_ROBERT SEYMOUR._
Decidedly next in order of merit to George Cruikshank, amongst his own
contemporaries, if we except only Theodore Lane, comes Robert Seymour.
With a style and manner peculiar to himself, and a power of invention
and realization which amounted almost to genius, Seymour was superior in
every respect to Robert Cruikshank, with whom we find him not
unfrequently associated in comic design. This style and manner were
clearly founded on those of George Cruikshank; and when he selected (as
he not unfrequently did) subjects which had been treated by the latter,
the work of this most able draughtsman will bear even favourable
comparison with that of the great original whom he chose as his master.
That he drew his inspiration from and sought even to emulate Cruikshank,
is shown by the fact that to some of his earlier caricatures he affixed
the name of "Shortshanks," a practice which he discontinued on receiving
a remonstrance from the irritable George.
Robert Seymour was born in 1798. Henry Seymour, his father, a gentleman
of good family in Somersetshire, meeting with misfortune, removed to
London, and apprenticed him to Mr. Vaughan, a pattern designer of Duke
Street, Smithfield. This Vaughan seems to deserve a passing notice here
by reason of the fact that his father is said to have received proposals
for partnership from the father of the late Sir Robert Peel, which were
rejected, on the ground that the fortunes of the Peel family were not
then considered particularly flourishing. How far this statement may be
correct we know not. Assuming it to be true, the fortunes of the Peel
family afterwards took a turn which probably frequently gave Vaughan
_pere_ (if he lived to ruminate thereon) some serious cause for
reflection as well as of repentance.
Like Hogarth, with whom this artist, like all other comic designers, has
been frequently and improperly compared, young Robert Seymour declined
to waste his abilities as a mere mechanical draughtsman, and used his
technical education as a means of cultivating the artistic gifts with
which nature and inclination had endowed him. He seems at first to have
selected a walk in art which required for its ultimate success a larger
amount of application and patience than he could well spare for the
purpose. Shortly after the expiration of his indentures, he started as a
painter in oils, and executed several pictures, one of which (a Biblical
subject) included, it is said, no less than one hundred figures, whilst
a no less ambitious subject than Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered" was
deemed of sufficient merit to be exhibited on the walls of the Royal
Academy. Other pictorial subjects were taken from "Don Quixote,"
"Waverley," "The Tempest," etc., besides which he executed numerous
portraits and miniatures. These efforts, however, do not appear to have
been sufficiently remunerative to encourage him to continue them, and
after a time he resigned them to follow a branch of art more congenial,
perhaps, to his abilities, and thenceforth very rapidly acquired fame as
a social satirist and caricaturist.
The coloured caricatures of Robert Seymour, besides being comparatively
scarce and little known, seem hardly to call for any particular
description; the titles of some of them will be found mentioned in our
Appendix. One which has survived, and with which the public are probably
most familiar, is one of the worst of the series. It is entitled, _Going
it by Steam_, is signed "Short Shanks," and was published by King. Among
rarer and better ones may be named two very excellent specimens, without
date, published by Creed, of Chancery Lane, labelled respectively, _A
Musical Genius_ (a butcher boy playing on the Pandean pipes and
accompanying himself with marrow bone and cleaver), and _A Man of Taste
and Feeling_ (a tramp caught in a trap while helping himself in a
butler's pantry). Among the best of his coloured political caricatures,
we may mention, _Greece and her Rough Lovers_ (_i.e._ Russia and
Turkey), published by Maclean, in 1828. Lithography afforded greater
facilities of execution than the old process, and much of Seymour's work
in political as well as social satire was executed by himself on stone.
DEATH OF GEORGE IV.
The year 1830 brought the life and reign of George the Fourth to a
close. He had been breaking up for a long time past. The first entry of
any moment occurs in Mr. Greville's diary, of 25th August, 1828: "The
king has not been well; he goes fishing and dining at Virginia Water,
stays out late, and catches cold." A year later, the diarist relates
that the king had nearly lost his eyesight, and would be "couched" as
soon as his eyes were in a proper state for the operation. On the 7th of
December he attended a chapter of the Bath, "looked well," but was so
blind that "he could not see to read the list, and begged [Mr. Greville]
to read it for him." The Sangrado treatment was then in full force; and
we find that in January, 1830, the king, being very ill, "lost forty
ounces of blood." He grew at last so much worse that the preparations
for the festivities with which the royal birthday was to have been
celebrated were obliged to be postponed _sine die_. A victim to dropsy,
the operation of puncturing the legs was resorted to, with the result of
giving him temporary relief. The patient, however, became liable to
violent fits of coughing, in one of which he ruptured a blood vessel,
and expired early on the morning of Saturday the 26th of June, 1830.
A more contemptible, selfish, unfeeling being as a _man_ than this king
could scarcely have been found, "a mixture of narrow-mindedness,
selfishness, truckling, blustering, and duplicity, with no object but
self, his own ease, and the gratification of his own fancies and
prejudices."[97] "A more despicable scene," continues Mr. Greville,
"cannot be exhibited than that which the interior of our Court
presents--every base, low, and unmanly propensity, with selfishness,
avarice, and a life of petty intrigue and mystery."[98] George the
Fourth as king and regent was recklessly extravagant, but his
expenditure was always upon self or the gratification of self. A hundred
examples of his selfish nature might be given, but _cui bono_?
Everything he could get hold of, which could minister to his own
personal gratification, he _grasped_ with avidity. In this spirit he
appropriated the jewels and spent on himself the whole of the money
belonging to his late father's estate, amounting to L120,000. His
ministers did not dare to oppose his greed, or tell him that this money
belonged to the Crown, and not to himself as an individual. He acted
precisely in the same manner with regard to his mother's jewels, of
which she possessed a large quantity. Those she received from George
III. she left by will to the king; the rest she gave to her daughters;
in spite of which bequest, her selfish son appropriated the whole to
himself as his own personal private property.
PORTRAIT OF THE KING.
