Political Animals.

London, England, British Empire.
Artist: John Tenniel.

In the autumn of 1857, as the rebellion in British India had continued to rage across pockets of the Bengal Presidency with the force of a tropical monsoon, news had reached London of a heavy toll of retribution a British force had extracted in the region of Cawnpore, British India.

The military force, a mix of the 78th Highlanders, the 1st Madras Fusiliers and a troop of Sikhs, had not just captured back the town from the hands of the rebellion on the 17th of July 1857. But in the aftermath laid to waste homes and villages in a fit of rage and punished both inhabitants and mutineers.

One man who had outdone all others in this particular carnage was the Brigadier General George Neil. A solider with a stern attitude who had devised his own version of drumhead justice to punish the guilty.

Surprisingly for a city like London, that in normal times would have raised an outcry of resentment from one quarter or another, there instead had been silence. Far from it, the news had largely been well-received, and both the public and press had joined in to hail the retribution as just and deserving.

Among them was the British satirical magazine Punch-the London Charivari – that a month prior had published the political cartoon of a fierce lion pouncing on a snarling Bengal tiger on the 22nd of August 1857.

Captioned, the British lion’s vengeance on the Bengal tiger, this cartoon had come about after London had been alerted to the possible recruitment of some 30,000 men for curbing the rebellion in British India.

A military enterprise that may have raised eyebrows for we find that Punch had additionally put in a witty note, close to the cartoon. Perhaps, to ridicule those who had objected on the pretext of national security.

The cartoon had been developed on the suggestion of journalist Shirley Brooks and created by the talented hands of a 37-year-old artist by the name of John Tenniel. It had vibrated with nationalistic pride and in that month of August, exploded Punch’s popularity almost instantly from the day of its publication.

But contrary to the debate that has now cropped up, the cartoon was neither British propaganda based on fictitious lies nor deliberately conceived by Punch to increase circulation.

In fact, it had owed its creation to a very real and disturbing incident that had occurred between the 26th of June and 15th of July 1857 and provided an enraged Victorian era Britain with much valid reason to demand vengeance.

Not to mention jolted even a magazine like Punch to demand retribution. Instead of maintaining its earlier ironical attitude and criticism of the activities of the East India Company. As is attested by this editorial Punch had published on the 15th of August 1857, structured and presented as an advertisement.

Tenniel, who by now was the chief illustrator at Punch, had been made responsible for producing the double spread cartoon, and as to why Tenniel had ultimately decided to use the trope of a lion and tiger isn’t difficult to understand if one takes a closer look at the timeline of Punch and the iconography that had permeated Victorian era Britain at the time.

Founded some sixteen years before the onset of the violence as a satirical editorial that aimed at highlighting human vanities and politics with wit and gentlemanly humour, Punch in 1857 had acquired the reputation of a clean and respectable magazine.

Though initially edited for London’s middle-class citizens, its use of aesthetically done illustration and sophistication had earned it a much larger audience especially among the educated classes. Serious readers of politics had come to study Punch’s gentle cartoons, and the magazine itself had come to be defined as a ‘moulder’ of opinion.

To maintain this clear distinctiveness that separated Punch from its competitors in the mid 18th century, artists like Tenniel had exercised a great deal of imagination to continuously produce original and pleasing visual content in line with what readers had come to expect on a weekly basis.

Their job had not been easy. Not only was there the creative and technical aspect to consider but there was also Punch’s reservation and restraint in inseminating its editorial with banal rancour and realism in its rawest form.

Suffice to say, that inside the single-storey building Punch had owned on 85 St. Michael’s Street in Paddington, London in 1857, Tenniel did not just have to contend with the conceptualization and creation of a new piece of art that his audience would appreciate, and in the shortest possible time as well, but also sketch his concept on a block of wood that would later be engraved for publishing in print.

Yet Tenniel had not disappointed. Selecting four key allusions that could be easily identified by London, and particularly by Punch’s audience, he had set out to narrate both the history and story of the incident that had recently come to pass and in the process created one of the most iconic cartoons to have ever appeared in the 151-year long illustrious history of Punch.

In Tenniel’s anthropomorphic drawing the four key elements are the lion, the tiger, the woman and the child. Each has been appropriated its rightful place to build sequence, narrate a tale and in combination convey a core message.

England’s association with the symbol of a lion had by this time become deeply entrenched in English society. First recorded to have been used by King Henry I in the eleventh century, the symbol had evolved into the English Royal Coat of Arms and proliferated English literature and art. Furthermore, Punch itself had frequently made use of the lion as a symbol to describe imperial Britain.

So when we come around to analyse the first artistic element, we find Tenniel making use of the all too familiar lion trope. It’s strategic placement on the right, whether deliberate or subconscious, not only helps it grab readers’ attention at a single glance but also allows them to comprehend the rest of the visual story as they would be reading a sentence in English – that is by letting their eyes shift naturally from the left to the right.

