John Bull
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Bull is a national personification of Great Britain in general and
England in particular, especially in political cartoons and similar graphic
works. He is usually depicted as a stout, middle-aged man, often wearing a
Union Jack waistcoat.
John Bull originated in the creation
of Dr. John Arbuthnot in 1712, and was popularised first by British print
makers and then overseas by illustrators and writers such as American
cartoonist Thomas Nast and Irish writer George Bernard Shaw, author of John
Bull's Other Island. He is sometimes used to refer to the whole of the
United Kingdom, but has not been accepted in Scotland or Wales because he is
viewed there as English rather than British. Britannia, or a lion, is
therefore used as an alternative in some editorial cartoons. Although
embraced by Unionists, Bull is rejected by Nationalists in Northern Ireland
as well.
As a literary figure, John Bull is
well-intentioned, frustrated, full of common sense, and entirely of native
country stock. Unlike Uncle Sam later, he is not a figure of authority but
rather a yeoman who prefers his small beer and domestic peace, possessed of
neither patriarchal power nor heroic defiance. Arbuthnot provided him with a
sister named Peg (Scotland), and a traditional adversary in Louis Baboon
(the House of Bourbon in France). Peg continued in pictorial art beyond the
18th century, but the other figures associated with the original tableau
dropped away.
Portrayal
Bull is usually portrayed as a stout, portly man in a tailcoat with
light coloured breeches and a top hat which by its shallow crown indicates
its middle class identity. During the Georgian period his waistcoat is red
and/or his tailcoat is royal blue which, together with his buff or white
britches, can thus refer to a greater or lesser extent to the 'blue and
buff' scheme used by supporters of Whig politics which is part of what John
Arbuthnot wished to deride when he invented the character. By the twentieth
century however his waistcoat nearly always depicts a Union Flag, and his
coat is generally dark blue (but otherwise still echoing the fashions of the
Regency period). He also wears a low topper (sometimes called a John Bull
topper) on his head and is often accompanied by a bulldog. John Bull has
been used in a variety of different ad campaigns over the years, and is a
common sight in British editorial cartoons of the 19th and early 20th
centuries.
Washington Irving described him in
his chapter entitled "John Bull" from The Sketch Book:
"...[A] plain, downright,
matter-of-fact fellow, with much less of poetry about him than rich prose.
There is little of romance in his nature, but a vast deal of a strong
natural feeling. He excels in humour more than in wit; is jolly rather than
gay; melancholy rather than morose; can easily be moved to a sudden tear or
surprised into a broad laugh; but he loathes sentiment and has no turn for
light pleasantry. He is a boon companion, if you allow him to have his
humour and to talk about himself; and he will stand by a friend in a quarrel
with life and purse, however soundly he may be cudgelled."
The cartoon image of stolid stocky conservative and well-meaning John Bull,
dressed like an English country squire, sometimes explicitly contrasted with
the conventionalised scrawny, French revolutionary sans-culottes Jacobin,
was developed from about 1790 by British satirical artists James Gillray,
Thomas Rowlandson and George Cruikshank. (An earlier national
personification was Sir Roger de Coverley, from The Spectator (1711).)
In 1966, The Times, criticising the
Unionist government of Northern Ireland, famously branded the province "John
Bull's Political Slum".
In a suffragette cartoon of 1912,
John Bull is portrayed looking out of the window of a house over whose door
the sign says "Franchise Villa", while his wife knocks on the door, with the
accompanying text: John Bull: "How long are you going on making that noise
outside?" Mrs Bull: "Till you let me in, John!"
Increasingly through the early
twentieth century, John Bull became seen as not particularly representative
of 'the common man', and during the First World War this function was
largely taken over by the figure of Tommy Atkins.
John Bull's surname is also
reminiscent of the alleged fondness of the English for beef, reflected in
the French nickname for English people, les rosbifs (the "Roast Beefs").
A typical John Bull Englishman is
referenced in Margaret Fuller's Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 in Chapter 2:
"Murray's travels I read, and was charmed by their accuracy and clear broad
tone. He is the only Englishman that seems to have traversed these regions,
as man, simply, not as John Bull."