An admirable likeness of this most selfish of royal or private
personages has been drawn by a master hand. "To make a portrait of him,"
says Thackeray, "at first seemed a matter of small difficulty. There is
his coat, his star, his wig, his countenance simpering under it: with a
slate and a piece of chalk, I could at this very desk perform a
recognisable likeness of him. And yet after reading of him in scores of
volumes, hunting him through old magazines and newspapers, having him
here at a ball, there at a public dinner, there at races, and so forth,
you find you have nothing--nothing but a coat and wig, and a mask
smiling below it--nothing but a great simulacrum. His sire and
grandsires were men. One knew what they were like: what they would do in
given circumstances: that on occasion they fought and demeaned
themselves like tough, good soldiers. They had friends whom they liked
according to their natures; enemies whom they hated firmly; passions and
actions and individualities of their own. The sailor king who came after
George was a man; the Duke of York was a man, big, burly, loud, jolly,
cursing, courageous. But this George, what was he? I look through all
his life, and recognise but a bow and a grin. I try and take him to
pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a
fur collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handkerchief prodigiously
scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty brown wigs reeking with oil, a
set of teeth, and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more
under-waistcoats, and then nothing." "Under-waistcoats, more
under-waistcoats--and then nothing!" Yes, there was something besides
the silk stockings--the padding--the stays--the coat with frogs and a
fur collar, the star and the blue ribbon, although there might be
nothing underneath which resembled a heart or which was capable of being
inspired by a feeling which had not its origin in _self_. The wardrobe
of this royal professor of deportment, who ten years before had been
described to his own great personal annoyance as--
"The dandy of sixty, who bows with a grace,
And has taste in wigs, collars, cuirasses, and lace,"
was sold on the 2nd of August, 1830, and is said to have been
sufficiently numerous to fill Monmouth Street, and sufficiently various
and splendid for the wardrobe of Drury Lane Theatre. The meanness of his
disposition was exhibited even in the matter of his clothes, scarcely
any of which he gave away except his linen, which was distributed every
year. Here were all the coats which this monarch had had for fifty years
before, three hundred whips, canes without number, every sort of
uniform, the costumes of all the order of Europe, splendid fur pelisses,
hunting coats and breeches; among other etcetera, a dozen pair of
corduroy breeches made to hunt in when Don Miguel was in London. His
profusion in these articles was explained by the fact that he never paid
for them; but his memory in relation to them was nevertheless so
accurate that he recollected every article of dress, no matter how old,
and his pages were liable to be called on at any moment to produce some
particular coat or other article of apparel of years gone by.
The demise of this treasurer of royal antique raiment was followed by an
order for general _mourning_, to which a caricature drawing by Seymour
has reference, the satirical meaning of which will be apparent after the
explanation previously given. A colossal military figure armed with a
baton, on which is inscribed the word "fashion," encounters at dusk, in
Hyde Park, a solitary pedestrian habited in a suit of grey clothing.
"How dare you appear," says the apparition, "without a black coat?" to
which the frightened pedestrian replies, "The _tailor_ would not trust
me, sir." In August, 1830, he gives likenesses of the new king and
queen, William the Fourth and Adelaide, surrounded by a halo of glory.
The new king, in reference to his profession, and by way of obvious
contrast to his predecessor, is subsequently depicted as an anchor
labelled, "England's best bower not _a maker of bows_." From other
contemporary pictorial skits by Seymour we learn that various changes
were made in the royal establishment, and the new queen seems to have
addressed herself specially to a reform in the dresses of the court
domestics. On the 1st of October, 1830, Seymour represents her grinding
an enormous machine, called the "Adelaide Mill," into which the women
servants, dressed in the outrageous head-gear and leg-of-mutton sleeves
of the period, are perforce ascending, and issuing from the other side
attired in plain and more suitable apparel. "No silk gowns," says Her
Majesty as she turns the handle. "No French curls; and I'll have you all
wear aprons." The new queen seems also to have shown a disposition to
encourage native manufactures and produce at the expense of French and
continental importations. These changes were not particularly pleasing
to the Conservative lady patronesses of Almack's, who were celebrated at
this time for their capricious exclusiveness. One of Robert Seymour's
satires, bearing date the 1st of November, 1830, shows us a conference
of these haughty dames, who seriously discuss the propriety of admitting
some lady (probably the queen) who proposed appearing at one of the
balls "in some vulgar stuff made by the _canaille_ at a place called
Kittlefields" [Spitalfields].
[Illustration:
ROBERT SEYMOUR. _October 1st, 1830._
"THE ADELAIDE MILL."
_Face p. 213._]
FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1830.
Whilst England was thus peacefully passing through the excitement of a
succession to a vacant throne, France was convulsed with one of her
ever-recurring revolutions. Charles the Tenth, driven from his throne,
had been replaced by one who in his turn, some three and twenty years
afterwards, was doomed to give place to the Bonaparte whose sun we
ourselves have seen set in the defeat and disaster of Sedan. We find
portraits in September, 1830, of Louis Philippe, king of the French, of
the queen, General Lafayette, the ex-king Charles the Tenth, and the Duc
d'Angouleme. Besides these, we meet with several clever illustrations by
the artist, on stone, of the stirring events of the time, which are
interesting and valuable specimens of his versatile powers.
Some of our readers may remember a passage in Peter Pindar, where the
merciless satirist ridicules George the Third's German band, telling us
(in allusion to his Majesty's well-known penurious habits) that,
although they displaced native talent and expected "to feast upon the
Coldstream regiments fat," their experience was altogether of another
character:--
"But ah, their knives no veal nor mutton carved!
To feasts they went indeed, but went and starved!"
The services of these foreign musical mercenaries had been retained by
George the Fourth, but one of the very earliest acts of his successor
was to dismiss them in favour of the guards' bands, "who," however, if
we are to believe Mr. Greville, had no great reason to be thankful, but
were on the contrary "ready to die of it," as they had to play every
night without pay, and were moreover "prevented" from earning money
elsewhere. This act of the new king is referred to in a sketch by
Seymour, which shows us his Majesty in the act of "discharging the
German band," who may be seen marching off headed by their ancient and
crestfallen drum-major.
ST. JOHN LONG.
The month of October, 1830, witnessed the trial of the notorious
impostor, John St. John Long (whose real name was O'Driscoll) for the
manslaughter of Miss Cushin. The success of this ignorant and notorious
quack, who managed for a series of years to extract a magnificent income
of some L10,000 or L12,000 per annum by trading on the credulity of his
fellow-creatures, forms a curious commentary on the weakness of
contemporary "society." It is said that he commenced life as a
house-painter, and afterwards acquired some slight knowledge of art in
the humble capacity of colour grinder to Sir Thomas Lawrence, and while
colouring (on his own account) some anatomical drawings for a medical
London school, picked up a slight and imperfect knowledge of anatomy.
