Pear Pressure

Caricatures, censorship, and the power of fruit in 19th-century France

Charles Philipon spent a lot of 1831 in courtrooms. He was not a thief or a murderer but a publisher of a satire magazine called La Caricature. His crime was making fun of the King of France.

As is so often the case, it was the hope that hurt the most for Philipon.

The new king, Louis Philippe, had taken the throne after the July Revolution of 1830 pushed the arch-conservative Charles X to abdicate. Louis Philippe initially made gestures that impressed liberals like Philipon. He called himself “King of the French” instead of “King of France,” which indicated a belief that legitimacy came from the citizens. He promised to uphold the Charter of 1830, which created a constitutional monarchy. And he presented himself as a “citizen king,” ditching pomp and circumstance and dressing like a (very wealthy) bourgeois Frenchman much of the time.

So when, in the months after his ascent to the throne, Louis Philippe started to back away from his commitment to liberalism, Philipon and the cartoonists who worked for him took the king to task. He published a cartoon that showed the new king blowing bubbles with liberal promises (popular elections, freedom of the press, etc.) on them. The message was that these programs would disappear into thin air just like bubbles.

Public domain

This did not amuse the king. He immediately set out to prove that the cartoon was accurate by placing Philipon on trial under a new law censoring the press. The charge: “injury to the person of the king.”

Philipon’s trial was national news. His lawyers cleverly defended him by claiming that the cartoon did not make the king look bad. They also appealed to the importance of satire: "Better the sketches of Philipon than periodic riots." Philipon put on quite a show, at times mocking or impersonating the prosecutors. The jury loved it, and they acquitted him.

So Philipon kept at it. Later that year, his magazine published another cartoon showing the king replastering a wall with the slogans of the revolution on it. The message: Louis Philippe was covering over the past.

Public domain

So Philipon found himself in court again for insulting the king. He tried the same strategy, arguing that he was mocking “power” rather than the man on the throne and saying that it would be odd if the king found it injurious to be depicted in the clothes of a working man.

Philipon attempted an almost deconstructionist argument, saying that no one could really ever know if an image was meant to represent a particular person. At one point, he asked if the court would condemn him for drawing a picture of a pear. Then he drew a pear with some hair, then a pear that looked a little bit more like Louis Philippe, and then a caricature of the king.

Public domain

His point was that it was impossible and unfair to assume anything about caricature, but he was also making fun of the king right there in court. Philipon later said that he knew he would be convicted, so he thought he might as well have some fun. He went to jail for six months, but the pear lived on.

Soon, lithographs were published with versions of Philipon’s famous drawing. Liberals defended their publication by claiming that they weren’t making fun of the king; they were just trying to accurately report what had happened in the trial:

Public domain

The Met

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The pear incident began a glorious back-and-forth between cartoonists and the crown. The pear became a universal symbol for Louis Philippe, a way to walk right up to the line drawn by the censors without going over. The whole affair resembled the way that Winnie the Pooh came to represent Xi Jinping on the Chinese internet for a while. The government tried to crack down on those who made fun of the king, but cartoonists generally stayed one step ahead.

Cartoons showed ordinary citizens supporting an overweight man with a pear-shaped head. It was clearly meant to represent the king, but couldn’t be charged as a direct portrait of him:

Public domain

And Honore Daumier made this drawing of the pear-shaped king as the past, present, and future:

The Met

Daumier, by the way, had previously been sent to jail himself for this cartoon, which depicted the king as the gluttonous giant Gargantua, gobbling up the taxes of the poor and crapping out decrees and commissions for his toadies:

Public domain

Sometimes the king wasn’t just pear-headed, he was a pear. Cartoons depicted Louis’ ministers seeking his favor:

This one shows the “pear and its pips” — rather than seeds, the core of the pear is filled with rich people gorging themselves:

Public domain

The pear was often a burden, here weighing down a woman who carries republican newspapers:

Public domain

And here the king is a nightmare pressing on the chest of the Marquis de Lafayette, a revolutionary hero and one-time supporter of Louis Philippe:

Public domain

Cartoonists used the pear not only to mock Louis Philippe but to imply violence against him. Here we see a jester character preparing to cut the neck of a pear, implying that the king should go to the guillotine:

Public domain

And here citizens hoist a giant pear aloft in what looks an awful lot like a hanging:

Public domain

Philipon and his fellow cartoonists seem to have really enjoyed themselves. The pear became a brand of sorts. In this drawing, a jester shows a crowd a wall of pear caricatures:

Public domain

And a chef (Philipon) shows his apprentices how to “prepare” a pear:

Public domain

When the crown sued one of Philipon’s publications, Le Charivari, the magazine printed the judgment against it — in the shape of a pear.

Public domain

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In 1835, the king, tired of this game, passed a new set of censorship laws. These were much harsher: they outlawed all political satire and no longer allowed the accused to have jury trials. Philipon realized that there was no way to continue. He shut down his political magazine La Caricature and turned Le Charivari into a completely non-political publication.

Louis Philippe had won, sort of. But the resentment against him lingered. When the king was finally overthrown in the 1848 Revolution, the cartoonists unleashed the pears again. In this one, Louis worries that he’ll be stuffed into a jar and pickled:

Public domain

And here a pear ripens on the tree until it inevitably falls:

Public domain

The cartoonists got the last laugh in more ways than one. By the early 20th century, the French had added a new slang word to mean “fool” or “idiot” — poire, or pear.

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