Directly Isaac Cruikshank’s boys could hold a tool they appear to have
been apprenticed to the father’s art-trade. Robert, the elder, was a
spirited worker--perhaps on a level with his father; but the handsome,
bright-eyed younger son, George, soon gave signs of a deeper original
power of observation, and of surprising humour and fancy, that drew
him away from sire and brother, and gave him a strong and distinct
individuality.
“George” (says Mr. Sala) “had both the _Geist_ and the _Naturgabe_.
Long before he was out of jackets he had learned to draw with facility,
symmetry, and precision; and if we recollect right, the collected
exhibition of his original drawings, shown at Exeter Hall some years
since (1863), comprised some sketches in pencil of ‘Coalies’ at the old
‘Fox under the Hill,’ executed in 1799. His manner of handling was,
at the first, mainly founded on that of the renowned Gillray, to
whose position as a caricaturist, political and social, he ultimately
succeeded, although he never exhibited any traces of Gillray’s
vices--revolting grossness, and at last a downright madness in
delineation, rivalling that of the _pictor ignotics_, William Blake.”
Without unreservedly endorsing Mr. Sala’s opinion on Gillray and Blake,
I hasten to admit that Cruikshank was, from his manhood onwards, free,
with a few exceptions, from their coarseness and wildness. Some of
his coarse coloured plates in “The Scourge,” dated 1811, forbid the
assertion that he never, even in youth, transgressed the bounds of
modesty. He always had, however, a tenderness and grace, an earnestness
and a lively sympathy, which were entirely his own. In a few prefatory
words to “A Catalogue of a Selection from the Works of George
Cruikshank, extending over a period of upwards of sixty years, from 1799
to 1863,” he said, in his own whimsical way, “‘The George Cruikshank
Gallery,’ as it is called, originated in consequence of many persons
having expressed their belief that G. C., the caricaturist of former
days, was the grandfather of the person who produced the ‘Worship of
Bacchus.’ The committee, therefore, who are exhibiting the ‘Worship of
Bacchus,’ requested to have some of my early works, in order to show
that they were the production of one and the same person, or to prove,
in fact, that I am not my own grandfather.” *
* One day, while Dr. B. W. Richardson was engaged at his
house in Hinde Street, with an old patient who had been away
many years in India, George Cruikshank’s card was handed to
the doctor. “It must be the grandson, or the son, at any
rate, of the great artist I remember as a boy,” said the
patient. “It is impossible the George Cruikshank of Queen
Charlotte’s trial time can be alive!” The doctor asked the
vivacious George to come in. He tripped in, in his eighty-
fourth year; and when the old officer expressed his
astonishment, George exclaimed, “I’ll show you whether he’s
alive!” With this he took the poker and tongs from the
grate, laid them upon the carpet, and executed the sword-
dance before Richardson’s astonished patient.
It may be that George Cruikshank was in doubt sometimes, in the course
of his boyhood, as to the calling or profession he would adopt. We know
that he was inclined towards the stage, and delighted in acting to
the end of his days; and he was full of military ardour, as we shall
presently see. But he had little or no time for dreams. He had his daily
bread to win, in his teens, as a designer of “Twelfth Night Characters,”
and “Lottery Tickets,” a rough illustrator of songs, or pictorial
delineator of any event or exhibition which excited public attention. He
made a drawing of Nelson’s funeral car in 1805; in 1809, the O. P. riots
at Covent Garden engaged his pencil. Even in 1822 he was the popular
pictorial commentator, and his needle touched an extraordinary variety
of subjects, even to the mermaid which drew crowds in St. James’s Street
in 1822. His etching of this “disgusting sort of a compound animal,
which contains in itself everything that is odious and disagreeable,” is
to be found reproduced in “The Book of Days.” He even tried his hand at
scene painting, in the days when his friends Clarkson, Stanfield, and
David Roberts were at Drury Lane.
“His art in its better developments being essentially dramatic,” Miss
Alice Thompson * has truly remarked, “the love of the actual drama was
not wanting. In his circumstances, however, to become an actor meant to
become a strolling player; while he was hesitating about the possibility
of embarking upon such a career, he obtained a commission to paint
a drop-scene for Drury Lane Theatre, on the stage of which he was
ambitious of appearing. The bit of scene-painting in question was a
caricature of Sir William Curtis, and the young artist depicted him
looking over a bridge, and did it with so much humour that the picture
brought down the house. George Cruikshank’s success in scene-painting
led to more employment of the same kind; he shared, as an artist, the
theatrical beginnings of Stanfield and David Roberts.”
