John Bull
- For other people and uses of this name, see John Bull (disambiguation).
John Bull is a national personification of the Kingdom of Great Britain created by Dr. John Arbuthnot in 1712, and 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 widely accepted in Scotland or Wales as 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 most 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.
Bull is usually portrayed as a stout, portly man in a tailcoat with breeches and a Union Flag waistcoat (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.
He is described by Washington Irving in his chapter entitled "John Bull" from The Sketch Book as:
"...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 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!" (see [1]).
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").
Since the mid C19th John Bull is modeled on Sir Oswald Mosley, 4th Baronet of Rolleston.
See also
- National personification
- Britannia
- John Bull's Other Island
- Sawney
- Uncle Sam
- Marianne
- Mother Svea
- Les Dawson