paper that reported this story (not invented for this cartoon) was the Cincinnati Inquirer. It was widely reprinted. See below:
(Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)
*1885 "Charles Darwin. | Die Abstammung des Menschen." (Charles Darwin. The Descent of Man) Re-drawing of Goedecker 1881 caricature (see above) signed "C Ohnesorg 85" ('without worry'). Morgen-Post (Vienna) 25, no. 61 (3 March): 1. A daily Viennese family newspaper which ran from 1854-1886. The accompanying text is on p. 3:
"Charles Darwin.
(Siehe unser heutiges Titelbild.)
Dem Maler F. Goedecker in London, dessen humorvolle Carricatur Hans Richter's wir kürzlich unseren Lesern vorgeführt haben, verdanken wir auch die geistreiche Carricatur Darwin's, welche zu, einer Serie derartiger Producte des Witzes gehört, die von Carl Simon in Berlin publicirt worden sind. Goedecker's Stift hat mit Humor uud Schärfe den Urheber der Descendenz-theorie als seinen eigenen affenähnlichen Ahnen dargestellt und damit den Punkt getroffen, wegen dessen die Frommen des Landes den großen Naturforscher am meisten anzufeinden pflegten. Darwin selbst hat an dieser Carricatur, die schon vor Jahren entstanden ist, seinen Spaß gehabt, und auch unsere Leser werden mit Vergnügen das Bild betrachten, welches die Züge des berühmten Gelehrten treu vergegenwärtigt."
(To the painter F. Goedecker in London, whose humorous caricature of Hans Richter we recently presented to our readers, we also owe the witty caricature of Darwin, which belongs to a series of such humorous products published by Carl Simon in Berlin. With humor and sharpness, Goedecker's pen portrayed the originator of the descent theory as his own ape-like ancestor and thus hit the point for which the pious people of the country used to be most hostile to the great natural scientist. Darwin himself had fun with this caricature, which was created years ago, and our readers will also enjoy looking at the picture, which faithfully represents the features of the famous scholar.)
(Library of Congress)
1885 "SHEOL." Puck (New York) 17, no. 429, (27 May): [200-201]. Chromolithograph by Joseph Ferdinand Keppler.
"'SHEOL.' | According to the New Version of the Old Testament, Many Respectable People who have been writhing in the Old-Fashioned Hell will have to be Transferred to the Pleasant Watering-Place known as 'Sheol.' This is Puck's notion of the Evolution of Hell to Sheol". A sign reads "This business is removed to Sheol, opposite."
Darwin as one of many respectable non-Christian figures moved from the old hell. Other figures Heinrich Heine, Goethe, Galileo, John Stuart Mill, Rousseau, George Sand, Fanny Elssler, Voltaire, Frederick the Great, Socrates, Jacques Offenbach (eating pork), Hypatia of Alexandria and Charon ferries them over the river.
The accompanying text on p. 194 makes it clear that this is about how a recent revision of the English translation of the Old Testament replaced the word "hell" with the Hebrew word "sheol". It thus could appear that the traditional idea of hell as a place of cruel punishment had been replaced with a milder afterlife destination for those who had previously been considered damned, which the writer says "the story of Christ's life and the gospel of modern science alike teach us the sin of believing in a hell." See Diana Donald's entry on this caricature here.
(Yale University Library)
1885 "THE OLD ATTEMPT." Puck (New York) 17, no. 430 (3 June): [224]/back cover. Chromolithograph by Eugene Zimmerman.
