[Illustration: From "Jack Sheppard," 1839.]
"Jack Sheppard," with its requisition of antiquarian exactness so
plausibly met, may well have suggested to Cruikshank a more epic theme
than the exploits of a master-thief, revolving about a nobler gaol than
Newgate. In a letter which may or may not have been posted (it is to be
read at the back of No. 9910 H in the Cruikshank collection at South
Kensington), he writes: "The fact is, I am endeavouring to emancipate
myself from the thraldom of the Booksellers, whose slave I have been
nearly all my life; to effect this object I have published, in
conjunction with the author, a work called 'The Tower of London.'"
[Illustration: THE DEATH WARRANT. From "The Tower of London," 1840.]
Of the acrimonious discussion that Cruikshank started by claiming to
have originated Ainsworth's romance, I shall say little. That Cruikshank
was the senior partner there is no doubt. It was he who took Ainsworth
to the Tower, and he asserted that he "hardly ever read a line" of the
text, which must be considered to illustrate his designs. It may be
said, however, that Ainsworth's text has been repeatedly devoured
without the aid of Cruikshank's designs. He was a public idol. Smiled on
once by Sir Walter Scott, he contrived to become the first
horror-monger, _via_ history, of an age whose favourite realism was the
safe realism of torture and decent crime. In the September before his
death, which occurred January 3, 1882, he was informed by the Mayor of
Manchester that the last twelve months' record of the public free
libraries of that town showed that "twenty volumes of his works" were
"being perused in Manchester by readers of the free libraries every day
all the year through."
That I may not write a decrescendo about the designs for "The Tower of
London," I begin with their faults. Cruikshank's Simon Renard is too
darkling a Spaniard even for a staged Spain, and even Lady Jane Grey's
waist should have been made rather larger than her throat. "Mere
skeletons in farthingales," quoth "The Athenaeum" of Cruikshank's Queen
Mary, Jane and Elizabeth. To what extent defective figure-drawing
diminishes the proper force of Cruikshank's designs the reader may judge
by the reproduction of _The Death Warrant_, which is presented as a
frank example of his melodramatic invention. The masked assassin peers
at the Spanish Ambassador through the window of the chamber of the Tower
where the little princes were murdered, and where the pen that has just
doomed Lady Jane Dudley hovers in Queen Mary's hand. Her hound is an
incarnate presentiment and the gods of old Drury could have asked no
more. There are, however, far finer plates in the book. In Underhill,
the Hot Gospeller, burning at the stake, his finger nails riveted to his
bare shoulders while he bawls his last agony, Cruikshank shows the
longevity of the Marian crime--the crime of creating fears and
loathings, for here we have absolutely a reflective shudder, a naked
confidence from an abominable place which we thought was cleansed by
merciful years. No other figure in the gallery of Cruikshank's "Tower"
is so vital as this dying man, but he drew a handsome Wyat, an
executioner as repulsive as a ghoul, and groups--for instance Elizabeth
and her escort on the steps of Traitor's Gate--which a stage manager of
melodrama might like to imitate.
Partly contemporaneous with "The Tower of London" was Ainsworth's "Guy
Fawkes" (1840-1) with Cruikshankian etchings, which are as little
serviceable to the dignity of a brave fanatic as the effigies exhibited
by boys on the fifth of November. Cruikshank had drawn a typical effigy
of Guy for "The Every-Day Book" of 1826; twelve years later came his
ludicrous _Guys in Council_, but being required in 1840 to produce a
serious Guy he only succeeded in being operatic. In one of his etchings
the rigidity of Guy's cloak suggests that the garment is a
"bath-cabinet" in occupation; in another a celestial visitor resembles a
Dutch doll. Such failures are not to be explained by a desire to annoy
the publisher of "Guy Fawkes," Richard Bentley, whom Cruikshank bitterly
attacked in 1842. Cruikshank could and did produce etchings in a hurry
for stories which he had not read, by way of expressing his dislike for
a contract which survived his approval of it; but he could also be
befooled by his own solemnity.
[Illustration: THE DUEL IN TOTHILL FIELDS ("The Miser's Daughter"). From
"Ainsworth's Magazine," 1842.]