This stimulated him to further superficial research; and after a few
months' probation, his confidence enabled him to pretend that he
possessed a cure for every disease under the sun--more especially
consumption.[99]
The origin and pretensions of this learned practitioner are thus
referred to in one of the rhymes of the day:--
"You may talk of your Celsus, Machaons, and Galens,
Physicians who cured all incurable ailings,
But ne'er yet was doctor applauded in song
Like that erudite Phoenix, the great Doctor Long.
Such astonishing cures he performs, I assure ye,
Some think him a god--all a _lusus naturae_:
The whole animal system, no matter how wrong,
Is set right in a moment by great Doctor Long.
Through all regions his vast reputation has flown,
Through the torrid, the frigid, and temperate zone;
The wretch, just expiring, springs healthy and strong
From his bed at one touch of the great Doctor Long.
His skill to experience, what potentates ran--
The Pope, the Grand Llama, the King of Japan!
The great Chinese autocrat, mighty Fon Whong,
Was cured of the 'doldrums' by famed Doctor Long!
In each serious case he considers as well as
Doctor Horace, '_naturam cum furca expellas_';
'Dame Nature' (_i.e._) 'you must poke with a prong.'
Pretty poking she gets from the great Doctor Long.
He cures folks _a merveille_, the French people cry;
The Greeks all pronounce him [Greek: theztagon tz]
Dutch and Germans adore him; the Irish among,
'To be sure he's the dandy!' Go bragh, Doctor Long!
King Chabert has proved, since restored from his panic,
There's small harm in quaffing pure hydrocyanic;
But he never found out it was good for the throng,
When scrubbed on their stomachs by great Doctor Long.
A machine he's invented, stupendous as new,
To sweep one's inside as you'd sweep out a flue;
No climbing boy, urged by the sound of the thong,
Can brush out your vitals like great Doctor Long.[100]
* * * * *
Garter King has assigned, like a sad 'fleering Jack,'
A duck for a crest, with the motto, '_Quack, Quack_'
To the proud name of St. John (it should be _St. Johng_,
Which would rhyme with the surname of great Doctor Long).
Great house-painting, sign-painting, face-painting sage!
Thou Raffaelle of physic!--thou pride of our age!
Alas! when thou diest, and the bell goes ding-dong,
Sure Hygeia herself will expire with her Long!
Then fill every glass, drink in grand coalition,
_Long life_, _long_ await this _long_-headed physician;
_Long_, _long_ may Fame sound, with her trumpet and song,
Through each nation the name of the great Doctor Long!"[101]
"Dr. Long's" remedy ("the prong" referred to in the foregoing ballad)
was of the simplest possible character, and--his dupes in nine cases out
of ten being women--his success complete. He invented a wonderful
liniment or lotion, by means of which he professed to diagnose and
eradicate the virus of consumption. With many patients an inflammation
followed its application, which (according to the quack) discovered the
presence of disease, and which, after a plentiful crop of guineas had
been extracted, nature was allowed to heal: the patient was then
pronounced out of danger. With some persons the liniment was perfectly
innocuous, and when this was the case the patient was informed that no
disease need be feared. The secret of course lay in the fact that the
quack used two liniments, apparently identical, one of which only
contained the irritating medium. Many actually consumptive persons of
course consulted him; but when this was the case he refused his
assistance, on the ground that it had been invoked too late.
He carried the imposition, as might have been anticipated, once too far,
and, in the case of the beautiful and unfortunate Miss Cushin (a lady of
highly nervous temperament), maintained the inflammation for so long a
time that nature for once refused to assist him, and when Sir Benjamin
Brodie was summoned, mortification had already set in. The trial
resulted in a verdict of guilty, but the judge (Baron Parke), who summed
up scandalously in his favour, instead of sending the fellow to hard
labour, imposed a fine of L250, which was immediately paid.
Seymour alludes to this event in a pictorial satire, in which he shows
us St. John Long, with a vulture's head and beak, kneeling on the floor
of a dungeon with a bottle by his side labelled "lotion," and (beneath)
the words,--"Lost, L12,000 per annum, _medical practice_. Whoever will
restore the same to Mr. St. J. L--g, shall receive the benefit of his
advice."
Miss Cushin's death was quickly followed by another fatal case, that of
Mrs. Colin Campbell Lloyd, who also died from the effects of the
corrosive lotion, and St. John Long the following year was again put on
his trial for manslaughter; in this case the fellow was acquitted.
Seymour's prediction was not destined to be verified. The _soi-disant_
St. John Long, _alias_ O'Driscoll, in spite of these "mistakes," which
in our day would receive a harsher term, retained his large "practice"
to the last, and died--still a young man--of the very disease to which
he professed to be superior, thus conclusively proving better than
anything else could have done the utter impotency of his preparation.
Anstey (son of the once celebrated author of the "New Bath Guide")
amusingly describes the administration of an oath to a witness in a
court of law:--
"Here, Simon, you shall (silence there!)
The truth and all the truth declare,
And nothing but the truth be willing
To speak, so help you G--d (a shilling)."[102]
The artist possibly had this quotation in his mind when he designed the
following:--The deponent is a country bumpkin, to whom an official
tenders the Testament, at the same time extending his disengaged palm.
"Pleas zur," says Hodge, "wot be I to zay?" (To him the officer), "Say,
This is the truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God one and
sixpence."
The open and notorious bribery, corruption, and intimidation which
prevailed in those days at parliamentary elections; Sir Robert Peel's
"New Police Act" (which was received with extraordinary suspicion and
dislike); the Reform Bill; the universal distress and consequent bread
riots of 1830-31, form the subjects of other pictorial satires by Robert
Seymour, which seem, however, to call for little notice.
The artist's talent and services were constantly in demand as a designer
on wood; but finding that the productions of his pencil suffered at the
hands of the wood-engravers to whom they were entrusted, and the very
inferior paper upon which the impressions were taken, he, in or about
the year 1827, began to learn the art of etching on copper. We believe
his earliest attempts in this direction will be found in a work now
exceedingly rare, bearing the title of "Assisting, Resisting, and
Desisting." A volume called "Vagaries, in Quest of the Wild and
Wonderful," which appeared in 1827, was embellished with six clever
plates after the manner of George Cruikshank, and ran through no less
than three editions.