* “A Bundle of Rue.” George Cruikshank. _The Magazine of
Art,_ March 1880.
George Cruikshank was “soldier-struck” as well as “stage-struck.” He was
a pugnacious man. The Rev. Charles Rogers, who knew him in his old age,
tells me that he used to regret to him that he had not entered the army.
Describing his recollections of England at the time of the threatened
French invasion, he gives us some of his military reminiscences and
aspirations as a child. *
* “A Popgun fired off by George Cruikshank, in defence of
the British Volunteers of 1803, against the uncivil attack
upon that body by General W. Napier, etc.” Illustrated with
cuts.
“Great Britain at this time might well be compared to the state of a
beehive when its inmates have been disturbed by accident or an intruder;
and we might quote Dibdin’s song of ‘The Tight Little Island,’ and
say,--
‘Buzz was the word of the island.’
Every town was, in fact, a sort of garrison; in one place you might hear
the ‘tattoo’ of some youth learning to beat the drum; at another place
some march or national air being practised upon the fife, and every
morning at five o’clock the bugle-horn was sounded through the streets,
to call the volunteers to a two hours’ drill from six to eight, and the
same again in the evening; and then you heard the pop, pop, pop, of the
single musket, or the heavy sound of the volley, or distant thunder of
the artillery; and then sometimes you heard the ‘Park’ and the ‘Tower,’
guns firing to celebrate some advantage gained over the enemy. As soon
as these volunteers were taught (by the _regulars_) how to load and
fire, they were set to practise ‘ball firing;’ and when these regiments
were thought to be pretty well instructed in all points, they were
inspected by general officers; and if the inspecting officer thought
them sufficiently advanced, a day was appointed, and they were marched
off to a ‘grand review.’
“I was but a boy--a little boy at that time--but I had a sharp critical
eye for all those military movements, and used to be much amused at
the occasional blunders of the ‘awkward squads;’ and as I often had
the opportunity of witnessing the regulars ‘exercise,’ I judged of and
compared the evolutions of ‘my father’s regiment’ by this standard; and
I remember feeling considerable pride and pleasure when I saw the ‘Loyal
St. Giles’s and St. George’s Bloomsbury Volunteers’ wheel out of the old
gate of ‘Montague House’ (then the British Museum, and the site of the
present building), to march to Hyde Park to be reviewed, where they
acquitted themselves in so soldier-like a manner as to gain the
approbation of the reviewers, and, of course, of themselves.
“When Napoleon I. was once speaking of the people of Great Britain, he
contemptuously called them ‘a nation of shopkeepers.’ This was told to
George III., and when he reviewed the Metropolitan Volunteers in Hyde
Park, and saw one fine sturdy body of infantry after another march past,
and then the splendid regiments of cavalry--the City of Westminster
Light Horse, commanded by the Prince of Wales, the City Light Horse, and
other equally fine corps, mounted upon as fine horses as England could
produce, and that is saying something--he was indeed much pleased
by their martial appearance and general bearing, and, turning to
the general officers around him, he exclaimed, in the pride of his
good-natured heart,
‘Shopkeepers! shopkeepers! shopkeepers!’”
In the warmth of his military ardour, Cruikshank says: “As my father
served as a private in the ‘St. Giles’s and St. George’s Bloomsbury
Volunteers,’ and as my late brother Robert, at a later period, served in
the rifle company of the ‘Loyal North Britons’ (in which corps he rose
to the rank of sergeant), and further, as I (at a still later date)
carried a rifle in the same company, I think that I have a right, and
that I ought to stand forth for the defence of the military character of
my relations, my friends, and my brethren-in-arms, and myself.” * He was
even ready to take the command of the army. Having severely criticised
the military authorities of the day, he says: “This is a very different
style of thing to what _I_ would adopt, if I had the command of our
forces; but as that is not likely to be the case (although I flatter
myself that I am quite capable of doing so), I must leave all these
matters to our Royal Commander-in-Chief and his staff of general
officers. People will here, perhaps, smile at what they would term
my vanity, and wish to know upon what grounds I would dare to take so
responsible a position; to which I reply, that I had, as before stated,
acquired as a child almost all the discipline necessary for an infantry
soldier, completing when a youth this part of my military education by
serving as a volunteer. This early acquaintance with soldiering led me
to study the sword exercise; and understanding the small-sword, and
the broadsword as well, and the use of firearms, I consider myself able
(with a properly trained horse) to mount at a moment’s notice, to act as
an irregular cavalry man; and having paid some attention to gunnery on
land, and attended the gunnery practice on board Her Majesty’s ship _The
Excellent_, in Portsmouth Harbour, I could lend a hand to work a
gun afloat, or, of course, as Horse-Marine,--or, if ashore, as an
artilleryman; and besides all this, I have--although it is not generally
known, nor do I lay too much stress upon it--yet _I have served in the
Militia_--by _substitute_; but as this was in a time of peace, and as my
representative was such a queer, uncommon, wild-looking fellow--one who,
I am sure, would not hurt anybody--I don’t think any harm was done in
any way except the picking of my pocket for the ‘bounty.’ But as _they
‘drew’_ me for the Militia, I in return _drew them--‘Drawing for the
Militia’_--as may be seen in ‘My Sketch Book.’”
