A Residence in France: With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to SwitzerlandCooper, James Fenimore
History
A Residence in France: With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to Switzerland
Cooper, James Fenimore
France -- Description and travel; Germany -- Description and travel; Switzerland -- Description and travel
In a country where the cholera could not escape being caricatured, you
will readily imagine that the King has fared no better. The lower part
of the face of Louis-Philippe is massive, while his forehead, without
being mean, narrows in a way to give the outline a shape not unlike that
of a pear. An editor of one of the publications of caricatures being on
trial for a libel, in his defence, produced a large pear, in order to
illustrate his argument, which ran as follows:--People fancied they saw
a resemblance in some one feature of a caricature to a particular thing;
this thing, again, might resemble another thing; that thing a third;
and thus from one to another, until the face of some distinguished
individual might be reached. He put it to the jury whether such forced
constructions were safe. "This, gentlemen," he continued, "is a common
pear, a fruit well known to all of you. By culling here, and here,"
using his knife as he spoke, "something like a resemblance to a human
face is obtained: by clipping here, again, and shaping there, one gets a
face that some may fancy they know; and should I, hereafter, publish an
engraving of a pear, why everybody will call it a caricature of a man!"
You will understand that, by a dexterous use of the knife, such a
general resemblance to the countenance of the King was obtained, that it
was instantly recognised. The man was rewarded for his cleverness by an
acquittal, and, since that time, by an implied convention, a rude sketch
of a pear is understood to allude to the King. The fruit abounds in a
manner altogether unusual for the season, and, at this moment, I make
little doubt, that some thousands of pears are drawn in chalk, coal, or
other substances, on the walls of the capital. During the carnival,
masquers appeared as pears, with pears for caps, and carrying pears, and
all this with a boldness and point that must go far to convince the King
that the extreme license he has affected hitherto to allow, cannot very
well accord with his secret intentions to bring France back to a
government of coercion. The discrepancies that necessarily exist in the
present system will, sooner or later, destroy it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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