The "Humorous Sketches," several times republished, perhaps the only
work by which Seymour is now known to the general public, appeared
between the years 1834 and 1836. They were first published at threepence
each by Richard Carlisle, of Fleet Street, who is said to have paid the
artist fifteen shillings for each drawing on the stone. Carlisle falling
into difficulties shortly before Seymour's death, sold the copyright and
lithographic stones to Henry Wallis, who in turn parted with the latter
to Mr. Tregear, of Cheapside, but retaining his property in the
copyright, transferred the drawings to steel, and published them in
1838, with letterpress by Alfred Crowquill. Mr. Henry G. Bohn issued an
edition in 1842, and another some twenty-three years later, with plates
so sadly worn and blurred by over use that the best part of this last
edition (issued by the Routledges in 1878) is the binding.
The "Humorous Sketches" (we refer, of course, only to the early
impressions), although affording fair examples of the artist's comic
style and manner, are in truth of very unequal merit. They comprise some
eighty subjects, which, owing to the frequent republications, are so
well known that it would be superfluous to attempt a detailed
description of them here. The best is unquestionably the one numbered
XXV., "This is a werry lonely spot, Sir; I wonder you arn't afeard of
being rob'd." The inevitable sequel is amusingly related by Crowquill:--
"Poor Timmins trembled as he gazed
Upon the stranger's face;
For cut-purse! robber! all too plain,
His eye could therein trace.
'Them's werry handsome boots o' yourn,'
The ruffian smiling cried;
'Jist draw your trotters out, my pal,
And we'll swop tiles beside.
That coat, too, is a pretty fit,--
Don't tremble so--for I
Vont rob you of a single fish,
I've other fish to fry.'"
The "Sketches," with other detached works by the artist, reappeared in
an edition published by the late John Camden Hotten, entitled "Sketches
by Seymour," comprising in all 186 subjects, for the most part sadly
worn impressions. Although there is nothing whatever "Hogarthian" about
the originals, as the amiable publisher would have us (as usual)
believe, we may admit that the faces in No. 24, _At a Concert_, are a
perfect study, and that this sketch, with Nos. 45 and 46 (_Snuffing_ and
_Smoking_), afford excellent examples of the artist's ability as a
draughtsman.
"THE BOOK OF CHRISTMAS."
But the work which contains probably some of the best specimens of the
artist's style is one now exceedingly scarce. Christmas books, like
Christmas cards, are practically unsaleable after the great Christian
festival has come and gone; and this was the experience of Mr. T. K.
Hervey's "Book of Christmas," which, owing to the author's dilatoriness,
came out "a day after the fair," and despite its attractions proved
unmarketable. This circumstance, we need not say, by no means detracts
from its value, and as a matter of fact, the collector will now deem
himself fortunate if he succeeds in securing a copy at a price exceeding
by one half the original cost. Those who have formed their ideas of
Seymour's powers from the oft republished and irretrievably damaged
impressions of the "Humorous Sketches," will be astonished at the
unaccustomed style, vigour, and beauty of these illustrations. A few of
the earlier _etchings_ are somewhat faint and indistinct, as if the
artist, even at that time, was scarcely accustomed to work on copper.
They, however, improve as he proceeds with his work; the larger number
are really beautiful, and are characterised by a vigour of conception
and execution, of which no possible idea can be formed by those who have
seen only the "Humorous Sketches." Noteworthy among the illustrations
may be mentioned the finely executed head of _Old Christmas_, facing
page 23; the _Baronial Hall_ (a picture highly realistic of the
Christmas comfort and good cheer which is little better than a myth to
many of us); _The Mummers_; _Christmas Pantomime_; _Market, Christmas
Eve_; _Boxing Day_; and _Twelfth Night in the London Streets_. The
cheery seasonable book shows us the _Norfolk Coach_ with its spanking
team rattling into London on a foggy Christmas Eve, heaped with fat
turkeys, poultry, Christmas hampers and parcels. William Congreve tells
us--
"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak."
The irritable personage awoke from his slumbers by the music of the
waits, certainly does not belong to any of the order of animate or
inanimate subjects so softened, soothed, or bent, as aforesaid, for he
opens his window and prepares to discharge the contents of his jug on
the heads of the devoted minstrels. If the ancient ophicleide player,
with the brandy bottle protruding from his great coat pocket, might but
know of the impending cataract which more immediately threatens himself,
he would convey himself from the dangerous neighbourhood with all the
alacrity of which his spindle shanks are capable. A younger neighbour on
the opposite side of the street awaits the catastrophe with amused
interest, whilst a drunken "unfortunate" executes--under the elevating
influences of music and drink--a _pas seul_ on the pavement below. In
the etching of _Story Telling_, the deep shadows of an old baronial hall
are illuminated solely by the moonbeams and the flickering flame of the
firelight; a door opens into a gallery beyond, and one of the listeners,
fascinated by the ghost story to which she is listening, glances
fearfully over her shoulder as if apprehensive that something uncanny
will presently issue out of the black recesses. The ghostly surroundings
have their influences on the very cat, who looks uneasily about her as
if afraid of her shadow. Besides the thirty-six etchings on copper, the
book contains several charming woodcuts, impressed on paper of a very
different quality to that on which the artist was accustomed to behold
impressions from his wood blocks.
