The history of caricature in England travels very little beyond George
Cruikshank’s lifetime. The very word _caricatura_, used by Sir Thomas
Browne in his Christian morals, and transplanted to the +Spectator+,
appeared first as an English word in Johnson’s dictionary in the middle
of the last century Caricature--the modern word and the modern art
the use of the pencil and the etcher’s point as ironical and satirical
weapons--may be said to have taken root in this country under the breath
of Hogarth’s genius. It flourished in Germany,--nay may be said to have
been born there, during the Renaissance. The Reformation gave it its
first great impulse, under the hand of Lucas Cranach. From Germany it
travelled to France, thence to Holland, and from Holland to England. The
famous caricaturists, however, are not many. Cranach, Peter Breughel,
Jacques Callot--but particularly the latter--may be noted as
caricaturists who made the way for our Hogarth, for the Spaniard Goya
(a caricaturist of infinite humour), and so for Gillray, Rowlandson,
Daumier, the Cruikshanks, Leech, and the elder Doyle. Our earliest
caricaturists came over to us from the French and Dutch schools; and
they flourished (albeit their names are forgotten now) until the genius
of Hogarth rose, and founded a British school of caricature, racy of the
soil. The names of John Collet, Paul Sandby, Bunbury, and Woodward, were
famous in their day; but they were destined to be eclipsed by the glory
of James Gillray and the lesser light of Rowlandson; and these two, with
Goya in Spain, and the renowned Daumier in France, represent the power
which caricature exercised in the political world at the close of the
last and in the early days of the present century.
A writer in the “Encyclopaedia Britannica” * has remarked of the rise of
George Cruikshank, “The satirical grotesque of the eighteenth century
had been characterised by a sort of grandiose brutality, by a certain
vigorous obscenity, by a violence of expression and intuition, that
appear monstrous in these days of reserve and restraint, but that
doubtless suited well enough with the strong party feelings and fierce
political passions of the age. After the downfall of Napoleon (1815),
however, when strife was over, and men were weary and satisfied, a
change in matter and manner came over the caricature of the period. In
connection with this change, the name of George Cruikshank, an artist
who stretches hands on the one side towards Hogarth and Gillray, and
on the other towards Leech and Teniiel, deserves honourable mention.
Cruikshank’s political caricatures, some of which were designed for the
squibs of William Hone, are, comparatively speaking, uninteresting; his
ambition was that of Hogarth--the production of moral comedies.”
* Ninth edition.
In an admirable article on the work and career of George Cruikshank, by
Mr. John Paget, published in _Blackwood_ (August 1863), an interesting
passage occurs, showing how the link of historical caricature passed
unbroken from the hands of Gillray to those of George Cruikshank.
“The political series of his (Gillray’s) caricatures commences in the
year 1782, shortly before the coalition between Fox and Lord North, and
continues until 1810. It comprises not less than four hundred plates,
giving an average of about fourteen for each year. When it is remembered
that this period commences with the recognition of the independence
of the United States; that it extends over the whole of the French
Revolution, and a considerable portion of the Empire; that it comprises
the careers of Pitt, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, Wyndham, Erskine, and Lord
Thurlow, and comes down to the times of Castlereagh, Canning, Lord Grey,
and Sir Francis Burdett, and that the aspect of every actor who played
any conspicuous part during that period is faithfully preserved ‘in his
habit, as he lived,’ his gesture and demeanour, his gait, his mode of
sitting and walking, his action in speaking--all, except the tone of
his voice, presented to us as if we gazed through a glass at the men of
former times--we shall feel that we owe no small debt to the memory of
James Gillray.
“Nor is this all. He has given to us with equal fidelity the portraits
of those actors who fill up the scene, who sustain the underplot of the
comedy of life, but have only a secondary share, if any, in the main
action of the drama. Nor was he simply a caricaturist That he possessed
the higher qualities of genius--imagination, fancy, and considerable
tragic power--is abundantly shown by many of his larger and more
important etchings, whilst a small figure of the unhappy Duchess of
York, published in 1792, under the feigned signature of Charlotte
Zethin, gives proof that he was not wanting in tenderness or grace.