"THE OLD ATTEMPT. | Mr. Beecher is Trying to Bridge the Chasm between Old Orthodoxy and Science with his Little Series 'Evolution Sermons.' We Wish Him Luck; but We Don't Feel Hopeful." Other figures beside Darwin (the predominant figure in foreground) as giant busts carved into a mountainside are Spinoza, Copernicus, Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall and Haeckel. Thus the illuminated side of the chasm is science. Nameless religious leaders make up the dark (religion) side of the chasm which Beecher seeks to bridge.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), the younger brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, was an abolitionist and advocate for women's suffrage and long-time pastor of the Congregationalist Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. Accepting Darwin's evolutionary perspective in the 1880s, from May to June 1885 he gave a series of eight widely-reported sermons on evolution and religion. Published later that year as: Evolution and religion. Part I, Eight sermons, discussing the bearings of the evolutionary philosophy on the fundamental doctrines of evangelical Christianity. The Puck caricature is accompanied by the following paragraph on p. 210:
"The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher has come nobly to the front to try to give us something like a decent, respectable, clean sensation; but we grieve to say that we feard his praiseworthy attempt will prove futile. The trouble with his sensation is that it is very old sensation. Bless our poor old theology racked soul! how many an excellent minister of the Gospel have we seen march smilingly up to do this very same act. And the act remains undone, and the circle is yet un-squared, and the old orthodoxy and the new science are just as much at variance as they ever were. The successful performance of the feat may be reserved for Mr. Beecher; but we don't believe it. It will take something more than a plank from Plymouth Church platform to bridge the chasm between Darwin and the first chapter of Genesis."
Another squib on p. 247 also refers to Darwin and Beecher. See an article about this by William B. Ashworth, Jr. at the Linda Hall Library.
*1889 Lithographed portrait by Jan Vilímek (1860-1938). Humoristické Listy 31(46) (15 November): front cover. (National Library of the Czech Republic)
Humoristické Listy (Humorous sheets) was a weekly Czech satirical and nationalist magazine published from 1858-1941. Although on the cover of a satirical magazine, this is not strictly a caricature. This was based on the popular photograph of Darwin Lock & Whitfield 1878a. The magazine was publishing a series of cover portraits of famous persons. The accompanying text is on p. 414 (below). The writer suggested that in the Middle Ages Darwin would have been burnt at the stake for his ideas. The controversy over his doctrines had some of the greatest names in the world on either side and raged for two decades but has since been settled in favour of Darwin.
1890 Darwin hands a copy of Origin of species to a bespectacled man dressed as an ancient Egyptian. The 'Pharaoh' holds a document labelled "races of man" behind his back, with a chimpanzee and ibis in foreground. Publication untraced. (Getty Images)
*1883-1890s? "DARWINISM." Signed "C.E". Caricature of Darwin in woodcut-style as organ grinder with monkey in the background on a playing card by Multum In Parvo. Printed by H & A Mullord, London. Two colour variants seen, red and brown.
*1891 "SOCIETY'S IDOL, 1841. | SOCIETY'S IDOL, 1891." Truth Christmas Number (25 December):
Truth was a London weekly journal founded by Liberal politician and publisher Henry Labouchere (1831-1912) in 1877. Truth was known for exposing corruption and fraud. In this two-page spread caricature the virtues of Queen Victoria's early reign fifty years before are characterised by great thinkers like Tennyson, Darwin and Huxley (the later two indicated here with the word "SCIENCE") contrasted with the low and base interests of the present age with a wastrel like the Prince of Wales and his supposed decadent interests. Darwin's presence in this was cited in Jerold Savory, Patricia Marks, The Smiling Muse: Victoriana in the Comic Press, 1985.
1893 "DARWINISM. | Precocious Child (in front of Darwin's Statue at the Natural History Museum). And is this a fossil monkey, ma?" Larks 1, no. 25 (16 October): 197. This is perhaps not technically a caricature of Darwin since the statue is realistically depicted without humorous exaggeration or changes but it is a satirical cartoon with Darwin in it. See Diana Donald's entry on this here. See also: Anon. 1885. Unveiling the statue of the late Charles Darwin in the Natural History Museum, South Kensington. The Graphic (20 June): 621-22. A542
(British Library)
*1895 "DISCOVERY OF THE MISSING LINK." By 'HM'. Moonshine (19 January): 34. Inspired by the discovery of the famous 'Java Man' (Pithecanthropus erectus, today Homo erectus) fossils by Eugène Dubois.
"('M. DUBOIS, OF THE BRUSSELS MUSEUM, HAS RECEIVED THE TOP OF A SKULL AND A 'FEMUR OF AN ANTHROPOID CHARACTER' FROM A COLLECTOR IN JAVA, AND AFTER EXAMINING THEM HAS COME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT THEY ARE THE CRANIUM AND THIGH-BONE OF SOME CREATURE BETWEEN THE HUMAN AND SIMIAN SPECIES.'—Daily Paper.)"