Of a class entirely different to the foregoing may be mentioned the
still rarer series of comicalities executed by the artist under the
title of "New Readings of old Authors," of which we may notice the
following: _Moved in Good Time_ (_Taming of the Shrew_, Act 2, Sc. 1), a
tax-gatherer and other creditors bemoaning themselves outside the
premises of a levanted debtor; _I am to get a man, whate'er he be_ (Act
3, Sc. 2), disciples of Burke and Hare providing themselves with a
living subject; _I do remember when the fight was done, when I was dry_
(King Henry IV., Part 1, Act 1, Sc. 3), a victorious prize-fighter
recruiting his exhausted frame by imbibing many quarts of strong ale;
_He was much Feared by his Physicians_ (Act 4, Sc. 1), an irascible
gouty patient flinging medicine bottles and nostrums at one of his
doctors, and stamping a prostrate one under foot; _You are too great to
be by me gainsaid_ (_King Henry_ IV., Part 2, Act 1, Sc. 1), a huge
woman administering chastisement to a small and probably (in more senses
than one) _frail_ husband; _My Lord, I over rode him on the way_ (Act 1,
Sc. 1), a miserable huntsman who has ridden over and killed one of the
master's fox-hounds; _He came, saw, and overcame_ (Act 4, Sc. 2), a
wretched Frenchman, who, overbalancing himself, falls over the rails of
a bear-pit amongst the hungry animals below; _Never was such a sudden
scholar made_, (_King Henry_ V., Act 1, Sc. 1), in allusion to the
installation of the Duke of Wellington as Chancellor of Oxford
University; _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, a fat sleeper suffering under
the agonies of nightmare, under the influence of whose delusion he
fancies himself roasting before a vast fire, with a huge hook stuck
through his stomach; and, _I beg the ancient privilege of Athens: as she
is mine, I may dispose of her_ (Act 1, Sc. 1), an Englishman attempting
to dispose of his ugly, wooden-legged old harridan of a wife by auction.
The lithographic stones on which the drawings to these "New Readings"
were made, and which comprised no less than three hundred drawings, were
effaced before the artist's death, and impressions from them are now, of
course, more than difficult to procure. The Shakespeare series were
collected and republished in four volumes, in 1841-2, by Tilt & Bogue,
of Fleet Street, and even these last are very seldom met with.
On the 10th of December, 1831, there started into life a periodical of
decidedly pronounced political bias and opinions, entitled "Figaro in
London." Politics ran high in those days; it was the time of the great
agitation for "reform," which in those days, as we shall presently see,
was both loudly called for and imperatively necessary. A mob of boys and
degraded women had taken complete possession of Bristol,--had driven its
deformed little mayor over a stone wall in ignominious flight,--had
burnt down the gaol and the mansion-house, and laid Queen Square in
ashes, whilst the military and its very strangely incompetent officer
looked on while the city was burning.[103] Every one in those days was
either a rabid Tory or an ultra Radical. It was just the period for an
enthusiastic youth to plunge into the excitement of political life; but
the crude, unformed opinions of a young man scarcely of age are of
little value, and the political creed of the proprietor and originator
of this literary (?) venture does not appear to have been clearly
defined even to himself. In his valedictory addresses written three
years afterwards, when things were not altogether so rosy with him as
when he started his periodical, he confesses that he belongs to no
party, for "we have had," he says, "such a thorough sickener of the
Whigs, that we do expect something better from the new government,
_although it be a Tory one_."
The price of "Figaro in London," one of the immediate predecessors of
the comic publications of our day, was a penny, quite an experiment in
times when the price of paper was dear, and periodical literature was
heavily handicapped with an absurdly heavy duty. "Figaro" consisted of
four weekly pages of letterpress illustrated by Robert Seymour. The
projector, proprietor, and editor, was Mr. Gilbert a Beckett, whose
name--with those of men of vastly superior literary attainments--was
associated in after years with the early fortunes of _Punch_. The
literary part of the performance was indeed sorry stuff,--the main stay
and prop of the paper from its very commencement was Seymour, whose
drawings however suffered severely at the hands of the engraver and
paper maker. An eccentricity of the publication perhaps deserves notice.
It professed to look with sovereign contempt upon advertisements, as
occupying a quantity of unnecessary space--considering, however, that
exception was made in favour of one particularly persevering hatter of
the period, we are driven to the conclusion that the projector's
contempt for a source of revenue which modern newspaper proprietors can
by no means afford to despise, was nearly akin to that expressed by the
fox after he had come to the melancholy conclusion that the grapes he
longed for were absolutely beyond his reach.
The new periodical assumed from the outset a position which cannot fail
to amuse the journalist and reader of the present day. It professed to
look down upon all other publications (with certain exceptions of
magnitude, whom the editor deemed it prudent to conciliate) with
supercilious contempt. The absurdity of these pretensions will strike
any one who turns over its forgotten pages, and compares his pretensions
with Mr. a Beckett's own share of the performance. The mode in which
this young gentleman's editorial duties were conducted, gathered from
extracts taken at random from the "Notices to Correspondents," were, to
say the least, peculiar: "A. B., who has written to us, is a fool of the
very lowest order. His communication is rejected." Poor Mr. Cox of Bath
is told he "is a rogue and a fool for sending us a letter without paying
the postage. If he wants his title page, let him order it of his
bookseller, when it will be got as a matter of course from our
publisher," and so on. The aristocracy are regarded with a disfavour
which must have given them serious disquietude. The "coming out" of the
daughter of the late Lord Byron, or a _soiree_ at the Duchess of
Northumberland's town house, serve as occasions for indulging in
splenetic abuse of what Mr. a Beckett was pleased to term "the beastly
aristocracy." Authors, even of position, were not spared by this young
Ishmael of the press, the respected Mrs. Trollope, for instance, being
unceremoniously referred to as "Mother Trollope." The only excuse of
course for this sort of thing is to be found in the fact that comic
journalism being then in its infancy, personal abuse was mistaken for
satire; while, so far as the bad taste of the editor is concerned,
allowance must be made for an inexperienced young man who imagined that
the editorship of a paper, wholly destitute of merit except that which
Seymour brought to its aid, conferred upon himself a position which
rendered him superior to the rules of literary courtesy.
With all these pretensions, however, a Beckett was conscious of the
powerful assistance he was receiving from the artist; and we find him,
after his own peculiar fashion and more than questionable taste,
constantly alluding to the fact; describing him at various times as
"that highly gifted and popular artist, Mr. Seymour;" "our illustrious
artist Seymour;" and so on. In the preface to his second volume, he
indulges in the following flight of fancy, which will suffice to give us
an idea of the literary merits of the editor himself: "In this our
annual address," he says, "we cannot omit a puff for the rampant
Seymour, in whom the public continue to _see-more_ and more every time
he puts his pencil to the block for the illustration of our periodical."
This was the sort of stuff which passed for wit in 1832.[104] As for
Seymour himself, he was annoyed at these fulsome and foolish
compliments, and in a letter which he wrote to A Beckett after the
quarrel to be presently related, told him in the plainest terms that,
"the engraving, bad printing, and extravagant puffing of his designs
were calculated to do him more harm than good as an artist."