“Of those who appear in the etchings of Gillray the last has passed away
from amongst us within a year of the present time. The figure of an old
man, somewhat below the middle height, the most remarkable feature in
whose face consisted of his dark overhanging eyebrows, habited in a
loose blue coat with metal buttons, grey trousers, white stockings, and
a thick pair of boots, walking leisurely along Pall Mall or St. James’s
Street, was familiar to many of our readers. The Marquess of Lansdowne
(then Lord Henry Petty) appears for the first time in Gillray’s prints
in the year 1805; and it is not difficult to trace a resemblance between
the youthful Chancellor of the Exchequer of more than half a century
ago, and the Nestor of the Whigs, who survived more than three
generations of politicians. The personal history of Gillray was a
melancholy one. In 1809 his pencil showed no want of vigour, but his
intellect shortly afterwards gave way under the effect of intemperate
habits. The last of his works was ‘A Barber’s Shop in Assize-time,’
etched from a drawing by Harry Bunting in 1811. In four years
more--years of misery and madness--he slept in the churchyard of St.
James’s, Piccadilly. A flat stone marks the resting-place, and records
the genius, of ‘Mr. James Gillray, the caricaturist, who departed this
life June 1st, 1815, aged 58 years.’
“At the time of the death of Gillray, George Cruikshank was a young
man of about five-and-twenty years of age. Sir Francis Burdett was a
prominent figure in many of Gillray’s latest caricatures in the year
1809. One of the earliest of George Cruikshank’s represents the arrest
of the Baronet under the warrant of the Speaker in 1810. The series
is thus taken up without the omission of even a single link.” The same
writer distinguishes justly between the two political caricaturists. In
his early work Cruikshank often so closely resembles Gillray, that it is
difficult to say in what minor points he is dissimilar; but a study
of the political work of the two will show that Gillray was the more
vigorous of the pair, also the more audacious and unscrupulous. The
writer in _Blackwood_ remarks that Cruikshank in his own department is
as far superior to Gillray as he falls short of him in the walk of art
“in which no man before or since has ever approached the great Master of
Political Caricature. In another, requiring more refined, more
subtle, more intellectual qualities of mind, George Cruikshank stands
pre-eminent, not only above Gillray, but above all other artists. He
is the most perfect master of individual expression that ever handled
a pencil or an etching-needle. This talent is equally shown in his
earliest as in his latest works. Of the former, one of the finest
examples is the first cut of the ‘Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder,’ entitled
‘Qualification,’ The attitude was probably suggested by Gillray’s plate
of the same illustrious personage, as ‘A Voluptuary suffering from the
Horrors of Indigestion,’ But here the superiority of Cruikshank over
Gillray in this particular quality is at once apparent. Gillray’s is a
finished copper-plate engraving, Cruikshank’s a light woodcut, but there
is not a line that does not tell its story. Down to the very tips of
his fingers the unhappy debauchee is ‘fuddled.’ The exact stage of
drunkenness is marked and noted down in the corners of the mouth and
eyes, and the impotent elevation of the eyebrow.”
Cruikshank was a very young man when Gillray gave way to drunkenness,
and sank under it. His last work appeared in 1811.*
* “Gillray’s character affords a sad example of the reckless
imprudence that too frequently accompanies talent and
genius. For many years he resided in the house of his
publisher, Mr. Humphrey, by whom he was most liberally
supplied with every indulgence; during this time he produced
nearly all his most celebrated works, which were bought up
with unparalleled eagerness, and circulated not only over
all England, but most parts of Europe. Though under a
positive engagement not to work for any other publisher, yet
so great was his insatiable desire for strong liquors, that
he often etched plates for unscrupulous persons, cleverly
disguising his style and handling.”--Robert Chambers’ Book
of Days, vol. i., p. 724.