As at the time the need was to portray an avenging imperial Britain as the hero of the occasion, we can only assume this to be the reason why Tenniel takes to portraying the maned feline as an aggressive, confident and a powerful beast whose anger has been aroused and there is no stopping it from avenging pride and honour or in the case of the Bibighar massacre, the just and deserving retribution. The leap of the lion in the air the sign of its prowess, and its unwavering gaze its determination in conquering its enemy.  

Like the British lion, the Bengal tiger too had by this time seeped into English culture, iconography and literature becoming synonymous with both the fearsome and the fascinating side of India, and although it never was the banner of the mutiny, it nonetheless was a species native to India, a ferocious beast known for attacking humans, and barely half a century ago the emblem of the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan – an archenemy of imperial Britain between 1779 and 1799 A.D.   

Also in correspondence sent by Anglo-Indian newspapers to London, we discover the existence of ‘expressions’ and ‘allusions’ relating the violent acts of the Sepoys to that of a tiger such as this anecdote that has come down to us from a correspondent of The New York Daily – who had gleaned words from a Calcutta Newspaper in May 1857 to construct his own report of the insurrection.

Thus, to Tenniel, nothing else would have made more sense then to use the ready-made trope of the Bengal tiger to help his audience identify the principal villain of the illustration, and this is what we find Tenniel achieving next by repositioning the Bengal tiger to represent the rebellious Sepoys and portraying the feline as a powerful, terrifying and a menacing beast without remorse or compassion. On closer observation, one also finds the countenance of the tiger to be sinister and evil. 

Placed just inches away from the pouncing lion, the Bengal tiger in Tenniel’s illustration is made to occupy the next convenient spot for one’s eye to naturally settle upon after having come across the former feline. It is the primary target of the ‘pouncing lion’ that is in the air and flying towards it. The collision is imminent. The tiger is startled by the sudden appearance of the lion and displaying typical feline like behaviour has contracted its massive size into a crouch. But the tiger is not scared – with its head turned towards the lion and a defiant snarl on its face, it’s ready for the inevitable battle to come. 

Co-founder of Punch journalist Mark Lemon would later describe this double spread illustration as the ‘fighting cut’ – a tweak of the phrase ‘big cut’ that Punch normally used to describe its double spread cartoons.

Last in the line of the artistic elements but not the least in importance are the prostrate figures of the woman and child symbolizing the victims of the Bibighar massacre. This was the first time during the insurrection Punch had decided to highlight women and children as victims of the violence, and consequently, Tenniel’s task was to portray the desperation and helplessness in a manner that would evoke sympathy but not incite strong reactions as one later comes to witness with the painting of Scottish artist Joseph Noel Paton in 1858.

Titled ‘In Memoriam’, Paton’s painting had initially depicted a group of maddened with lust Indian Sepoys bursting into a room filled with European women and children but after facing a storm of criticism, he had wisely transformed the Indian Sepoys into enraged Scottish Highlanders and subsequently changed the location from Bibighar in Cawnpore to Lucknow – where the timely arrival of a British army had actually facilitated the rescue of women and children.

Coming back to the illustration, we now see Tenniel skillfully depicting the victimization by placing the woman and child underneath the tiger. The woman has her arms wrapped around what appears to be the shape of an infant. The protective embrace of the arms indicating the relationship is that of a mother and child. Both appear lifeless as if unconscious or killed by the tiger. Which towers over them and leaves it to the imagination of the reader to arrive upon the only plausible answer without any other visual aid.

The last two elements while not as dramatic as the trope of the lion and tiger, however, are the most crucial – without the woman and child, the presence of the felines hold no importance and existence of the topical illustration in relation to the Bibighar massacre cease to exist.

At this stage of analysing Tenniel’s cartoon and in spite of getting the feeling that this cartoon is generally about avenging the massacre of Anglo-India women and children, we are surprised to learn there is more to it – and not until do we discover the significance of having the lion and the tiger together in the same scene, do we realise this.

Portraying both the lion and the tiger together in a single scene was not conceived by Tenniel originally but rather appears to have been borrowed and improvised upon from an already existing set of iconography that had entered Victorian era Britain with the fourth Anglo-Indian Carnatic war of 1799. This was the Medal of Seringapatam, a badge of courage, that depicted a lion vanquishing a tiger to commemorate the final victory of a British, Maratha and Hyderabadi alliance against the forces of Tipu, in the siege of Seringapatam.

Moreover, after Tipu’s defeat and death during the battle of Seringapatam, his royal treasure was transported to London and displayed at the East India House Museum as spoils of war. Among them was a musical device created in the shape of a life-size tiger mauling an English soldier. Naturally to Tipu whose emblem was the tiger, this had symbolized his victory over the British, but, as we are told, so had the same feeling been aroused in Londoners who had chanced upon the device every now and then. Especially during the initial months of the insurrection when allusions of Sepoys fighting like tigers and regular updates of disasters were gnawing away their confidence in imperial Britain’s power and prestige.