Cruikshank's relations with Ainsworth continued in "Ainsworth's
Magazine," of which the first number bears the date February 1842. Among
the stories in this magazine which Cruikshank illustrated must now be
mentioned "The Miser's Daughter" (1842), "Windsor Castle" (1842-3) and
"St James's: or the Court of Queen Anne" (1844). The first of these
stories is only incidentally historical, but it afforded Cruikshank an
opportunity for quickening his hand with the spirit of place. He has
told us that his drawing of Westminster Abbey Cloisters and Lambeth
Church, etc., are "correct copies from nature" [sic], and it almost
seems as we look at his etchings and water-colours for "The Miser's
Daughter" that he copied not only stones but living scenes. His ball in
the Rotunda at Ranelagh has the charm of lavish light and dainty
gaiety; the humour and grace of his _Masquerade in Ranelagh Gardens_ are
too obvious for discovery, and his rendering of the pursuit of a
Jacobite Club on the roofs of houses within view of Westminster Abbey is
a striking nocturne.
In Cruikshank's designs for "Windsor Castle," Mr Julian Moore finds "the
minimum of charm and freshness in the drawing, and maximum of
achievement in technique." I am in disagreement with this verdict, but
it is not unintelligent. Cruikshank's "machine-ruling" is tyrannous to
his Ainsworthian work, and an artist serving the historic muse when she
is very much in earnest can only pray to be academic when he is not
inspired. But Cruikshank did admirable work for "Windsor Castle," and
could hardly help wishing to outshine Tony Johannot, who was also
employed in illustrating that romance. Since "the great George" is not
present to assail me in a vehement script, I may say that I discern an
influence of Johannot upon Cruikshank's design (spirited but not
insufferably vigorous) entitled _The Quarrel between Will Sommers and
Patch_, for there was something called artistic restraint to be learned
from the French illustrator of Cervantes, and this quality is in the
etching I have mentioned, and not negatively there but as a positive
gift of touch. Of Cruikshank's Henry the Eighth, it need only be said
that he is bluff King Hal; his Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour are mere
females: his Herne is as impressive as a person can be who jeopardises
the dignity of demonhood by wearing horns.
"St James's," the last important novel by Ainsworth which Cruikshank
illustrated, gave the artist opportunities for drawing St James's
Palace, London, and portraits of the Duke of Marlborough and other
celebrities. He accepted these opportunities, but his most striking
designs remind one of his illustrations for Smollett. He rejoices in the
contrast between masculine lath and feminine tub, and in one plate
afflicts us with a grinning face which exceeds in ugliness any of C.
Delort's portraits of "l'Homme qui rit." The vigorous design here given
touches the imagination on account of the absent presence of the dame in
the picture hanging on the wall.
[Illustration: THE MARQUIS DE GUISCARD ATTEMPTING TO ASSASSINATE HARLEY.
The man on the table drawing his sword is the Duke of Newcastle ("Saint
James's"). From "Ainsworth's Magazine," 1844.]
In "Ainsworth's Magazine" for January 1846 the last fruit of
Cruikshank's connection with Ainsworth appeared, after a year's
sterility, as a careful etching illustrating that novelist's "Sir Lionel
Flamstead, a Sketch": in the preceding year Cruikshank produced for W.
H. Maxwell the series of historic etchings which, in the opinion of Mr
Frederic G. Stephens, "marks the highest point of Cruikshank's
invention." These etchings illustrate a history of the insurrections in
Ireland in 1798 and 1803. In the selection of Cruikshank, Maxwell or his
publishers may have remembered the skill with which he had illustrated
I. Whitty's "Tales of Irish Life" (1824), though it is one thing to
render the frantic humour of a fight arising from O'Finn calling Redmond
a rascal, or the muddled emotions of a wake, and quite another to
exhibit the conflict between two nightmares of patriotism. Howbeit
Cruikshank realised the horror and poetry of war. His twenty-one
Maxwellian etchings are instructively comparable with Callot's precious
series "_Les Miseres et les Mal-heurs de la Guerre_" (1633). Callot is
at once more horrible and self-restrained. One peers into his work; one
listens to Cruikshank's. The artist of the seventeenth century drew with
minute delicacy the forms and gestures of men. He studied them as a
naturalist, indifferent to the individuality of the unit after fixing
the individuality of the class to which it belongs. Callot's men are
users of the wheel and the estrapade; they roast the husband while they
ravish the wife. They are not grotesques: they are men. Maurice Leloir
drew men of their age and country no more elegantly for the bravest
novel of Dumas. Cruikshank, on the other hand, drew well and hideously
not only Irish men, but Irish individuals. His rebel, obscenely jocose,
impaling a child, might, though a detail in a crowded etching, have been
drawn for Scotland Yard; so too might a woman squatting and smoking
while a wretch writhes on four pikes which take his weight and give it
him back in torture. England is to glow, Ireland is to blush as she
looks at Cruikshank's people of '98. As clear on the memory as his Irish
ruffianism is his portrait of the little drummer dying with his leg
through his drum to protect its voice from dishonour. One has heard of
Lieutenant Hepenstall--him who was called "The Walking Gallows"--as
well as of the drummer of Gorey, but Cruikshank was satisfied with
partizanship, and Ireland forgets him.