* General Sir W. Napier had aroused Cruikshank’s wrath by
writing a letter to the _Times_, in which he described the
volunteers as “mere mimics, without solidity to support the
regular army;” as “offering points of weakness to the
enemy,” and as irregulars who should they come in contact
with an enemy, “would have had to trust to their legs.”
The humourist peeps through the military reformer and the military
boaster, as he peeped always through Cruikshank’s many grotesque
masqueradings. Even his earnestness took grotesque forms. He was
extravagant in all his expressions, a caricaturist even “Shillahoo!
Who durst tread upon that? Is it yerself durst set yer ugly foot upon
it?”--From “More Mornings at Bow Street.”
His soldiering forcibly reminds the spectator and the reader of Bobadil;
albeit George Cruikshank was brave as a lion, and in downright earnest.
He had the simplicity, also the faith, of Don Quixote.
[Illustration: 075]
He tells the story of his military career as a boy and a young man, and
how it was brought to a close, in his own peculiar fashion:--
“Not only did the men in 1803 form themselves into regiments of
volunteers, but the boys of that day did so likewise, and my brother (of
whom I have already spoken), and who was my elder by three years, formed
one of these juvenile regiments, and appointed _himself_ the colonel.
We had our drum and fife, our ‘colours,’ presented by our mammas and
sisters, who also assisted in making our accoutrements. We also procured
small ‘gun-stocks,’ into which we fixed mop-sticks for barrels, kindly
polished by ‘Betty’ with a _tinge_ of blacklead, to make’em look like
_real_ barrels.
“The boys watched their fathers ‘drill’; and ‘as the old cock crows the
young one learns,’ so we children followed in the steps of our papas,
and we were ready for inspection quite as soon as our elders, and could
march in good order, to have _our_ ‘Field-day,’ from Bloomsbury Church
to the fields, where Russell and Tavistock Squares now stand. This
account of my ‘playing at soldiers’ may appear to be rather trifling and
nonsensical, but just see what it has done for me. Why, by my learning
the manual exercise with this mop-stick gun, when a boy, and at the same
time learning how to ‘march,’ ‘countermarch,’ and to ‘mark time,’ to
‘wheel’ and to ‘face,’ etc., IT HAS MADE ME--AYE, ME, G. C., FIT AND
ABLE TO HANDLE A MUSKET OR A RIFLE, AND FALL INTO THE RANKS OF AN
INFANTRY REGIMENT AT A MOMENT’S notice. I make this assertion with
confidence; for when as a young man I joined a rifle company, I found
that I required _no drilling_; the only additional knowledge necessary
was to understand the ‘calls’ of the bugle and whistle, which, with the
rifles, are used instead of the ‘_word_ of command’ when skirmishing;
and I can say, having previously learned to prime, and load, and fire,
and hit a mark, that I was a tolerable rifleman one week after I had
entered. The fact is, that learning the military exercise when young is
like learning to dance, or to ride, or to row, or to swim, or to fence,
or to box, at an early age; and when these very important parts of
male education or training are acquired in boyhood, _they are never
forgotten_.... We all know that early pleasurable impressions, as
well as very disagreeable ones, are never effaced; and as ‘playing at
soldiers’ does strongly engage the youthful mind, it is quite clear, as
in my case, that if _every boy_ in these realms was taught the military
exercise as I was, they would, as they grew up to manhood, require
little or no training to make them sufficiently effective for defence;
and if the whole male population of this country capable of bearing arms
were to be in such a condition, in such ‘fighting order,’ there never
would be any fighting at all, for no nation, or all the nations combined
together, would ever even so much as dream of invading a country where
they would have a difficulty of landing _hundreds of thousands_ of their
men, who would have to meet _millions and millions_ of well-trained and
well-organized men to oppose them, to say nothing of the tossing, and
bumping, and scraping they would be likely to get in getting over ‘the
wooden walls of Old England.’”
Cruikshank describes in his own quaint way how his early military
experiences were brought to a close.
