To mark the centenary of the Armistice the Heath Robinson Museum is hosting this charming little micro-exhibition, which amounts to ten or so of the humorous cartoons which he drew during the Great War, along with a selection of the correspondence he received from front-line soldiers telling him how much pleasure they derived from his pictures and suggesting topics for future works.
(There are a further eight drawings to be found in the quiet room of the café situated next to the Museum, which also houses the Pinner Books of Remembrance.)
The wicked Hun
When the war began, British cartoonists, illustrators and poster-makers were pressed into service to depict the Germans as monsters, devils, baby-eaters, and the German army as an unstoppable force of terrifying Huns.
First World War anti-German propaganda poster
But after a while this came to be felt to be counter-productive to British morale. Many at home really began to think of the Germans army as an unstoppable horde of cruel killers, larger, better equipped and better led than the Allies.
The saintly Hun
Heath Robinson decided to take entirely the opposite approach and, building on the reputation for off-beat humour and absurdly complicated machines which he had developed in his advertising work of the Edwardian era, to draw cartoons making fun of the German army – using humour to cut them down to size, to make them appear daft or gormless, as ridiculous rather than frightening – and so beatable.
Stiff Necking our Tommies by creating a draught on the British trenches
In fact Heath Robinson drew a surprising number and variety of humorous cartoons on the subject of the war throughout its duration. They were widely distributed via popular newspapers and magazines, and were sent directly to troops at the front. The pictures were gathered into books with titles like Hunlikely (1916) and The Saintly Hun: A Book of German Virtues (1917).
I particularly liked a picture which shows one of our lads charging a fleeing Hun in the pelting rain, when the German, to our chap’s surprise, turns round to offer our man an umbrella, the picture titled Unprecedented Gentlemanliness of a Prussian General to loan his umbrella to one of our Tommies during an advance in the rain.
Or the one showing an armed column of infantry marching from the far distance up towards the viewer but at the last minute making an unexplained detour – until you look very closely and understand the title of the picture – The soft-hearted Brandeburgs refusing to tread on a worm on their way to the trenches.
Or the cartoon of a German zeppelin floating past a rickety tower room in which a skinny spinster can be seen in a dressing gown as if about to have a bath – with the result that all the Germans in the zeppelin have gallantly averted their eyes in order to spare her maiden blushes.
The Saintly Hun by Heath Robinson
Letters from the front
As well as comic drawings the exhibition also includes a box of facsimiles of the many letters which Heath Robinson received from soldiers both at the front and home on R&R. We visitors are invited to rummage among them and read them.
The letters express gratitude to the artist for keeping the soldiers’ spirits up in hard times, suggest comic scenarios for new pictures, or request pictures celebrating their particular regiment to hang in the mess or the trenches, to be included in regimental magazines or hung among Christmas decorations.
Letters to Heath Robinson from First World War soldiers
Reading these letters is a humbling and moving experience. It’s hard to hold back the tears reading some of them. And they make you reflect that Heath Robinson’s pictures, in their modesty, humour and humanity, epitomised the English qualities which the soldiers were fighting for.
Related links
- Heath Robinson’s War Effort continues at the Heath Robinson Museum until 18 November 2018
Books & Boots 