The reconstructed bearded "Missing Link" is none other than Charles Darwin. Readers would instantly recognise the caricatured face coupled with the frequent coupling of Darwin with jokes about missing links. Moonshine was a weekly satirical magazine (published 1879-1902) which by the 1890s was becoming more conservative in its politics. See the 1881 caricatures of Darwin in Moonshine above.
*1899 "D's for Diogenes, Darwin and Dante, | Who delight in the dance | Of a Darling | Bacchhante." Oliver Herford, An alphabet of celebrities. Boston: Small, Maybard & Co. (National Library of Congress) Oliver Herford (1860-1935) was an Anglo-American writer and illustrator who published many humorous works. Each page put together different famous figures whose name began with the same letter, as with Thomas Edison and Eve (as in Adam & Eve).
*1900 "THE ROLL OF FAME 1800—1900." By Linley Sambourne (signed 1899). Punch's Almanack for 1900. foldout 44x57cm, and foldout key plan 27.5x44cm.
Mr Punch and his dog Toby stand atop a pile of inventions of the 19th century including a post pox, bicycle, typewriter, undersea telegraph cable and gas lighting. Near the top right corner, a kneeling Darwin holds a skull under a magnifying glass for Huxley to view while Tyndall and Richard Owen look on. This refers to the discovery of man's origins. Herschel, Faraday, and Brunel also feature.
*1901 Arthur Young, Through hell with Hiprah Hunt: A series of pictures and notes of travel illustrating the adventures of a modern Dante in the infernal regions. New York: Zimmerman's. With thanks to Gordon Chancellor for bringing this wood engraving to my attention. See the 1922 caricature of Darwin by Young below.
*1901 "THE MISSING LINK. | CHARLES DARWIN AUTHOR OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. | CONGO, THE AFRICAN CANNIBAL. | JOE, THE FAMOUS ORANG-OUTANG." U.S. Patent Office trademarks registration for cigars and cigarettes label by Joseph S. Edwards. 26x39cm (Library of Congress). This was published in The Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office 100 (September 1902), p. 2769: "The pictorial representation of Charles Darwin; Congo, the African cannibal, and Joe, the famous orang-outang, seated in chairs, appropriately costumed and smoking cigars. ...Used since September 15, 1901." Patent 38,925.
*1903 "Mommsen im Himmel." (Mommsen in heaven) By Friedrich Graetz. Der Floh (Vienna) 45 (8 November): 8.
The great German historian and politician Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903) had died one week before this cartoon appeared. It portrays Mommsen arriving in heaven where St. Peter says he may speak German as here in heaven all things from Rome (i.e. the Catholic church) are not popular. Darwin is one of over 20 deceased famous men from recent and ancient European history, including Julius Caesar, Bismarck, Shakespeare, Moliere and Wagner already in heaven. The text gives imaginary conversations between Mommsen and the great thinkers. The Austrian cartoonist Friedrich Graetz (1842-1912) illustrated for the weekly satirical magazine Der Floh (The Flea, published 1869-1919) as well as Kikeriki (Cock-a-doodle-doo) and the American magazine Puck. Many of his cartoons were political in nature, like this one, dissatisfied with politicians.
Extract from the accompanying text: "Da sagte Darwin hätte ich diese Reden der Landtagsabgeordneten gekannt, dann hätte ich statt über die 'Entstehung der Arten' ein Buch über die 'Entstehung der Unarten' geschrieben.
Nietzsche meinte: Das Buch von den Untermenschen muss noch einer meiner Epigonen schreiben.
Mommsen aber sagte: Meine Herren! Wir haben diesen Erden-menschen viel zu viel Ehre angetan, daß wir uns mit ihnen beschäftigten."
(Darwin said that if I had known these speeches by the members of the state parliament, then I would have written a book about the 'Origin of the Naughty' instead of about the 'Origin of Species'.
Nietzsche said: One of my epigones still has to write the book about the subhumans.