By recreating the scene again, albeit in a different artist version, Tenniel, whether he realized it or not, had reversed the tension and enforced the superiority of the British lion over the Bengal tiger with a few strokes of his pencil. In this light, his cartoon now was not just about imperial Britain avenging the Bibighar massacre but also about the assured victory of the British lion. After all, if the British lion had defeated the Bengal tiger once, as depicted in the Medal of Seringapatam, it could and would do it again. Which incidentally made the cartoon, both inspirational and a morale booster.

What Tenniel had in essence created was an effective political cartoon at a critical stage of imperial Britain’s relation with her colony British India. Never before having faced a rebellion of this magnitude in the region, and impeded by delayed news and updates that took nearly a month of ‘sailing the high seas’ to reach London, imperial Britain had at the start been unsure of the situation and slow to respond.

But with an agitated London, enraged over factual and exaggerated accounts of rape, murder and deaths of European men, women and children, now demanding retribution – events and moved into high gear. Initially left to the private armies of the East India Company to control, the worsening situation had led to the involvement of the British Government and subsequently the imperial British army.

Editorials and patriotic cartoons such as this one with its inspiring tone of nationalistic pride had helped reveal public sentiments due to their popularity and served as a ‘call to arms’ beacon. More importantly, at this critical juncture, they had provided imperial Britain with a pivotal point to rally and justify its brutal reprisal. Which was the topic of the victimization of women and children.

The immense traction Tenniel’s cartoon generated was essentially because of the circumstances. Regular news of the insurrection in British India had entered public discourse and Londoners were talking about the developing events at homes and in gatherings. The four key allusions Tenniel had used, though ‘children’s-book’ like sketches were artistic elements that reached out and connected with different sections of London’s society for they were easily identified and understood. Among them, the trope of the energetic and confident British lion springing to avenge the murder of the woman and child was the main motivator that inspired the Victorian-era public to rise up to the occasion – the popularity of the cartoon was such that within a few days of its publication it was again featured as an army recruitment banner.

On the 9th of September, 1857, just eighteen days after Punch had published the double spread cartoon, the venerable news agency The New York Daily, now known as the New York Times, had presented its own evaluation of Tenniel’s cartoon. The New York Daily at the time had been largely dependant on material from London and English based newspapers in British India to prepare its own editorials on the Indian insurrection, and words like ‘oppression’ and ‘misgovernment’ were actually not its own assessment but possibly taken from Punch’s scathing criticism of the East India Company on the 15th of August, 1857.

The insurrection that enveloped the Bengal Presidency in British India, though officially stated to have taken place between the 10th of May 1857 and the 1st of November 1858 took more than two years to curb. In the course of this time European forces, Indian insurgents and pockets of local communities (with the breakdown in law and order) committed unchecked atrocities and acts of violence with the Bibighar massacre finding its spot right at the top of the heap.

The brutal British reprisal, though seemingly justified at the time to Victorian-era England and the Anglo-Indian community of British India, was in many areas undeserving, no less barbaric and in modern times is criticized both by Britain and the world. From a military point of view, however, it can be debated to have been a much needed requirement of the hour.

For the Anglo-Indian community, a word then used to describe British people settled in India, 1857 was a traumatic year. In towns and cities across Northern India, many lost their lives, their loved ones, their valuables and their properties. Many naturally developed a deep hatred for their native neighbours and never trusted them again. Instances of which we find embedded in fictional novels that build their plots around factual events and through their characters revealed the bitterness, as well as nonfictional accounts published by the survivors.

Indians too had suffered grievously at the hands of the insurgents and local mobs that with a breakdown in law and order took to pillaging and murdering in affected areas, and this did not just include Indian Christians who were frequently targeted. A century and a half later, the memory of the events of 1857 still invokes bitter criticism of the colonial years even from those who are born in the present century- though the atrocities committed by Indian insurgents and mob violence is seldom talked about, and the blame is squarely put on the shoulders of the East India Company or the British Raj.

Newspapers and tabloids played a large part in aggravating the violence. Many a time facts were over dramatised and exaggerated by colonial news agencies in British India which led England and other parts of Europe to form a grossly unjust opinion about the native people.

The most mistaken belief being that the insurrection was a nationwide phenomenon and nationalistic in character. In reality, the insurrection erupted in only a small part of British India and the majority of Indians supported Britain in regaining back control, and in their own individual capacities helped and sheltered Europeans and Anglo-Indians from the violence. This while native regiments of the Madras and Bombay presidencies fought and bled alongside European forces to curb the rebellion – as did Indian princes, kings and several units of the Bengal army that had remained loyal.

Tenniel continued to work for Punch long after the end of the insurrection. Having discovered his aptitude for illustration at the age of fourteen, he had joined Punch in December 1850 and went on to spend almost four decades with the magazine. During which time be experienced and created illustrations reflecting the sweeping changes in the political and social fabric of Victorian-era England. Tenniel’s other famous works include Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the Aesop’s fables that he populated with his illustrations. It was Tenniel’s illustrations in Alice that had prompted co-founder Mark Lemon to invite Tenniel to work for Punch. In 1893 Tenniel was knighted for his artistic contributions.

His political cartoon, the British Lion’s vengeance on the Bengal Tiger gained immortality.