Mr. Ruskin, in his Appendix to his Modern Painters on “Modern
Grotesque,” insists that “all the real masters of caricature deserve
honour in this respect, that their gift is peculiarly their own--innate
and incommunicable.
[Illustration: 042]
No teaching, no hard study, will ever enable other people to equal, in
their several ways, the works of Leech or Cruikshank; whereas the power
of pure drawing is communicable, within certain limits, to every one who
has good sight and industry. I do not, indeed, know how far, by
devoting the attention to points of character, caricaturist skill may be
laboriously attained; but certainly the power is, in the masters of the
school, innate from their childhood.
“Further. It is evident that many subjects of thought may be dealt with
by this kind of art, which are inapproachable by any other, and that its
influence over the popular mind must always be great; hence it may often
happen that men of strong purpose may rather express themselves in this
way (and continue to make such expression a matter of earnest study),
than turn to any less influential, though more dignified, or even more
intrinsically meritorious, branch of art. And when the powers of quaint
fancy are associated (as is frequently the case) with stem understanding
of the nature of evil, and tender human sympathy, there results a bitter
or pathetic spirit of grotesque, to which mankind at the present day owe
more thorough moral teaching than to any branch of art whatsoever.
“In poetry the temper is seen, in perfect manifestation, in the works
of Thomas Hood; in art it is found both in various works of the
Germans--their finest and their least thought of; and more or less in
the works of George Cruikshank, and in many of the illustrations of our
popular journals.”
In a note, Ruskin adds: “Taken all in all, the works of Cruikshank
have the most sterling value of any belonging to this class produced in
England.”
Let us now turn once more to Thackeray’s admirable estimate of his old
friend:--
“We have heard only profound persons talk philosophically of the
marvellous and mysterious manner in which he has suited himself to the
time--_fait vibrer la fibre populaire_ (as Napoleon boasted of himself),
supplied a peculiar want felt at a peculiar period, the simple secret
of which is, as we take it, that he, living amongst the public, has with
them a general wide-hearted sympathy; that he laughs at what they laugh
at; that he has a kindly spirit of enjoyment, with not a morsel of
mysticism in his composition; that he pities and loves the poor, and
jokes at the follies of the great; and that he addresses all in
a perfectly sincere and manly way. To be greatly successful as a
professional humourist, as in any other calling, a man must be quite
honest, and show that his heart is in his work. A bad preacher will get
admiration and a hearing with this point in his favour, where a man with
three times his acquirements will only find indifference and coldness.
Is any man more remarkable than our artist for telling the truth after
his own manner? Hogarth’s honesty of purpose was as conspicuous in
an earlier time, and we fancy that Gillray would have been far more
successful and more powerful, but for that unhappy bribe, which turned
the whole course of his humour into an unnatural channel. Cruikshank
would not for any bribe say what he did not think, or lend his aid to
sneer down anything meritorious, or to praise any thing or person that
deserved censure. When he levelled his wit against the Regent, and did
his very prettiest for the Princess, he most certainly believed, along
with the great body of the people whom he represents, that the Princess
was the most spotless, pure-mannered darling of a Princess that ever
married a heartless debauchee of a Prince Royal. Did not millions
believe with him, and noble and learned lords take their oaths to her
Royal Highness’s innocence? Cruikshank would not stand by and see a
woman ill-used, and so struck in for her rescue, he and the people
belabouring with all their might the party who were making the attack,
and determining, from pure sympathy and indignation, that the woman must
be innocent because her husband treated her so badly.
“To be sure, we have never heard so much from Mr. Cruikshank’s own lips,
but any man who will examine these odd drawings, which first made him
famous, will see what an honest, hearty hatred the champion of woman has
for all who abuse her, and will admire the energy with which he flings
his wood-blocks at all who side against her.” *
* Westminster Review, 1840.