Our liberal interpretation of history allows us now to consider a few of
the works of Cruikshank which preserve for us scenes and types of his
age with or without the accompaniment of a fictitious text.
For his delineations of the sailor of Nelson's day we owe much to a
capital but neglected novelist M. H. Barker, author of "Greenwich
Hospital" (1826), "Topsail-Sheet Blocks" (1838), "The Old Sailor's Jolly
Boat" (1844), etc. Before the appearance of the earliest of these books
Cruikshank had etched Lieut. John Sheringham's designs entitled "The
Sailor's Progress" (1818), and those by Capt. Marryat entitled "The
Progress of a Midshipman" (1820). The illustrations to the quarto called
"Greenwich Hospital," are deservedly the most famous of Cruikshank's
sea-pictures. With lavish detail they exhibit Jack tearing along by
coach across pigs and fowls at finable knots per hour; carousing in the
Long Room with billowy sirens under a chandelier of candles; crossing
the line in a frenzy of ceremonious facetiousness; yelling in an
inn-parlour--though armless or "half a tree"--his delight in victory and
Nelson; ... and tied up for a whipping like a naughty boy. Barker was so
pleased with one of the illustrations for "Greenwich Hospital" that he
wrote on a proof (No. 1003-4 in the Cruikshank collection at South
Kensington), "Dear Friend, if you never do another design, the leg of
that table will immortalise you. It is a bona fide Peg." There is a mood
in which Clio prefers that crippled table-leg to Cruikshank's idea of
Solomon Eagle "denouncing of Judgment" upon London.
[Illustration: SOLOMON EAGLE. From the drawing by G. Cruikshank, as
engraved by Davenport for "A Journal of the Plague Year," 1833.]
We have now sounded the word which invites inquiry as to the nature of
Cruikshank's artistic service to London. London is not the Tower or St
James's Palace. Cruikshank, however, is not injured by this scorching
truism. If we go back to 1827 and 1829 we encounter in "The Gentleman's
Pocket Magazine" twenty-four _London Characters_, of which fifteen are
from the hand of George Cruikshank, who doubtless remembered
Rowlandson's "Characteristic Sketches of the Lower Orders" (1820).
George is responsible for very neat portraits of a beadle, waterman,
dustman, watchman ..., and the Cruikshankian enthusiast cries "Eureka!"
for he spies Mr Bumble among them. With "Sunday in London" (1833) came
the first example of Cruikshank's comic treatment of London, which a
book-collector, as distinct from a print-collector, can prize. The
woodcuts in this volume reveal a state of society in which people had
less sense of proportion than they have now, and were excessively vain
or excessively humble, according to the state of their paunch and the
view of them held by the policeman or the beadle. The power of the
beadle had not yet been broken by a metrical inquiry concerning the
origin of his hat. Frenchmen were still "mounseers," and soldiers
marched to Divine Service through St James's Park to the tune of "Drops
of Brandy." The flavour of the obsolete is rich in "Sunday in London";
we who look at it feel strangely toned-down.
[Illustration: THE STREETS, MORNING. From "Sketches by Boz," Second
Series, 1837.]
Place in London as well as character is presented vividly in
Cruikshank's contributions to "Sketches by Boz" (1836-7). Witness the
examples here given. In _The Streets, Morning_, I, a Londoner, feel the
poetry of streets cleansed by quiet, the chastity of Comfort enjoyed, as
it were, by the tolerance of Hardship. The little sweep is an extinct
animal, and yet we are in the neighbourhood of Seven Dials. _Monmouth
Street_, as exhibited by Cruikshank in the same work, is an appreciation
of the Hebrew dealer in old clothes as well as a caricature. We feel the
street to be an open-air parlour and nursery combined; it remains
imperturbably domestic though we walk in it. Another etching, depicting
a beadle hammering the door of a house supposed to be on fire, elicited
from Mr Frederick Wedmore the confession that he knew no artist "so
alive as Cruikshank to the pretty sedateness of Georgian architecture,"
though the remark will be more appreciated after a look at the pretty
etching entitled _French Musicians or Les Savoyards_ (1819), reprinted
in "Cruikshankiana" (1835).