But Mommsen said: Gentlemen! We have done with these people on earth far too much honour by busying ourselves with them...)
*1903 "Professor Darwin Doenutt Studies Infantile Expression." By Walter McDougall. Chicago Record-Herald (25 January). This is clearly not meant to represent Darwin in appearance but the references show a continuing awareness of Darwin's work on expression and possibly his famous paper 'A biographical sketch of an infant'. Mind. Text PDF. (San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection, The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum)
1904 "Great Prize Fight for the Championship of the World | Between G. Hovah, the Celestial Crusher, and | B L. Zebub, the Pet of Pandemonium." The Truth Seeker, (October): 5.
Darwin as referee has a scroll under his arm "origin of species" and notably, he is not named. His identity was obvious to readers. (South Place Ethical Society www.ethicalsoc.org.uk)
In 1904 the magazine was edited by the ironically named John William Gott. God and the devil were frequent characters. John Edwin McGee, A History of the British secular movement, 1948: "In 1894 the merchant, J.W. Gott, together with one John Grange and a man named Wakefield, launched at Bradford a Secularist journal called the Truth Seeker. Starting as a monthly publication, the paper later was issued at irregular intervals. The advocacy of Secularist principles and Freethought agitation both appeared in its pages. The Truth Seeker was a regional paper, serving primarily the district around Bradford. After a few years the Truth Seeker went out of existence apparently in 1905." See S. Paylor, Edward B. Aveling The people's Darwin. Endeavour, 2005. The newspaper Blue-Grass Blade [Lexington, Ky.], (3 January), p. 1, who wrote that the Truthseeker editor G. W. Foote was charged with blasphemy over this cartoon.
c.1906? "THE TOAST OF THE EVENING. | WISHING YOU AND YOURS A MERRY CHRISTMAS." Chromolithograph postcard highlighted with gold of monkeys at a table celebrating Christmas with unlabelled painting of Darwin on the wall.
*c.1908 "FIRST BABY. | DARWIN". An American lithographed advertisement card. Copies seen with an advert printed at the top: "Mullein Balsam will cure any Cough or Cold. H.S. Goodridge, Druggist, Cor. Monroe and Washington Sts., Lynn, Mass." and another with version printed: "J.H. Bunn's Old Established Wall Paper Store, Philadelphia." Four other cards from this series have been seen, each with a caricature of a celebrity as a baby, with titles "fat baby" (geologist James E. Talmage, 1862-1933), "man baby" (abolitionist Mary Walker, 1832-1919), "jumping baby" and "noisy baby" for a Davis and Bennett. All of the others are a human baby with the caricatured head of the person featured. Darwin is the only animal. 'First baby' means according to Darwin the first baby of our family tree looked like this.
1909 "Zu Darwins hunderstem Geburtstag." Simplicissimus (Munich) (15 February): 792.
"Zu Darwins hunderstem Geburtstag. | Professor Haeckel überbringt dem Juvilar einen heiligenschein ins Jenseits." (On Darwin's one hundredth birthday | Professor Haeckel presents him with a halo in the afterlife) Chromolithograph by Thomas Theodor Heine (1867-1948). Darwin with his arms around the shoulders of a chimpanzee and orangutan in a tree. His famous German admirer Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) reverently offers a halo. Haeckel is portrayed as worshiping his scientific 'saint'. Simplicimus was Germany's most prominent satirical magazine. It was decidely left-liberal in outlook and readership.
There is a black and white photograph of in CUL-DAR141; another copy is in CUL-DAR225.184 from the "Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin" (on verso). See Diana Donald's entry on this here.
1909 "Darwin | Probebild aus dem grossen historischen Gemäldecychlus 'Die Förderung der Wissenschaft durch den Ultramontanismus.'" (Sample picture from the large historical painting cycle 'The promotion of science through Ultramontanism.') By Arpad Schmidhammer. Jugend: Münchner illustrierte Wochenschrift für Kunst und Leben [Germany] 14, 1, no. 6, p. 141.