But artist and editor jogged on together in perfect good will until the
16th of August, 1834, when, for the first and only time, "Figaro in
London" made its appearance without any illustrations at all. The two
succeeding weekly issues contained each a single woodcut after Seymour's
drawing, but from that time until the end of the year, when A Beckett
himself retired from the proprietorship and disposed of his interest in
the concern, the paper was illustrated by Isaac Robert Cruikshank; this
change was due to the following circumstance.
A special feature of "Figaro in London" was its theatrical leader. A
Beckett had always taken an interest in dramatic matters, and was
himself author of some thirty plays, the very titles of which are now
forgotten. Not content with being proprietor and editor of a newspaper,
he was concerned at this time in another venture, being proprietor and
manager of a theatre in Tottenham Court Road, known at different times
under the various designations of the Tottenham Street or West London
Theatre, the Queen's, and latterly as the Prince of Wales' Theatre. The
result was almost a foregone conclusion. A newspaper is a sufficiently
hazardous speculation, but a theatre in the hands of an inexperienced
manager is one of the most risky of all possible experiments; and the
result in this case was so unfortunate, that A Beckett in the end had to
seek the uncomfortable protection of the insolvent court. He was
considerably indebted to Seymour for the illustrations to "Figaro," half
of the debt thus incurred being money actually paid away by the artist
to the engraver who executed the cuts from his drawings on the wood.
Finding that A Beckett was in no position to discharge this debt or to
remunerate him for his future services, Seymour did--what every man of
business must have done who, like the artist, was dependent on his
pencil for _bread_, refused any longer to continue his assistance. Apart
from the bad paper and bad impressions of which he complained, and above
all the bad taste displayed in fulsome adulation of his own merits,
supremely distasteful to a man of real ability, Seymour appears hitherto
to have entertained no bad feeling towards A Beckett personally.
The result however was a feud. A Beckett was not unnaturally angry, and
an angry man in his passion is apt to lose both his head and his memory.
Forgetting the manner in which he had shortly before acknowledged the
services and talent of the artist, he now attacked him and his abilities
with a malice which would be unintelligible if we had not seen something
of his nature and disposition. In his favourite "Notices to
Correspondents" in the number of 13th September, 1834, he professes to
account for the employment of Isaac Robert Cruikshank after the
following disingenuous fashion: "Mr. Seymour, our ex-artist, is much to
be pitied for his extreme anguish at our having come to terms with the
celebrated Robert Cruikshank in the supplying the designs of the
caricatures in 'Figaro.' Seymour has been venting his rage in a manner
as pointless as it is splenetic, and we are sorry for him. He ought,
however, to feel, that notwithstanding our friendly wish to bring him
forward, which we have done in an eminent degree, we must engage
_first-rate_ ability when public patronage is bestowed so liberally, as
it now is upon this periodical. He ought therefore not to be nettled at
our having obtained a superior artist." The public, however, were not to
be _gulled_; they perfectly well knew that Isaac Robert Cruikshank was
an inferior artist in every respect to Seymour, and had not forgotten
the tribute which the foolish editor had previously paid to the talents
and ability of the latter. Conduct like this could only recoil on the
head of the person who was injudicious and spiteful enough to be guilty
of it. The "Notices to Correspondents" in subsequent numbers continued
to be filled with references and allusions to Seymour, dictated by a
malice which was alike silly and childish. They are not worthy of
repetition here, and we must refer the reader for them to the numbers of
"Figaro in London" of 20th September and 15th November, 1834, or (if he
have not access to its pages) to the short biographical notice prefixed
to the latest edition of the "Sketches" by Mr. Henry G. Bohn. We have no
doubt whatever that the interval between these dates was employed in
fruitless endeavours on the part of A Beckett to arrange terms with the
artist, who, however, steadily refused to give the failing publication
the indispensable benefit of his assistance. Left as it were to its own
resources, the circulation, in spite of the graphic help accorded by
Robert Cruikshank, steadily declined, and A Beckett finally retired from
the editorship and proprietorship on the 27th of December, 1834. Seymour
wielded a far more effectual weapon of offence than any which A Beckett
possessed, and dealt him blows which at this time and in his then
circumstances must have been keenly felt. One of Seymour's satires is
aimed specially at the "Notices to Correspondents" already mentioned,
and shows us a heavy, vulgar fellow seated at his desk, habited in a
barber's striped dressing-gown _a la Figaro_. His features are distorted
with passion, for he has received a letter the contents of which are
anything but flattering, addressed "To the Editor of the nastiest thing
in London." This sketch bears the following descriptive title: "An
editor in a _small way_, after pretending a great deal about his
correspondents, is here supposed to have received _a_ letter." A second
skit shows us a critic examining a picture representing "the death of A
Beckett, Archbishop of Cant." A figure in armour, with its vizor down
(obviously intended for the artist) is depicted in the act of cutting at
the "archbishop" with a sword, the blade of which is inscribed "debts
due." His first blow has severed the mitre labelled "assumption," and
the pastoral staff, inscribed "impudence," with which the victim vainly
endeavours to defend himself. "Don't," says A Beckett, as he falls
prostrate amid a heap of "spoilt paper," among which we recognise,
"Figaro," "The Thief," "The Wag," and other periodicals with which his
name was associated. "Don't cut at me 'our own inimitable, our
illustrious, our talented;' pray don't give me any more cuts; think how
many I have had and not paid you for already:" a hand indicates the way
"to the Insolvent Court."
"Figaro," after the retirement of A Beckett, passed into the editorial
hands of Mr. H. Mayhew, and conscious of the injury which the defection
of Seymour had done to the undertaking, he lost no time in opening
negotiations with a view to his return. In this he experienced little
difficulty, for Seymour was glad to avail himself of the opportunity of
giving to the public the most convincing proof which could have been
adduced of the falsity of the libels which had been published by the
retiring and discomfited editor. The fourth volume commenced 3rd of
January, and from that time until his death (in 1836) he continued to
illustrate the paper. Mayhew announces his return after the following
curious fashion: "The generous Seymour, with a patriotic ardour
unequalled since the days of Curtius, has abandoned all selfish
considerations, and yielded to our request for his country's sake. Again
he wields the satiric pencil, and corruption trembles to its very base.