Thackeray dwells lovingly on Cruikshank’s success as a delineator
of children and the humours of childhood; and particularly on his
inimitable illustrations to children’s books. This is Cruikshank’s own
king dom, by a right of genius which none can dispute.
“How,” exclaims Thackeray, “shall we enough praise the delightful German
nursery tales, and Cruik-shank’s illustrations of them? We coupled his
name with pantomime awhile since, and sure never pantomimes were more
charming than these. Of all the artists that ever drew, from Michael
Angelo upwards and downwards, Cruikshank was the man to illustrate these
tales, and give them just the proper admixture of the grotesque, the
wonderful, and the graceful.” And further on the author of “Vanity Fair”
exclaims: “Look at one of Mr. Cruikshank’s works, and we pronounce him
an excellent humourist. Look at all, his reputation is increased by a
kind of geometrical progression, as a whole diamond is a hundred times
more valuable than the hundred splinters into which it might be broken
would be. A fine rough English diamond is this about which we have been
writing.”
And so Thackeray concludes a paper on his friend, whom he had not
forgotten many years after when he exhibited the “Triumph of Bacchus.”
Let us now glance at the childhood and early manhood of this famous
Englishman. We shall see that he owed nothing to Fortune. The coarse and
dangerous school of obscurity was his. The splendid powers which he had
received from nature, if they grew wild, grew strong also. He was the
son of Isaac Cruikshank, a struggling Scotch artist, who never won high
fame nor commanded rich rewards; a fair painter in water-colours and
a successful grotesque etcher, when the satirical grotesque was a
marketable produce. Isaac Cruikshank * was the son of a Low-lander, who
held at one time an appointment in the Customs at Leith. He married the
daughter of a naval officer--a Highlander from Inverary, according
to Dr. Charles Mackay; to whom George Cruikshank often boasted that
although he had the misfortune to be born in London, his blood was a
mixture of the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland. He boasted that his
grandfather had fought at Culloden, and had become thereby impoverished.
The child of a Lowland father, and of a stern, resolute Highland mother;
bred in London, with London streets for the fairyland of his young
imagination; inured as a child to taskwork in that busy house, or
factory, in Dorset Street; and his boyhood cast in the days of great
deeds and momentous events calculated to stir his blood to fever heat;
the genius of George Cruikshank budded and blossomed betimes. His first
pencilling is dated 1799: it was executed in his seventh year! It may be
said that his baby fingers played with the graving tool. While a boy, he
illustrated children’s penny books for the children’s publisher, James
Wallis, as well as comic valentines, and Twelfth Night characters, for
Chappell, the then publisher of _London Cries_, Knight, Baldwyn, and
others.
* The Cruikshanks belonged to Aberdeenshire, where they are
still a numerous sept. Probably some branches of them may be
found in the “Poll-Book of Aberdeenshire.” William
Cruikshank, a celebrated anatomist, flourished in Edinburgh
toward the close of last century.
Isaac Cruikshank, his father, was, as I have said, a fairly known
water-colour painter and etcher of popular subjects. Lottery tickets
were his “pot boilers”--for there was a steady demand for designs for
these. But, with poorer skill than his gifted son, he fed the popular
appetite for pictures of the time. A grim outline of the guillotine,
a cramped representation of the execution of Louis XVI. in 1793, were
among the sterner subjects to which his name is attached.
“Isaac Cruikshank,” says Mr. Wright, “was among the most active, and
certainly the most successful, of the caricaturists of the beginning
of the present century;” and he adds, that Isaac’s works were equal to
those of his contemporaries, after Gillray and Rowlandson. One of the
earliest examples, bearing the well-known initials I. C., was published
on the 10th of March, 1794. Mr. Wright is mistaken in saying that this
was the year of his illustrious son George’s birth; for George was then
two years old. Isaac published many plates that made a noise in the
world, as “The Royal Extinguisher” (1795), in which Pitt is represented
putting out the flame of Sedition; “Billy’s Raree-Show;” Fox as
“The Watchman of the State;” and “A Flight across the Herring Pond,”
published in 1800. * Mr. Wright says: “The last caricature I possess,
bearing the initials of Isaac Cruikshank, was published by Fores, on
the 19th of April, 1810, and is entitled ‘The Last Grand Ministerial
Expedition.’ The subject is the riot on the arrest of Sir Francis
Burdett, and it shows that Cruikshank was at this time caricaturing on
the Radical side in politics.”
