To do him justice he was academically interested in the whole technique
of pictorial art as practised in his day. He admitted, for instance, to
Charles Hancock, "the sole inventor and producer of blocks by the
process known as 'Etching on Glass,'" that if this invention had come
earlier before him "it would have altered the whole character" of his
drawing, though the designs which he produced by Hancock's process--the
first of which was completed in April 1864--include nothing of
importance.
We will not further linger over the media of reproduction employed by
our artist, but summon a few ideas suggested by the vision we have had
of him sitting like a schoolboy in the schoolroom of the Royal Academy.
As a draughtsman he had been professorial in 1817 when he published with
S. W. Fores two plates entitled _Striking Effects produced by lines and
dots for the assistance of young draftsmen_, wherein he showed, like
Hogarth, the amount of pictorial information which an artist can convey
by a primitively simple method. He was professorial, too, when in 1865
he attempted to put in perspective a twelve mile giant taking a stride
of six miles, on a plate 6 inches long and 3-3/5 inches broad, and
informed the publisher of "Popular Romances of the West of England"
(1865) that about 1825 he had attempted to put in perspective the
Miltonic Satan whose body
"Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood."
Cruikshank's greatest enemy was his mannerism which may even delude the
pessimist of scant acquaintance with him into the idea that it
imperfectly disguises an inability to draw up to the standard of Vere
Foster. The Cruikshankian has merely to direct the attention of such a
person to the frontispiece executed by Cruikshank for T. J. Pettigrew's
"History of Egyptian Mummies" (1834). If a man can draw well in the
service of science his mannerism is the accomplishment of an intention.
[Illustration: THE VETERANS. From "Songs, Naval and National, of the
late Charles Dibden," 1841.]
Ruskin said that Cruikshank's works were "often much spoiled by a
curiously mistaken type of face, divided so as to give too much to
the mouth and eyes and leave too little for forehead," and yet there is
extant a curious MS. note by Cruikshank to the effect that Mr Ruskin's
eyes were "in the wrong Place and not set properly in his head," showing
that Cruikshank was a student of even a patron's physiognomy and
suggesting that, if Ruskin had roamed in Cruikshank's London he would
have convicted the artist of a malady of imitativeness. It must be
remembered that he repeatedly drew recognisable portraits of his
contemporaries; indeed he was so far from being a realist devoted to
libel that Mr Layard confides to us that various studies by George
Cruikshank of "the great George" would, he thinks, "have resulted in an
undue sublimation had completion ever been attained."
Yet the sublimation of the respectable is precisely the rosy view of
Cruikshank the man enjoyed by me at the present moment. He is Captain of
the 24th Surrey Rifle Volunteers; he is Vice-President of the London
Temperance League. He sketches a beautiful palace as a pastime. He is in
the same ballroom as Queen Victoria, and Her Majesty bows to him.
Withal he is sturdy and declines the Prince Consort's offer for his
collection of works by George Cruikshank. In the end St Paul's Cathedral
receives him, and the person who knew him most intimately declares on
enduring stone that she loved him best.
[Illustration: VIGNETTE. From "Peeps at Life," by the London Hermit
(London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.), engraved by Bolton, 1875.]
We are now at the end, and cannot stimulate the muse of our prose to
further efforts. She being silent obliges our blunt British voice to
speak for itself. Inasmuch as Cruikshank was a mannerist, he is
inimitable except by them who take great pains to vex the critical of
mankind. Inasmuch as he expressed the beauty of crookedness, as though
he found the secret of artistic success in punning on his own name, he
offers a model worthy of practical study. His fame as an etcher is too
loud to be lost in the silence of Henri Beraldi, who enumerated "Les
graveurs du dix-neuvieme siecle," in 12 tomes (1885-1892), without
mentioning his name. Though C is more employed in the initials of words
than any other letter in our alphabet, the name of Cruikshank comes only
after "Curious" in its attractiveness for the readers of entries under
the letter C in English catalogues of second-hand books. It may be
that to etchings in books of Cruikshank's period is ascribed, since the
usurpation of the process-block, the factitious value of curios, and
that he, Beraldi's Great Omitted, profits thereby. It is a fact that he
is "collected" like postage-stamps, though no published work of his has
attained the price per copy of the imperforate twopenny Mauritius of
1847. But we have descended to a comparison so unfortunate in its
logical consequences that it is well to prophesy the immortality of
Cruikshank from other than commercial tokens. Those tokens exist in the
undying praises of Dickens, Thackeray, "Christopher North," and Ruskin,
in the enormous work of his principal bibliographer George William Reid,
and, not least to the spiritual eye, in the permanence of the impression
made by a few of his designs on a memory that has forgotten a little of
that literary art which is the only atonement offered by its owner to
the world for all the irony of his requickened life.