“Our regiment, the Loyal North Britons, being commanded by a Royal Duke
(H. R. H. the late Duke of Sussex), had the post of honour, next to
the Royal troops; and as I had the honour of being present upon that
occasion (the Grand Review in Hyde Park, given in honour of the Emperor
Alexander and Blucher, after the Allies had entered Paris), I can assure
my friends that _we_ made a very respectable military appearance, and
that the pop, pop, pop of our ‘_feu de joie_’ was as regular as the
pop, pop, pop of the regulars. But when _we_ marched in review past the
Prince Regent, his imperial visitor, and the crowd of general officers,
I remember feeling, a considerable degree of chagrin at the paltry
appearance we made in point of numbers, and wished most heartily that
these foreigners could have seen the ‘mobs’ of volunteers as they had
mustered in that park in 1803 and 1804.
“After this review, _our_ men retired from the service, or rather, went
about their business, little imagining they would ever have been
called out again; but they did rally round their colours once more when
Napoleon I., or ‘Corporal Violet,’ as he was then designated,
returned from Elba. But after the battle of Waterloo, and the apparent
re-establishment of the Bourbons, the British people and the Government
seemed to think that there never could be any more risk of invasion;
that fighting was quite done with everywhere, and that, at any rate,
we were safe to the end of time; that they had been assisting in the
completion of some great work, which, being now finished, the volunteers
gave back their tools--firearms--to the Government, conceiving that
the swords were to be turned into ploughshares, and the spears into
pruning-hooks. I was not exempt from this national belief; and, as the
_war_ was over, I exchanged my rifle for a fowling-piece, and this I
unfortunately lent, with the powder-flask and shot-belt, to a friend of
mine who was going into the country a-shooting.
[Illustration: 082]
“One day, in his early volunteer days, when passing down Ludgate Hill in
his striking uniform, of which a tall feather and tight green trousers
were the conspicuous features, he was laughed at, and followed by some
men and boys. He turned upon them and singled out the chief aggressor. A
ring was formed in the street, and Private Cruikshank gave his assailant
a sound thrashing, treating his second to a pot of beer afterwards by
way of acknowledgment. * Robert Cruikshank was even more smitten with
soldiering than George, and the weakness remained with him to the end
of his life. George jocularly dubbed Robert “the maj_ar_!” Among the
“majar’s” military exploits was that of exchanging his frock-coat with
a Grenadier, in the course of a tipsy frolic, and finding himself
ultimately before the magistrates at Bow Street, charged with being in
possession of His Majesty’s property, and under the necessity of paying
a fine of £5.”
* Robert Cruikshank, who was sergeant in the same corps with
his brother, could not withstand the gratification of paying
a visit in uniform to the ladies’ boarding school at
Bromley, where he gave lessons, and on the following day his
further services were dispensed with.
The military ardour of the brothers had extravagant outbursts
occasionally, even when they were middle-aged men. George was a Tory,
and Robert was a Republican. In 1848, after the fall of Louis Philippe,
Robert called on his brother to tell him the glorious news that a
republic had been established in France, and that the Republican legions
would assuredly put an end to Russian tyranny. A very hot discussion
ensued, in which Robert declared that he was ready to lead the French
army to St. Petersburg.
George started in a fury from his seat, and with what a friend used to
call his Balfour of Burley expression, roared at Robert, “Then, by G--d,
I’ll head the Russians, and meet you.”
Robert retreated in disgust.
How George Cruikshank was led to study the lower strata of society,
and to become the most masterly delineator of the poverty, vice, and
vulgarity of London streets, he has himself described in a categorical
series of reproofs which he administered by way of introduction to his
“Omnibus,” to a writer who had misrepresented him. Having described how
he had as a boy been saluted with “There goes a copperplate engraver,”
by a little ragged urchin, when he was carrying a plate home, he replied
to the charge that he had studied low life by frequenting the taproom
of a miserable public-house in a lane by the Thames, where “Irish
coal-heavers, hodmen, dustmen, scavengers, and so forth, were admitted,
to the exclusion of everybody else.”