* England and Ireland are separated by a rough sea, over
which a crowd of Irish “patriots” are flying, allured by the
prospect of honours and rewards. On the Irish shore, a few
wretched natives, with a baby and a dog, are in an attitude
of prayer, expostulating with the fugitives.... On the
English shore, Pitt is holding open the “Imperial Pouch,”
and welcoming them.--_Wright’s History of Caricature and
Grotesque._
Isaac Cruikshank, after his establishment in London, married Miss Mary
MacNaughton, a young Scottish lady from Perth, whose family owned a
small property there. Her parents dying young, she was brought up by the
Countess of Orkney, from whom she concealed her marriage with an artist,
as a _mésalliance_ the Countess would not approve. She was a lady
of strong will and temper, while Isaac, her husband, was of quiet,
meditative temperament. Robert, the eldest son of the marriage, was like
his father, while George showed the hot head and imperious temper of his
mother. *
* The daughter, Eliza, inherited the family skill in
drawing. She designed the well-known caricature of the Four
Prues--High Prue, Low Prue, Half Prue, and Full Prue, which
was etched by her brother George in his boldest style. She
died young, of consumption.
Isaac Cruikshank was living in Duke Street, Bloomsbury, when his
sons Robert, Isaac, and George were born, the latter on the 27th of
September, 1792, the former on the same date in 1789. While the boys
were in their early infancy, the family removed to 117, Dorset Street,
Salisbury Square, a house commodious enough for the admission of
lodgers, one of whom was Mungo Park. Among the constant visitors were
Dr. Pettigrew, the family doctor (known afterwards as Mummy Pettigrew),
and George Dawe, R.A., to whom Isaac Cruikshank had given lessons as a
poor boy. It was a busy establishment. Isaac Cruikshank worked at his
etchings on copper, while his wife coloured the plates, pressing her two
boys into the service at a very early age. This Mary Cruikshank, if
a hot-tempered, was a frugal and industrious wife, and an excellent
mother. She used to boast how she had managed to save a thousand pounds,
and at the same time to bring up her children in God-fearing ways
(laying her hand on her Bible she said she knew Jerusalem as well as she
knew Camden Town), sending them regularly to the Scotch Church in Crown
Court, Drury Lane. She was a trifle too strict and serious, according to
her husband; and often when the clergyman from Crown Court was coming
to spend the evening, he would escape to the Ben Jonson Tavern in Shoe
Lane, where he is said to have spent more time than was good for him.
Her boys used to relate, as illustrative of their mother’s “Highland
temper,” that on one occasion, when a tradesman had sent her two bad
eggs, she told them to return with them and “throw them at the rascal’s
head.” This command was obeyed to the letter, to the great delight
of the pugnacious youngsters. The two brothers were educated at an
elementary school at Edgeware, but they were very early cast into the
rude business of life. Robert went to sea as a midshipman in the East
India Company’s service, his head full of the wonderful stories he had
heard from his mother’s lodger, Mungo Park.
He made only one voyage. On his way home, having gone on shore at St.
Helena in command of a boat’s crew, and a storm having suddenly arisen,
he was left behind, and reported to be lost. He was passed home in a
whaler, after having endured severe privations on the island; and would
relate that the only noteworthy incident of the homeward voyage was the
speaking with a vessel which gave the news of the battle of Trafalgar.
When he presented himself in Dorset Street, Salisbury Square, he was
astonished at the frantic excitement of his brother George on opening
the door. The family were in mourning for him.