A priest throws ink or paint on the tall plinth of a bust of Darwin. Catholic priests are carrying copies of Descent of man and Origin of species and another a genealogical tree diagram showing species descended from the hands of a grinning ape. In the background an effigy of Darwin is apparently impaled and being burned. Ultramontanism was the name for a conservative movement within the Catholic Church which emphasised the power of the Pope and recent calls to reject modernism(s).
*1909 "Om Darwin lefde ar 2909… | Apornas hylining: | Charles Darwin, vetenskapens konung! Mottag af oss, quadrumaner, som evighets-apanage titeln hederschimpans." Fyren (Finland) 8(1) (19 February): front cover. (Kansalliskirjasto Nationalbiblioteket)
(If Darwin lived in 2909… | The Ape's Celebration: | Charles Darwin, King of Science! Receive from us primates the eternal title of Honorary Chimpanzee.) With thanks to Peter Kjaergaard for improving the translation.
With accompanying poem by poet and journalist Hjalmar F. E. Procopé (1868-1927). In 1909 the Darwin centenary celebrations were news around the world. Fyren (The Lighthouse in Swedish) was a satirical magazine published in Helsinki from 1898-1922. The accompanying poem:
The tribute of the monkeys. | (See the picture on the previous page.)
To the race of apes early you turned your kindred love. You babbled our baboon, you warmth ba-biologist.
To the darkness of myths you banished the story of Adam's family — we are all tertiary chimpanzees with the right skull.
But you have degenerated, so the lowest ape-poet hardly finds it worth singing your modest ludiness.
We still wear with honor our progenitor's stately endowment: our handsome tail — but In the search, your missing link is in vain.
We dart around in paradisiacal bliss on our primeval forest path. Lying in each other's arms in constant gorilla warfare.
But apart from all this, your theory speaks quite a lot, because much in humans seems hopelessly chimpanzee.
Hjalmar Procopé.)
*1909 "Die hundertjährigen Geburtstagskinder im Himmel. | Darwin: Lieber Gott, wir haben dich heute zum Protektor des Monistenbundes ernannt und hoffen, dass due annimmst und dich nich vom 'heiligen Vater' beeinflussen lässt." Signed 'E.' Der wahre Jakob: illustrierte Zeitschrift für Satire, Humor und Unterhaltung 26: 6143. (Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg)
(Dear, Lord, today we have named you protector of the federation of monists, and hope will accept and not be influenced by the 'holy father.') Other named historic figures of the 19th century take off their hats in respect (Struwelpeter Hoffman, Tennyson, Lincoln, Proudhon, Poe, Mendelssoh-Bartholdy, Chopin and Gladstone.)
Also printed in: Ulk: illustriertes Wochenblatt für Humor und Satire and Le Rire: journal humoristique N.S. (no. 309-360): n.p "LES CENTENAIRES (1809-1909) | DARWIN.—J'espère, Seigneur, que vous voudrez bien ne plus vous laisser influencer par le Saint-Père, ennemi des modernistes qui sont nos élèves!".
*1913 "FORCIBLE FEEDING." Hentschel colourtype by Stanger Pritchard. Truth (25 December).
John Bull being force-fed by Prime Minister Asquith and Lloyd George from a queue of people representing Britain's political and social problems: Emmeline Pankhurst ('Votes for Women'), Lord Mayo ('Home Rule'), Churchill ('Dreadnoughts'), Andrew Bonar Law ('Tariff Reform') and Kitchener ('Conscription'). Darwin bears a retort labelled, rather unfairly, "eugenics", but, curiously, is not in the queue with the others but looks out towards the viewer.
(National Library of Congress)
*1922 "THE SPIRIT OF CHARLES DARWIN DROPS IN FOR A CHAT". By Ellison Hoover. New-York Tribune (18 June): 6.
"THE SPIRIT OF CHARLES DARWIN DROPS IN FOR A CHAT | Following Closely Upon Conon Doyle's, His Visit Is Timely, Especially in View of Bryan's Recent Repudiation of the Descent of Man". Illustration caption: "Then he amused himself by actually passing through me. I could feel him coming out on the other side. A nice personality is Darwin's".
