It is recorded that when it was proposed to cast a statue of Sir Robert
Peel, the portrait selected as most striking in its resemblance, most
faithful to his natural expression, was found in a cartoon by John
Leech, published in _Punch_; and that from this drawing the head
was modelled. The caricaturist is something more than the mere
portrait-painter, who produces his work after a few sittings, and with
his model in a set position. Gillray, for example, spent his life in
studying his subjects. He had never finished observing Pitt, and Fox,
and Burke, and Sheridan. From his vantage-ground over Mrs. Humphrey’s
shop in St. James’s Street, he caught his victims unawares. He was
familiar with every angle and every shade of expression of the public
men who were his unconscious sitters. * In the same way, Leech snatched
a sitting from Peel and Palmerston, Lord John and Wellington, and had
thrust it safely into his waistcoat pocket, in that small note-book
which he always carried. And thus the public figures which Sandby and
Gillray, Sayer, Bunbury, Rowlandson, the Cruikshanks, the elder Doyle,
Leech, Doyle, and Tenniel have fixed with their needles or pencils upon
their cartoons, present to us men and manners living as they rose,
with a vividness and truth and force the value of which can hardly be
exaggerated. Estimate, if you can, the treasure a Gillray of the time of
Henry VIII., a Leech of the Commonwealth, a Cruikshank contemporaneous
with Shakspeare, would be!
* Pitt, however, paid the great pictorial satirist the
compliment of giving him sittings for a serious portrait.
As I have already noted, the art of the caricaturist does not date
beyond the time of Hogarth in this country, and he did little in the
way of political caricature. What we understand by caricature--that is,
pictorial satirical commentary on public events--arose while Gillray
was a boy, and when Paul Sandby and Saver were at the height of their
fame. Sayer’s caricatures of the early time of George the Third were
the models on which the infant genius of Gillray was nursed; as that
of George Cruikshank’s was fed five-and-twenty years later at the
print-shop windows of St. James’s Street and Piccadilly, where the crowd
stretched even into the roadway, laughing at, and discoursing over,
Gillray’s last. Cruikshank, although he never had Gillray’s academical
training, enjoyed the benefit of his master’s matchless skill and
infinite variety. Gillray unconsciously provided him with a rich
inheritance. It has been justly observed that the works of Gillray
preserve an entire social revolution; they form the link uniting the
habits, fashions, and manners of the past, with the later generation
which inaugurated our present ways of life.
This later generation it fell to the lot of George Cruikshank to
preserve for the edification of posterity. As the etching-needle was
trembling and wandering in the hands of the poor demented Gillray, when
“Drooped the spent fingers from the nerveless wrist,”
the keen, flashing eyes of old Isaac Cruikshank’s second son were making
perpetual rounds of observation in London streets, and his hand
was learning that cunning which would enable him to point with his
etching-needle the morals that lay thick about him, in strange guises
and combinations of never-ending variety, in the great world of London.
Gillray “lived among the subjects of his satire, almost within sight
of the palace, whose inmate was aware of the proximity of this Georgian
Juvenal; he mixed with the men who possessed the power of suspending his
freedom, and was himself as easy of recognition as he had made the faces
and figures of those whose caricatures he drew.... His eye was quick to
detect the weakest point of the best-armed champion: but the stab was
more often playful than cruel. The same quiver furnished shafts for
friend and foe alike. Gillray stood alone, and lent his aid to the side
which had the greatest need of his weapon. Strengthening and satirizing
both factions in turn, to neither side was he a servile champion; his
own misfortunes, his gratitude, his necessities, and his weaknesses,
were all powerless to confine his satire to the object of mere party
advancement. No curb could control his irony. His works are, however,
stamped with one attribute--popularity--which is indispensable to
lasting success amidst the fluctuations of opinion. His intuitive
knowledge of human nature had convinced him of the expediency of
securing this advantage; and by recognizing the force of public opinion,
he, it may be unconsciously, assumed to a large degree, as his works
abundantly prove, the responsibility of shaping and directing it; so
far, that is, as the popular voice is subject to individual expression.
Gillray and his caricatures enjoyed in their day--allowing for a little
excess of colouring to suit the age--the position that the _Times_
and _Punch_ now fill. His satire has a speciality: it is often heroic,
elevating its object far above the heads of his fellow-men in the
semblance of a demi-god, dignified and commanding, even when associated
with the attributes of burlesque.” *
* Wright.
We find a quality akin to this in the burlesque work of George
Cruikshank. He is inclined always to moralize with his etching-needle.
He dignifies some of his most fantastic and even repulsive scenes with a
lofty purpose. Of gentler disposition, and a less ardent politician than
Gillray, Cruikshank’s political caricatures are tame when compared
with those of the “Georgian Juvenal”; but he had walks and powers
which Gillray never approached. Gillray is the rougher, sterner, more
audacious genius, reflecting in these qualities the spirit of his times.