The elder brother found that George had made wonderful progress in
his art in the three years during which he had been at sea. Robert had
meantime lost ground as an artist, and had contracted bad habits. Isaac
Cruikshank was at this time etching theatrical portraits and scenes for
a publisher named Roach, who dwelt in Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane. This
connection drew the two sons into an acquaintance with Edmund Kean, then
an obscure player, and the three got up an amateur performance of “Blue
Beard” in Roach’s kitchen, Kean taking the principal part, Robert and
George Cruikshank playing the two brothers, and Miss Roach appearing as
Fatima. The copper was the tyrant’s castle. *
* In 1855, shortly before his death, Robert Cruikshank made
a water-colour sketch of the scene, for a life of Edmund
Kean, projected, but never written by Mr. Michael Nugent, a
_Times_ parliamentary reporter.
The Cruikshanks--but particularly Robert--remained on intimate terms
with Kean after he had become famous. The tragedian, on one occasion, to
divert them, threw somersaults on the stage of Drury Lane after playing
Richard. Robert drew portraits of Kean in most of his characters. *
* At the sale of Mr. Lacy’s Theatrical Library, Robert
Cruikshank’s theatrical portraits in water-colours fetched
£200.
On the death of their father the two brothers kept on the house in
Dorset Street, with their mother and sister, working together. They
had, after the death of Gillray, the command of the whole field of
caricature, supplying nearly all those coloured etchings on copper,
on the subjects of the day, which drew crowds about the print-sellers’
windows. They were the rough forerunners of H. B.’s pencillings and of
Leech’s cartoons in _Punch_. The prize-fighter in those days was the
popular idol; and the most notorious “bruisers” found their way to the
Cruikshank studio on the second floor in Dorset Street, to stand for
their portraits. The Cruikshank brothers were not particular as to
sitters, even to murderers * It was a strange workroom, decorated with
the most incongruous ornaments. An undergraduate’s cap (the spoil of a
town-and-gown riot) upon a human skull with a pipe between the teeth, a
sou’wester from Margate, boxing gloves, foils, masks, and weapons of
all kinds, proclaimed the wild tastes of the two artists, who generally
invited their guests to a bout with the gloves. Both brothers
were expert boxers, but George had cultivated the science under a
distinguished professor more assiduously than Robert. It was in one of
his bouts with this professor that George received a blow on his nose,
which, with other taps on the same point, fixed that feature awry for
the remainder of his life.
* The portrait of Elizabeth Fenning, by I. R. Cruikshank,
taken in Newgate, is a very coarse work.
To this strange studio rough old Ackerman, Fores of Piccadilly, and
Johnny Fairburn of the Broadway, Ludgate Hill, came with plentiful
commissions for both brothers. When Robert was in want of money and
expected Johnny, he placed an empty purse upon the mantelpiece, marked
“unfurnished,” and the good-natured old printseller would take it up and
replenish it. When Robert married, the family removed to King Street,
Holborn; and it was here that the elder brother contrived to get
sittings, through a keyhole, of old Mrs. Garrick, in her ninetieth year,
while she was paying visits to her friend Miss Cotherly, one of prudent
Mrs. Cruikshank’s lodgers. The result was a finished, full-length
etching upon copper, with the face carefully stippled. It was in
portraiture that Robert excelled; and to this branch of his art he
devoted himself. When at the height of his success he removed to St.
James’s Place, St. James’s Street, where he established himself as
a fashionable artist, carrying on, at the same time, his work as a
caricaturist and illustrator. * George, on parting from his brother,
went to live with his mother and sister to Claremont Square,
Pentonville. On his marriage he removed only a few doors from his old
residence, and at 22 and 23, Amwell Street, he remained during the
thirty most brilliant years of his life, ** as the addresses on some of
his best work attest.