His first peace-offering to 'Figaro in London,' is the rich etching
[woodcut] our readers now gaze upon with laughing eyes." Constant
references of a laudatory kind are made to him in succeeding numbers.
The woodcuts after Seymour's designs, which appear in "Figaro in
London," are too small and unimportant to justify the title which the
editor gives them of "caricatures;" and relating to political matters
which at that time were far more efficiently chronicled by the pencil of
H. B., they have lost any interest which they once might have commanded.
The most interesting illustrations which Seymour contributed to
"Figaro," are the brief series of theatrical portraits, which are not
only clever but evidently excellent likenesses.
It was not only in the case of "Figaro in London" that the slanders of A
Beckett recoiled upon his own head. That gentleman in 1832 had started a
sort of rival to Hood's "Comic Annual," under the title of the "Comic
Magazine." It was cheaper in price than the former publication, and
contained an amazing number of amusing cuts of the punning order, after
Seymour's designs. After the quarrel with A Beckett, the artist withdrew
his assistance from its pages, and the illustrations show a fearful
falling off after 1833. Many of the wretched designs which follow bear
the signature of "Dank," and so destitute are they of merit that the
"embellishments" (as they are termed) for 1834, are altogether below
criticism.
At the opening of the present chapter we said that Robert Seymour was
_almost_ a genius. Genius, however, he never absolutely touched; he was
destitute of the inventive faculties which distinguished John Leech, and
lacked the vivid imagination which enabled George Cruikshank to realize
any idea which occurred to him, whether comical, grave, realistic, or
terrible. His talents as an artist, though undoubtedly great, ran in a
narrow groove, and their bent is shown by the well-known "Humorous
Sketches," and the less known but far more admirable designs which he
executed for the "Comic Magazine." He always had a fancy for depicting
and satirizing cockneys and cockney subjects, and had conceived the by
no means new or ambitious idea of producing a series of such pictures
with an appropriate letterpress to be furnished by a literary coadjutor,
whose work, however, was to be subservient to his own. The idea was not
perhaps a very definite one, but the pictorial part of the work was
commenced, and four plates actually etched at the time the artist was
retained to execute the illustrations to the "Book of Christmas." Out
of this undeveloped idea, and out of the four apparently unimportant
drawings to which we have alluded, was destined to evolve the strange
and melancholy story which will be associated for all time with the
mirth-inspiring novel of the "Pickwick Papers."
ORIGIN OF "PICKWICK."
The difficulty at the outset was to find an author to carry out the
artist's idea, indefinite as it was. In this direction there was in
1836, a very _embarras de richesses_, for, if comic artists were few,
there was on the other hand no lack of humourists of the highest order
of merit. Theodore Hook, Clark (the author of "Three Courses and a
Dessert")--probably many others were suggested by the publishers who
were taken into consultation by Seymour; but all were rejected. He
himself seems to have inclined towards Mayhew, with whom it will be
recollected he was associated at this time on "Figaro in London." The
man of all others most fitted to carry out the artist's _own_ idea seems
to us to have been John Poole, one of the most original of English
humourists, whose productions, now forgotten, are worth searching for in
the pages of the "New Monthly" and other periodical publications of a
past day. It is a singular fact, too, that on the first appearance of
the "Pickwick Papers," the authorship was by many ascribed to this very
man. In the end, Mr. Chapman, of the firm of Chapman & Hall, introduced
the artist to one of the most unlikely men for his own purpose that
could possibly have been selected,--the man, as we have already seen, of
all others the least fitted and the least disposed to act the part of
William Coombe to Seymour's character of Thomas Rowlandson.
At this time Charles Dickens was reporter on the staff of a newspaper;
he had written a book which, although successful, had created no very
intense excitement; he was moreover a young man, and consequently
plastic, and fifteen pounds a month would be a small fortune to him; so
at least argued the artist and his friends. How little they understood
the resolute, self-reliant character of this unknown writer! The result
was altogether different from anything they expected. Author and artist
differed at the outset as to the form the narrative should take; but the
man with the strongest power of mind and will took his stand from the
first, and Charles Dickens made it a condition of his retainer that the
illustrations should grow out of the text, instead of the latter being
suggested (as Seymour desired) by the illustrations, and the artist had
reluctantly to give way. No one can doubt that the author was right. By
way however of a concession, and of meeting Seymour's original idea as
far as practicable, he introduced the absurd character of Winkle, the
cockney sportsman. The mode of publication followed was the artist's own
suggestion, who, desiring the widest possible circulation, insisted on
the work being published in monthly numbers at a shilling. Thus it was
that "Pickwick" came to be written.
We are not called on in this place to discuss the merits of "Pickwick";
to compare Charles Dickens with the writers who had immediately preceded
him; to enlarge upon the comic vein which he discovered and made so
peculiarly his own; to show the influence which his humour exercised
upon the literature of the next quarter of a century; to contrast such
humour with his wonderful power of pathos; to marshal the shades of
true-hearted, noble Nell, unhappy Smike, little Paul Dombey, world
abandoned Joe, and compare them with the Wellers--father and son, Mr.
Jingle, Tracy Tupman, Bob Sawyer, and the spectacled but essentially
owlish founder of the "Pickwick Club." All this we fancy has been done
in another place; our task is altogether of a simpler character. We have
to trace the connection which subsisted between the artist and author;
to show how this book--the creation of a writer in the spring-time of
his genius--the essence of fun, the unfailing source of merriment to
countless readers past, present, and to come, came to be associated with
the memory of a terrible and still incomprehensible tragedy.
We have seen that, contrary to his own wishes, Seymour had yielded to
Charles Dickens' suggestion, or rather condition, that the illustrations
should grow out of the text; but he does not seem to have abandoned (so
far as we can judge) all idea of having a hand in the management of the
story, and he never for one instant contemplated interference on the
part of the author with any one of his own designs. If we are to believe
his friends (and their testimony seems to us distinctly valuable in
this place), he was extremely angry at the introduction into the plot of
the "Stroller's Tale," and we may therefore fancy the spirit in which he
would receive Charles Dickens' intimation, conveyed to him in the same
manner that he afterwards communicated to Cruikshank his disapproval of
the last etching in "Oliver Twist," that he objected to that etching "as
not quite _his_ [Dickens'] idea;" that he wished "to have it as complete
as possible, and would feel personally obliged if he would make another
drawing." The letter (on the whole a kindly one) has been set out
elsewhere,[105] and there is no occasion to repeat it here. What other
causes of irritation existed will never be known. All that is still
known is, that he executed a fresh design and handed it over to Dickens
at the time appointed; that he went home and destroyed nearly all the
correspondence relating to the subject of "Pickwick"; that he executed a
drawing for a wood-engraver named John Jackson,[106] and delivered it
himself on the evening of the 20th of April, 1836; that he then returned
to his house in King Street, Islington, and committed self-destruction.