“I shall mention _en passant_, that there are _no_ Irish coal-heavers: I
may mention, too, that the statement of the author adverted to * is not
to be depended on; were he living, I should show why. And now to the
scene of my so-called ‘first studies,’ There was, in the neighbourhood
in which I resided, a low public-house; it has since degenerated into
a gin-palace. It was frequented by coal-heavers only; and it stood in
Wilderness Lane (I like to be particular), between Primrose Hill
and Dorset Street; Salisbury Square, Fleet Street. To this house of
inelegant resort (the sign was startling, the ‘Lion in the Wood’), which
I regularly passed in my way to and from the Temple, my attention was
one night especially attracted by the sounds of a fiddle, together with
other indications of festivity; when, glancing towards the tap-room
window, I could plainly discern a small bust of Shakspeare placed over
the chimney-piece, with a short pipe stuck in its mouth. This was not
clothing the palpable and the familiar with golden exhalations from the
dawn, but it was reducing the glorious and immortal beauty of Apollo
himself to a level with the commonplace and vulgar. Yet there was
something not to be quarrelled with in the association of ideas to
which that object led. It struck me to be the perfection of the
human picturesque. It was a palpable meeting of the Sublime and the
Ridiculous; the world of Intellect and Poetry seemed thrown open to
the meanest capacity; extremes had met; the highest and the lowest had
united in harmonious fellowship. I thought of what the great poet had
himself been, of the parts that he had played, and the wonders he had
wrought within a stone’s throw of that very spot; and feeling that even
he might have well wished to be there, the pleased spectator of that
lower world, it was impossible not to recognise the fitness of the pipe.
It was only the pipe that would have become the mouth of a poet in
that extraordinary scene, and without it, he himself would have wanted
majesty and the right to be present. I fancied that Sir Walter Raleigh
might have filled it for him. And _what_ a scene was that to preside
over and contemplate! What a picture of life was there! It was _all_
life! In simple words, I saw, on approaching the window, and peeping
between the short red curtains, a swarm of jolly coal-heavers!
Coal-heavers all, save a few of the fairer and softer sex--the wives
of some of them--all enjoying the hour with an intensity not to be
disputed, and in a manner singularly characteristic of the tastes and
propensities of aristocratic and fashionable society; that is to say,
they were ‘dancing and taking refreshments.’ They only did what their
“betters” were doing elsewhere. The living Shakspeare, had he been,
indeed, in the presence, would but have seen a common humanity working
out its objects, and have felt that the _omega_, though the last in
the alphabet, has an astonishing sympathy with the _alpha_ that stands
first.
* The author of “Three Courses and a Dessert.”
“This incident, I may be permitted to say, led me to study the
characters of that particular class of society, and laid the foundation
of scenes afterwards published. The locality and the characters were
different, the spirit was the same. Was I, therefore, what the statement
I have quoted would lead anybody to infer I was, the companion of
dustmen, hodmen, coal-heavers, and scavengers? I leave out the ‘and so
forth’ as superfluous. It would be just as fair to assume that Morland
was the companion of pigs, that Liston was the associate of louts and
footmen, or that Fielding lived in fraternal intimacy with Jonathan
Wild.”
Further on he protests that he was not in the habit, as charged, with
sitting at his window on Sundays, to observe the patrons of the “Vite
Condick Ouse” on the way to that popular place of entertainment.
In 1870 he wrote the following account of himself and his family to Mr.
Reid, while this gentleman was preparing the great collection of his
work, which was published in three volumes by Messrs. Bell and Daldy:
“In the compiling of such a list as this, it is not at all surprising
that there should be errors, particularly when we look at the fact of
there being three in one family (a father and two sons), all working
in similar styles, and upon the same sort of subjects. My father, Isaac
Cruikshank, was a designer and etcher, and engraver, and a first-rate
water-colour draughtsman.
My brother, Isaac Robert, was a very clever miniature and portrait
painter, and was also a designer and etcher, and your humble servant
likewise a designer and etcher.
“When I was a mere boy, my dear father kindly allowed me to _play at
etching_ on some of his copper plates, little bits of shadows, or little
figures in the background, and to assist him a _little_ as I grew older,
and he used to assist _me_ in putting in hands and faces. And when my
dear brother Robert (who in his latter days omitted the Isaac) left off
portrait painting, and took almost entirely to designing and etching, I
assisted him at first to a great extent in some of his drawings on wood
and his etchings; and all this mixture of head and hand work has led to
a considerable amount of confusion, so that dealers or printsellers and
collectors have been puzzled to decide which were the productions of the
‘I. CK.’ the ‘I. R. CK.’ (or ‘R. CK.’), and the ‘G. CK’; and this will
not create much surprise when I tell you that I have myself, in some
cases, had a difficulty in deciding in respect to early _handwork_,
done some sixty odd years back, particularly when my drawings, made on
wood-blocks for common purposes, were hastily executed (according to
price) by the engraver. Many of my first productions, such as halfpenny
lottery pictures and books for little children, can never be known or
seen, having, of course, been destroyed long ago by the dear little ones
who had them to play with.”
[Illustration: 090]
[Illustration: 091]