Darwin is portrayed as a cigar-smoking ghost passing through the body of reporter Thomas L. Masson. (Included in the Darwin iconography under 'Prints to 1982' in Darwin: A Companion, 2021) The article details an imaginary and humorous conversation with Darwin about the recent public denunciations of human evolution by William Jennings Bryan. Perhaps one of the most bizarre caricatures of Darwin up to that time.
(National Portrait Gallery)
[1920s?] "Charles Darwin | Some Victorian Men". Pen and ink drawing of Darwin in chair, legs crossed, stroking beard thoughtfully, 45.4x30.2cm. By Irish-born British artist Harry Furniss (1854-1925) who drew for the Illustrated London News and later Punch. It is unknown when this was drawn, it could have been before Darwin's death. Published in Furniss, Some Victorian men, 1924, facing p. 25. As the drawing has the title of the book on it, perhaps it was drawn in the 1920s as the style seems to suggest. This appeared on an Irish stamp in 1982 during the centenary year of Darwin's death, in Darwin stamps. See the detailed entry by Diana Donald on this item here.
*1922 "'Heaven for Climate—Hell for Company'—Mark Twain". By Arthur Young. The Labor Journal (Everett, Washington, USA) (4 August): 1.
This refers to the famous joke attributed to Mark Twain that he would prefer to go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company. A line of 11 nude figures followed by a long queue of hooded ones file past the devil in hell. Darwin and Voltaire are the only figures that look ahead and not at the viewer. The joke being that all the clever and innovative people are in hell and heaven is presumably for the dull and boring. See Young, Through hell with Hiprah Hunt: A series of pictures and notes of travel illustrating the adventures of a modern Dante in the infernal regions, 1901, which includes a very small caricature of Darwin also in hell (above).
1925 "DARWIN'S THEORY REVERSED" by John M. Baer. Labor [USA] (18 July).
Darwin lecturing with pointer at monkey to man images. "It took millions of years, Darwin claimed, to make a man out of a monkey". In other panel a "company 'union' boss" has a monkey (employee) sign a contract: "While a company union can make a monkey out of a man in a few minutes". Here Darwin is taken seriously and used to lampoon something else.
1925 "You can't make a silk purse out of a SOW'S EAR" By Major Leonard Darwin, D.G.D. Son of Charles Darwin. Drawing by Alfred J. Frueh. Collier's: The National Weekly [USA] (25 July): 10-11. Leonard Darwin (1850-1943) was President of the Eugenics Society. "If you want your daughter to be musical you should begin with her grandfather".
(Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg)
*1925 "Bryan und Darwin" By Herbert Anger. Lachen links: das republikanische Witzblatt (Germany) 31: 368. The spectre of William Jennings Bryan looming over Darwin (science) is not a flattering view of the USA as a law bans teaching of human evolution in public schools. The Germans are appalled. This was part of an entire issue of the magazine devoted to the Scopes Monkey Trial which the magazine likened to the return of the Middle Ages and the Inquisition. See the cover in Caricatures of evolution: Scopes Trial.
(Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg)
*1925 "Ein verzeihlicher Irrtum | Bryan ver der Himmelstür: 'Damned, der Darwin hier oben?!'" By Arthur Johnson (1874-1954). Kladderadatsch (Germany) 78(33) (August): front cover.
Kladderadatsch was a German satirical magazine that ran from 1848-1944. (A forgivable mistake | Bryan at the gates of heaven: 'Damn, Darwin is up here!?') William Jennings Bryan mistakes St. Peter for Charles Darwin. Bryan had famously prosecuted the John Scopes 'monkey trial' in Tennessee. He died on 26 July 1925, shortly after the trial. See Caricatures on the Scopes trial.
*1926 "Texas Bars the Monkey" by Harold von Schmid illustrating article by Sidney Sutherland. Liberty [Rye, NY, USA] 3 (23) (9 October): 49.
There was an explosion of caricatures surrounding the so-called Scopes Monkey trial in 1925 and subsequent high-profile trials regarding the teaching of evolution in American public schools. Here Darwin bound and carried away by two Texas cowboys. A monkey sits on Darwin's shoulder and its tail curls around his face and beard. The second cowboy is carrying a copy of Darwin's Origin of species.
