It's All a Bit Heath Robinson: Re-inventing the First World War

WILLIAM HEATH ROBINSON

On 20 April 1910, the first in a new series of cartoons was published in the weekly illustrated magazine The Sketch . ‘Am Tag! Die Deutschen Kommen!’ sought to make light of what was a growing paranoia in the British press – the possibility of a German invasion. In retrospect, the series appears remarkably prescient, and in 1910, though it would be more than four years before war was to erupt in Europe, the theme was both timely and topical. Four months earlier, in December 1909, Lord Northcliffe had commissioned the socialist journalist and editor of The Clarion , Robert Blatchford, to write a series of ten articles in the Daily Mail warning of the coming German menace. Northcliffe had already published a serial called ‘The invasion of 1910’, written by William Le Quex three years earlier, and several other papers under his control began to pump the British public full of stories that foresaw the potentially disastrous consequences resulting from emergent Prussian aggression. Certainly, Germany’s military and naval expansion was a cause for concern, and in less than four years, Blatchford’s views would eventually be justified, but in 1910 it all seemed a touch hysterical to a sophisticated magazine such as The Sketch and a state of affairs ripe for satire.

William Heath Robinson (1872–1944), the ‘Gadget King’.

William Heath Robinson, the man behind ‘Am Tag’, was one of The Sketch’s most popular artists. His imagined ‘Incidents of the Coming German Invasion of England’ depicted German spies in the most incongruous of locations, posing unnoticed as Graeco-Roman statues in the British Museum – invisible to visitors despite their pickelhaube helmets – or as British excursionists crossing the North Sea equipped with tell-tale boxes of Schnitzel, Schwartz Brod and Lager. The first in the series, ‘German Spies in Epping Forest’, showed the Teutonic intruders disguised as a ludicrous assortment of birds, trees and woodland animals following the movements of a single, small Boy Scout on an innocent ramble. It was a picture that embodied two elements intrinsic in Heath Robinson’s art – the elaborate and extraordinary lengths undergone to achieve what are ultimately underwhelming and simple objectives, and his own wry and gentle brand of mocking humour. ‘Am Tag’ encouraged the British to laugh, not only at the ridiculous Germans in their woodland fancy dress, but also at themselves. Perhaps a German invasion was a possibility – one day – but Heath Robinson’s visions diluted and dispelled hysteria and replaced it with a calmer perspective: a case of laughter triumphing over fear.

‘Mr. W. Heath Robinson at work.’ Will pictured in The Strand magazine in 1918. His photograph accompanied a series of drawings on the theme of ‘War-Time Economies’.

‘A most worthy disciple of the modern school of penmen.’ The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, illustrated by Heath Robinson in 1900. The influences of art nouveau and wood engraving are apparent in Will’s early book-illustration work and the serious subjects the polar opposite to his later humorous drawings.

‘Cape Town’ from The Song of the English by Rudyard Kipling, 1909.

It appeared, however, that the British sense of humour was not shared by the Germans. Heath Robinson would later discover in 1915 that the cartoon had been taken literally when it was reprinted in the German press as an example of ‘the alarm we were all supposed to be feeling at their frightfulness’. The correspondent who had sent him the magazine from the front agreed, writing with amused disbelief, ‘I don’t think Jerry tries to convey to his readers the