* He was, according to his son, “still the pink of fashion,
even to designing a hat, a block for which was made at a
cost of three guineas, while all other details of costume
were treated regardless of cost. George Hibbert commissioned
Robert to execute a set of etchings for the Roxburgh Club,
at his own price, from one of Boccaccio’s tales in the
‘Decameron.’ Sixty copies were printed, and the plates were
destroyed. The English Spy, illustrated by Robert at this
time, was edited by Charles Molloy Westmacot, said to be the
son of a sweep in Newcastle Court, Strand, named Molloy. He
ultimately became the owner of the _Age_ newspaper.”
** His mother went to live at Finchley, and died at the age
of ninety.
When he had, in part, emancipated himself from the bibulous boon
companions of his youth, George fell into a regular system of hard work.
He breakfasted punctually at eight o’clock, after which he smoked a
pipe, and went to work at nine. When biting up plates, he would smoke
more in the course of the morning to drive away the fumes of the acid.
At twelve he lunched, and then resumed work until three o’clock, when
he dined. After dinner he sat, with a jug of porter before him, enjoying
his pipe, and talking with any friend who dropped in. His visitors were
many. At five he drank tea, and then worked again from six o’clock
till nine, when supper concluded the labour of the day, and was the
preliminary to pipes and grog.
The establishment in Amwell Street was strengthened, soon after its
establishment, by the addition of one Joseph Sleap, the son of the
Finchley carrier. Joe was as eccentric as his master. Originally
employed as a help in the kitchen and a page in the parlour, he at
once began to devour any book that came within his reach. He became a
ravenous student of literature. Then he took to water-colour drawing,
and in the end made sketches from nature in the neighbourhood
(Pentonville was almost in the country in those days), for which he
found a brisk sale. His abilities soon caused his promotion from the
kitchen, to the studio, where he helped to bite up the plates. His
devotion, his artistic skill, and the extraordinary capacity for storing
up knowledge which Joe discovered, won his way to George Cruikshank’s
heart, and he became his confidential friend. The only drawback
to Joe was his somnolent habits. He was patient, quiet,
undemonstrative--qualities which galled Cruikshank, whose energy was
vehement and sleepless. * “What would I not give for some of your uncle’s
devil?” said the carrier’s eccentric son to George Cruikshank’s young
nephew. But Joe went the wrong way to work. He became an opium-eater.
He lived and worked, and still read on in a dream. On Cruikshank’s
recommendation Joe was employed by Thackeray, when he etched his own
designs, to bite up. “George,” cried the novelist one day, “Joe knows a
great deal more than you or I.”
* Another of Cruikshank’s journeymen,--Sands, the engraver,
who bit up his steel plates for him,--was recommended to
Thackeray. But Sands was a difficult man to deal with, and
he was dismissed. He rushed to Amwell Street for comfort. He
complained bitterly of the treatment he had received, adding
that Thackeray owed him for a “glass,” a “pint,” and a
“quart.” Cruikshank thought they had been drinking. But the
“glass” was a magnifying one, the “pint,” an etching point,
and the “quart” a quarto plate!
Poor Joe’s end was a dismal one. He was found one night dead upon a
doorstep, poisoned with an overdose of his drug!
The exploits of the wild brothers, while the family lived in Dorset
Street, were severely condemned by their strict mother. * Occasionally
she even went the length of castigating George, when he returned home in
the small hours from fairs or horse-races, or the prize-ring, far from
sober; or when he had been emulating the exploits of Tom and Jerry
with wild companions. He is described at this early time as gifted
with extraordinary animal spirits, and filled with a reckless spirit of
adventure, in the dangerous byways of London. What he saw in these days
he carefully observed and set down. His field of observation stretched
from the foot of the gallows to Greenwich fair; through coal-holes,
cider-cellars, cribs, and prize-fighters’ taverns, Petticoat Lane, and
Smith-field. Its centre was Covent Garden market, where the young bloods
drank and sang and fought under the piazzas, something more than sixty
years ago.
* “Take the pencil out of my sons’ hands,” she used to say,
“and they are a couple of boobies.”
[Illustration: 063]
[Illustration: 064]