1927 "THE CHILDHOOD OF GREAT MEN. | LITTLE CHARLES DARWIN BEGINS TO CONSIDER." By George Morrow. Punch (27 April): 465.
Darwin as a small child with his mother on the street with a monkey and organ grinder nearby. This was part of a series. The 9 February issue made fun of Dr. Johnson refusing to join a game of hopscotch as a child. This was widely reprinted in Western newspapers.
*1927 "The Big Laugh". By Donald McKee. The Saturday Evening Post 200 (20 August): 27.
A stereotypical "young intellectual" of the present (1927) who confidently gestures to the painting of "The Victorian Era" as he equals or peers is in mockingly compared to the great achievers of the Victorian age.
*1920s Watercolour caricature of Darwin with a monkey by Carlo Rim (1905-1989). (Ebay France 2021).
*1929 "What if Darwin had had no better ground for his suspicion about the Descent of Man than could be obtained by alternately comparing the face of his neighbour with that of a gorilla and the mask of Dante!" By Dorothy Burroughes (1883-1863). Social etiquette: A monthly feature of Britannia & Eve in which various matters of taste and manners are lightly discussed. Britannia and Eve: A Monthly Journal for Men & Women (1 September): 142.
The two magazines Britannia and Eve combined in 1929 to become a single magazine for news, fashion and short stories. It was published until 1957. The purported death mask of Dante Alighieri was a common study for young artists.
1930 "THE IMMORTALS TAKE COFFEE: A HUGE FREEZE OF CARICATURED CELEBRITIES". by Lluís Bagaria (1882-1940). The Graphic (1 February): 22.
Darwin is seated, taking coffee with an ape on his lap while Herbert Spencer grins at the viewer. As the caption explains, this was the plan for a large mural in the dining hall of the Madrid newspaper El Sol by Lluís Bagaria.
1936 "THE RETURN OF 'MAX': HE SHEARS THE VICTORIANS | 'If they were flourishing in this our day'". By Max Beerbohm. Manchester Guardian (13 March): 7.
Darwin, middle of back row, is among 15 other eminent Victorians imagined shorn of their Victorian hair. See Jerold Savory and Patricia Marks, The smiling muse: Victoriana in the comic press, 1985.
*1939 Caricature. Bagaria, Paris .jpg
The following are either not strictly caricatures or beyond the time period covered here but interesting all the same…
1897 Victorian men of achievement Her Majesty's glorious Jubilee, 1897.
1932 Kings and Queens by Eleanor and Herbert Farjeon.
1935J. H. Furbey, The Debunker. Atlanta Constitution (2 December): 11.
1935 Strange as it seems by John Hix. (October). Widely syndicated in USA newspapers.
1936 Strange as it seems by John Hix. (July). Widely syndicated in USA newspapers.
1936 "Charles Darwin was born on the same day of the same year as Abraham Lincoln." This curious world by William Ferguson. (August). Widely syndicated in USA newspapers.
1936 I. S. Klein, "Stories in Stamps | Center of Evolution War." The Times-News (Hendersonville, N.C.) (15 September): 2. Widely printed.
1938 Strange as it seems by John Hix. (May). Widely syndicated in USA newspapers.
1939 Strange as it seems by John Hix. (May). Widely syndicated in USA newspapers.
1940 Strange as it seems by John Hix. Widely syndicated in USA newspapers.
1941 This curious world by William Ferguson. (March). Widely syndicated in USA newspapers.
1942 Strange as it seems by John Hix. (January). Widely syndicated in USA newspapers.
1959 The Darwin Centennial Celebration, Chicago. Programme for 'Time Will Tell'.
1962 Cover of Der Spiegel (Germany).
Of course there are very many more 20th-century and recent caricatures of Darwin but these are not recorded here.
| This is based on the iconography of Darwin in Darwin: A Companion (2021) with many additions, corrections and illustrations. The rest of the iconography or catalogue of over 1,000 unique Darwin portraits including 210 oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, more than 600 printed portraits as well as caricatures and over 240 three-dimensional works such as statues, busts and medallions and iconographies of HMS Beagle, Down House and Emma Darwin is in the book. |  |
RN1