Cruikshank's London ideas were further realised in "Oliver Twist"
(1838), a novel to which he contributed etchings so documentary as well
as imaginative that he attempted to deprive Dickens of the glory of
authorship, by claiming the origination of the story. The fact was, he
had grown to be a collector: he was collecting fame, and in the passion
of his hobby he felt that he might claim to have originated the novel
which owed local colour and a formative idea to his suggestions. The
subject really belongs to the pathology of egoism. Cruikshank gained
nothing by seeking laurels in the field of literature except the
impression on paper of a weakness one prefers to call juvenile rather
than puerile.
[Illustration: THE LAST CAB-DRIVER. From "Sketches by Boz," Second
Series, 1837.]
Yet he had much to give Boz, if that gentleman was minded to write of
rogues. Cruikshank knew all about Buzmen and Adam-tilers; the days when
he drank bene bowse had not been wasted, if low life be worth depicting.
We may accept as portraits his Fagin and Sikes and Artful Dodger,
without digesting the statement that Fagin condemned is himself in
perplexity, and Fagin uncondemned the image of Sir Charles Napier.
Undoubtedly, the workhouses in England of the third decade of the
nineteenth century are in popular fancy all ruled by the nameless master
in cook's uniform, of whom Oliver asked more, but it is not Boz's
master, it is Cruikshank's. All beadles are one Mr Bumble--the Bumble of
Boz and Cruikshank, though without the shadow of the sack with which the
novelist eclipsed him. The etched scene where Fagin, frying sausages,
receives Oliver in a den of thieves, has a squalid comfortableness--a
leering charity--which praises Hell. The etched scene of Sikes's
desperation on the roof of a house in Jacob's Island, Bermondsey, is in
essence Misery itself, vermicular as well as violent. The etched scene
where Fagin sits with blazing eyes in the condemned cell at Newgate
under a window which shows him up like the Day of Judgment has been
called "a picture by Fagin," for rhetoric exhausts itself in confessing
its horror. In "Jack Sheppard," Cruikshank drew Newgate with
particularity, he drew Bedlam with a maniac in it; for "A Journal of the
Plague Year," he drew _The Great Pit in Aldgate_, but Fagin in his
extremity belittles other horrors in Cruikshank's gallery of art. London
is ashamed to see and acknowledge him; he makes her long for rain, and
soap in the rain; he makes her remember her river.
The reader will therefore look sympathetically at the powerful etching
here reproduced from Angus B. Reach's "Clement Lorimer" (1849). It is a
kidnapping scene; there is a drugged girl in the boat; the pier against
which an oar has snapped supports an arch of London Bridge.
It might be doubted if Cruikshank personally cared for any locality
except London if it were not for evidence in the South Kensington Museum
and the dispersed collection of the metropolitan Royal Aquarium. Number
9502A/C in the South Kensington collection of his work is a design for a
house which he intended to build for himself at the seaside. The Royal
Aquarium collection contained several water-colours by him of littoral
subjects. Hastings may remember what she was like before the building of
her esplanade by means of two water-colours by him, dated respectively
1820 and 1828, which Mr Walter Spencer bought for five guineas. _A
Distant View of Shakespeare's Cliff, Dover_, secured by Mr Frank
Karslake, tempted that art-dealer, who was its possessor when I last saw
it, to withhold it from his customers. It is soft, slight and pretty.
With a fanciful _Beachy Head_ (a water-colour "sketch from [sic] part
of Shakespeare's Cliff, Dover, 1830") it sold for seven guineas, the
"Beachy Head" being an outline of the cliff resembling a head looking
left with dropped eyelid as seen (perhaps exclusively) by Cruikshank,
who represents himself as standing in front of it; and I mention this
"Beachy Head" because the same idea informs a rather subtle drollery in
"My Sketch Book" (1833), where a couple are depicted in their fright at
seeing a human face outlined by the edge of the top of Shakespeare's
Cliff. All the sales mentioned in this paragraph were made at the
auction at Sotheby's, 22 and 23 May 1903.
[Illustration: Miss Eske carried away during her Trance.