He left behind him an unfinished drawing for "Figaro in London," which
afterwards appeared (in the state in which it was found) in the pages of
that periodical.
Various reasons have been assigned for this rash act, all more or less
contradictory. According to some he was a man of equable temperament;
while others, who knew him personally, have told us that he was nervous
and subject to terrible fits of depression. Some would trace the act to
his quarrel with A Beckett; but this is simply absurd, seeing that it
had occurred some two years before. We need not, as it seems to us,
travel out of our course to seek the real cause, which was probably due
to over-work. His energies had been tasked to the utmost to keep pace
with the supply which his ever-increasing popularity brought him. The
state of his mind appears to us clearly indicated by his design of _The
Dying Clown_, one of the last drawings which he etched for the "Pickwick
Papers," and for which we must refer the reader to the _original_
edition only; anything more truly melancholy we can scarcely imagine.
Entirely appropriate to the story, it seems to tell its own tale of the
morbid state of mind of the man who designed it; it is a pictorial
commentary on the sad story we have attempted to tell.
[Illustration:
ROBERT SEYMOUR. "_Pickwick Papers._"
"THE DYING CLOWN."
_Face p. 233._]
A too zealous application to work has destroyed many men both of talent
and genius; it produces different effects in different individuals,
according to their respective temperaments: while it drove Robert
Seymour to frenzy, it killed John Leech--a man of far finer imaginative
faculties--with the terrible pangs of _angina pectoris_. Differently
endowed as they were, both belonged to the order of men so touchingly
described by _Manfred_:--
"There is an order
Of mortals on the earth, who do become
Old in their youth, and die ere middle age
Without the violence of warlike death;
Some perishing of pleasure, some of study,
Some worn with toil, some of mere weariness,
Some of disease, and some insanity,
And some of wither'd or of broken hearts;
For this last is a malady which slays
More than are numbered in the lists of fate."[107]
The coadjutorship of distinguished artists and authors has led to more
than one strange controversy. Those who have read Forster's "Life of
Dickens" will remember the curious claim which George Cruikshank
preferred after Dickens' death to be the suggester of the story of
"Oliver Twist," and the unceremonious mode in which Mr. Forster disposed
of that pretension. We have referred elsewhere to the edifying
controversy between George Cruikshank and Harrison Ainsworth, in
relation to the origin of the latter's novels of the "Miser's Daughter"
and "The Tower of London." The republication of Seymour's "Humorous
Sketches" in 1866, led to a very curious claim on the part of his
friends, in which they sought to establish the fact that he was the
originator and inventor of the incidents of "Pickwick." This claim
happily was made while Dickens was yet alive, and was very promptly and
satisfactorily disposed of by himself in a letter which he wrote to the
_Athenaeum_ on the 20th of March, 1866. Author and artist have long since
gone to their rest; and the plan which the author of this work proposed
when he sat down to write the story of Robert Seymour, was to place that
artist in the position which he believes him to occupy in the ranks of
British graphic humourists, and not to rake up or revive the memory of a
somewhat painful controversy. Of the claim itself we would simply
remark, that not only was it made in all sincerity by those who loved
and cherished the memory of Robert Seymour, but that to a certain extent
the claim has a foundation of fact to rest upon; for who will deny that
had not Seymour communicated his idea to Chapman, and Chapman introduced
the artist to Dickens, the "Pickwick Papers" themselves would have
remained unwritten. In this sense, but in this sense only, therefore,
Robert Seymour was the undoubted originator of "Pickwick." He was an
artist of great power, talent, and ability; and it seems to us that
those only detract from his fame who, in a kind but mistaken spirit of
zeal, would claim for him any other position than that which he so
justly and honestly earned for himself, as one of the most talented of
English graphic satirists.
FOOTNOTES:
[97] "Greville Memoirs." vol. i. p. 180.
[98] _Ibid._, p. 207.
[99] His theory, as stated in a book which he published, was this:
that as all men are born in moral sin, so they have about them a
physical depravity in the form of an acrid humour, which, flying
about the system, at length finds vent in diseases which afflict or
terminate existence. He professed by the means afterwards explained
to bring this acrid humour to the surface, and having thus expelled
the cause of disease, to put an end to every bodily ailment.
[100] In allusion to a complex piece of machinery he said (in his
book) he had invented, which when complete would cost him two
thousand guineas. This machine, said Long, _alias_ O'Driscoll, "will
search all the body, and cut away all the diseased parts, leaving the
patient perfectly sound and well."
[101] We found a curtailed copy of these amusing verses in one of the
_jeux d'esprit_ of the time, called "Valpurgis; or, the Devil's
Festival" (William Kidd, 6, Old Bond Street, 1831), illustrated by
Seymour. With the exception of one immaterial verse, we now give the
complete poem; in the ring of the verses the reader will have no
difficulty in recognising the hand of the Rev. Richard Harris Barham,
subsequently author of the "Ingoldsby Legends."
[102] Anstey's "Pleader's Guide," Bk. 2nd (1810).
[103] Colonel Brereton. His conduct afterwards formed the subject of
a court-martial, but the unhappy man forestalled the "finding" by
committing suicide.
[104] Mr. a Beckett's strong point was puns; in later days he found a
vehicle for these in the well-known "Comic Histories" of England and
Rome, illustrated by John Leech. It was his peculiar good fortune
always to be associated with artists of the highest ability.
[105] See Forster's "Life of Dickens."
[106] In one account of Seymour's death the name of the engraver is
given as _Starling_. This is a mistake. The engraving (probably one
of the best the unfortunate artist ever executed) represents a sailor
captain of Charles the First's time, showing a casket of pearls to a
lady of remarkable beauty.
[107] Act 3, Scene 1.