Nearer perhaps to Cruikshank's heart than this triumph of fancy was _The
Fiend's Frying Pan_ (1832), published in the last number of "Scraps
and Sketches," which represents the devil, immensely exultant, holding
over a fire a frying-pan which contains the whole noisy lascivious crowd
and spectacle of Bartholomew Fair. The fair was proclaimed for the last
time in 1855, and Cruikshank was pleased to figure himself as an
inspirer of the force that struck at its corrupt charm after the fair of
1839 and condemned it to a lingering death. _The Fiend's Frying Pan_ is
now chiefly remarkable as an early example of Cruikshank's love of
crowding a great deal of real life into a vehicle that belittles it.
This frying-pan sends the thought forward to the etching entitled
_Passing Events, or the Tail of the Comet of 1853_, where Albert Smith's
lecture on Mont Blanc, a prize cattle show, emigration to Australia, and
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," are all jumbled together in the hair of a comet
which possesses a chubby and beaming face.
The pictorial journalism of the "Comic Almanacks" is often delicious; no
ephemerides, in my knowledge, equal them in sustained humorous effect.
_Guys in Council_ (1848) haunts one with its grave idiocy. Even His
Holiness Pius X. could scarce refrain from smiling at the blank stare of
the rigid papal guy in the chair, at the low guy who, ere leaving the
conclave, challenges him with a glance of malignant cunning. On the
other hand, it would be hypercritical to seek a prettier rendering of an
almost too pretty custom than _Old May Day_ (1836), with its dancers
ringing the Maypole by the village church. Cruikshank's extraordinary
power of conveying dense crowds into the space of a few square
inches--say six by three--is shown in _Lord Mayor's Day_ (1836) and _The
Queen's Own_ (1838), illustrating Victoria's Proclamation Day. In the
1844 Almanack he humorously foreshadows flying machines in the form of
mansions; but the 1851 Almanack shows his liberality scarcely abreast of
his imagination, as _Modern Ballooning_ is represented by an ass on
horseback ascending as balloonist above a crowd of the long-eared tribe.
[Illustration: SEPTEMBER--MICHAELMAS DAY. From the "Comic Almanack,"
1836.]
One cannot, however, glance through Cruikshank's Victorian caricatures
without perceiving that the passing of the Regent slackened his
Gillrayan fire. True, in the "Table Book" we have a John Bull whose
agony reminds us of the suffering figure in _Preparing John Bull for
General Congress_ (1813): the midgets of infelicitous railway
speculation who strip this bewildered squire of hat and rings, of boots
and pocket-book, while a demented bell fortifies their din, are of an
energy supremely Cruikshankian: no other hand drew them than the hand
which enriched the immortality of the elves in Grimm. Nor will one
easily tire of a vote-soliciting crocodile in the "Omnibus"; and yet the
fact remains that the great motives of Cruikshank's political caricature
pulsated no more. He was ludicrously incompetent for the task of
satirising the forward movement of women: the Almanacks show that, if
their evidence be required. The subjects of Queen Victoria found in
Keene and Du Maurier pictorial critics who, by the implication of their
veracity, their success, demonstrate his imperfect understanding of a
generation to whom George the Fourth was history and legend. To the
ironists of that generation there was something in the Albert Memorial
more provocative than the
"--huge teapots all drill'd round with holes,
Relieved by extinguishers, sticking on poles"
which distinguished the Folly at Brighton. It is too much to say that
the art of the Victorian epoch establishes this fact; yet of what
caricaturist can it be said as of Cruikshank that his naif enthusiasm
for all that an Age rather than a Queen signified by the Albert Memorial
forced him into the role of its patron rather than its satirist? In _A
Pop Gun_ (1860) there is a pathetically feeble engraving, after a
drawing by Cruikshank of Prince Albert and the late Queen, which almost
brings tears to the eyes, its insipidity is so loyally unconscious. And
what does all his marvellous needlework in the Great Exhibition novel
entitled "1851: or The Adventures of Mr and Mrs Cursty Sandboys,"
accomplish for satire in comparison with what it accomplishes as a puff
and a fanfare? Here, as in the _Comet_ of his ill-fated Magazine (1854),
is a skill beside which his Georgian caricatures are but a brat's
defacement of his Board School wall. And yet what is the answer to our
question? Nothing. It is an answer that rings down the curtain on the
diorama called "Cruikshank the journalist."