Apes and Angels : The Irishman in Victorian Caricature

by L. Perry Curtis Jr.

Exploring the connections between the lore of physiognomy, the debate over evolution, and the art of caricature, L. Perry Curtis, Jr. documents the escalating harshness of cartoon images of the Irish in London, Dublin, and New York newspapers during the Victorian era.

Genres: History, Victorian, Nonfiction

211 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1979

Reviews

[cindabella · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a snapshot in time of a history that explores '[the Irish} Paddy's degeneration into a rather hairy ape man' in Victorian English and American cartoons and caricatures.

'By the 1860s the 'representive Irishman' was to all appearances an anthropoid ape. Among the forces that accelerated Paddy's degeneration was the assumption that there were qualities in Irish Celts which marked them off as a race or breed quite distinct in looks and behaviour from those who claimed Anglo Saxon, Danish and Norman ancestry in the British Isles. Granting indeed that there were some noticeable differences between Englishmen and Irishmen in terms of behavioiur and physical features, those differences were not sufficient in themselves to explain the belief of so many Victorians that the physical and mental traits of Irish Celts and Anglo Saxons were not only profoundly antithetical, but could also not be altered except through massive miscegenation.'

'It is therefore, to genes and chromosomes, not to diet or language, that one should look for the causes of upturned noses and prominent chins [characteristic of the Irish], wherever and whenever these are to be found among the races of man'

'...the popular belief that Celts were Celts, Saxons were Saxons and any mixture of the two races would debase the better blood and darken the fairer skin and hair'.

Selections from another staunch Protestant paper The North British Daily Mail, show how fond some journalists were of degrading Irish features: 'an apefaced small headed Irishman''.

'The images of the Irish Celt in Victorian times thus depended on the perspective of the viewer and the features he was determined to find or to exaggerate. Englishmen who celebrated the genius of the Anglo Saxon race tended to see themselves as modern Athenians, endowed with Grecian noses and facial angles in the high 80s or low 90s.'

So the Irish had darker skin and hair, smaller heads and upturned noses in contrast to the English fairer skin and hair, bigger heads and Gretian noses, (though is this more likely to have been inherited Roman/aquiline noses from the Roman invasion of England? Or perhaps the 'Gretian' nose much like the fair hair and skin came from the mixing and blending of Roman ancestry with Anglo Saxons who invaded England at a later date, as the Romans never invaded Ireland).

'..some Victorians on both side of the Atlantic [who must have identified as being Anglo Saxon in origin] went further by discovering features in Irish character which they took to be completely simian or anthropoid. In cartoons and caricatures as well as in prose, Paddy began to resemble increasingly the chimpanzee, the orangutan and finally the gorilla.'

The author gives some background to the belief associating people with animals and suggests that the work of Aristotle on Physiognomy whereby 'facial features, complexion, colour and texture of hair, as well as voice and posture revealed not only the 'natural passions of the soul' but human affinities with animals.'

The author then describes how this idea perpetuated throughout historical scientific thought giving examples such as James W. Redfield's 'Comparative Physiognomy or Resemblences between men and Animals' published in 1852 that likened Prussians to cats, Africans and people of African descent to elephants and fish, Englishmen to bulls, Turks to turkeys, Chinese to hogs, Americans to bears, Russians to geese and Irish to dogs.

'The question concerning us here is not the right of comic artists to turn Irishmen into apes or monkeys, but rather why so many cartoonists on both sides of the Atlantic {mainly English and Scottish or second generation English or Scottish] preferred the simian rather than the porcine, canine, asinine, feline, bovine, or lupine metaphor for Paddy [Irish}...why Paddy became so simian in the 1860s and after... Paddy won his simian features not just because of his propensity to resort to dynamite and firearms to end British rule in his country; after all Irishmen had been plotting rebellions for centuries. The timing of his transmogrification into a gorilla suggests that the coincidence of Fenianism with the debate over [Darwin's] 'The Origin of the Species*' and the increase in social and political tensions arising out of the mid-Victorian era lay at the root of the simianizing process. The pressures of upward social mobiilty were already disturbing the recently entrenched middle classses who had no wish to share their status and neighbourbood with even skilled laborers and other members of the working class elite.'

'Anglo-Saxons, after all, could never be accused of having the same physiognomies as Irish Celts. Was it not Pope Gregory I who had observed when passing by a group of fair-haired British youths on sale in the Roman slave market "Non Angli, sed Angeli?**'

*Full book title 'On The Origin of the Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life' by Charles Darwin

**Pope Gregory's full response; Pope Gregory had asked the name of this 'race' of islanders, and he was told they were called Angles. "That is appropriate" he said "for they have angelic faces and it is right that they should become joint-heirs with the angels in heaven."

[Meltha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disturbing, but very good background for anyone studying the underlying prejudice against the Irish in the 1800s, especially Brit Vic Lit types.

[Edward Lengel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Outdated, simplistic treatment originally published in 1971; this book has been superseded by recent, more nuanced research.