The son of one of Cumberland’s swearing drinking troopers, who had left
an arm at Fontenoy, and was an out-pensioner of Chelsea Hospital at
twenty-five, Gillray was brought up in a hardy school. His father, like
a true Scot, albeit himself reduced to the position of a sexton, managed
to give his boy the rudiments of a sound education. Then seeing that
he was for ever poring over the popular plates of Hogarth and the
caricaturists of the day, and was nimble with his pencil, he humoured
the lad’s bent by placing him under a letter engraver; and so the
foundation of his future skill as an etcher was laid. * But he was a
Bohemian, and went forth gipsying with strolling players. In this wild
school he saw many picturesque and striking aspects and contrasts of
life which were of vast consequence to him in after-life. When, tired of
the barn stage, and impelled irresistibly by his genius, he threw up the
hare’s foot, and obtained admission to the Royal Academy as a student,
he entered with a stout heart upon the career in which he was to find,
but never to enjoy, lasting fame. The life of Gillray with Mrs. Humphrey
and her maid Betsy is one of the saddest records of a man of genius
I remember. His habits were dissipated, and he kept low company. He
resorted to dishonest shifts, it is said, to obtain money for strong
drink. But he remained independent in spirit.
* It has been surmised that he afterwards studied under
Bartolozzi and Byland.
If George Cruikshank had the advantage of Gillray in the teaching of
a father who held no mean place in that profession which his son was
destined to adorn, Gillray had, so far as we know, the better education,
and the help of academical training. The knowledge after which
Cruikshank longed, with affecting earnestness and sadness, after he had
passed the prime of life, and which he even attempted to master in his
decline, was Gillray’s in his youth. Cruikshank saw his master sink and
die a dreadful death, a pensioner on the bounty of his publisher, while
he himself advanced to take his place, and indeed those of Bunbury and
Rowlandson, and his own father.
“I was cradled in caricature,” said Cruikshank to Cuthbert Bede,
who adds, “He told me that it was not because he despised academical
instruction that he had never availed himself of its salutary
discipline, but simply because the pressure put upon him in his early
years was so great that he had no leisure for the lectures or work of an
art student.” *
* I think he told me that he had submitted to Fuseli some
drawings from “the round,” with a view to secure his
entrance into the schools of the Academy; but, any way, I
remember that he mimicked Fuseli’s voice and manner--which
Cruikshank’s histrionic talent enabled him to do very
cleverly--when the Professor of Painting told him that “if
he wished to attend his lectures he would have to fight for
a place.” As Fuseli’s “Lectures on Painting” were delivered
and published in 1804, this anecdote would probably refer to
that period, when the young artist was twelve years of age,
and was already an illustrator of children’s books, before
he had got into his “teens.” This was the preparation for
his early work in the Scourge and the Meteor, and the
prelude to those famous political hits in Hone’s pamphlets,
that brought the artist great fame, but little money; for
the publishers only gave him half a guinea for a drawing
that produced upwards of fifty pounds for Hone’s pocket.--
_Cuthbert Bede’s “Personal Recollections of George
Cruikshank_.”
Thrown early into the midst of the hard life of London, as we have
seen, and made to feel in early boyhood “the bewildering care” of
bread-earning, George Cruikshank, with his brother Isaac Robert, had no
time save for school culture. He rose from his cradle, and went straight
into the bitter fight. For a time he worked by his father’s side, and
caught very early from his practised hand the cunning tricks of his
craft. How the life into which he was thrown quickened and forced the
growth of his genius, without impairing its vigour, the long list of his
extraordinarily various works bears witness--ranging as it does from his
sheet of children’s pictures published by Mr. Belch, Newington Butts,
in 1803, to his exquisite etching of Fairy Connoisseurs inspecting Mr.
Frederick Locker’s collection of drawings, which forms the frontispiece
to Mr. George William Reid’s descriptive catalogue of his works, which
is dated 1868.
Referring to George Cruikshank’s early work, Mr. Reid observes: “It is
to no recent period that the greater part of Cruikshank’s work recalls
us. In times which to the younger generation are now historic, before
the present century was ten years old, he had already commenced the long
career which has been spent so industriously in amusing and instructing
the public.
“And that now (1871), after a life of almost eighty years, there are many
to whom the work which occupied the earlier portion of it is practically
unknown, is perhaps not surprising; nor can we wonder if many of those
who may more strictly be called Cruikshank’s contemporaries have become
somewhat unmindful of his name, and of the associations which it carries
with it.”
Somewhat unmindful! In 1875, when a committee was raising money to
buy the collection of Cruikshank’s works which is now in the London
Aquarium, he told one of the members of it that he had not made a
shilling by his art for the last ten years. He was quite willing to
receive commissions, and he had refused none. None had reached him!
Other men, of lesser genius, had arisen and taken his place. He had been
voted old-fashioned. His figures were of a time gone by. His women were
the grandmothers of the living generation in their youth. He had passed
from the shop-windows, where laughing crowds used to greet him, to
the portfolios of collectors. How great Cruikshank’s popularity once
was--that is, his popularity with the masses of his countrymen--a few
of our older readers may recollect. His hits at the follies and vices
of the day struck home. He was constantly before the public, and yet the
laughing crowds never had too much of him. While Gillray, Rowlandson,
and later poor Seymour, fell out of the ranks of his rivals, he
constantly advanced in the quality of his work and the dignity of his
conceptions. His father died and was forgotten; his brother (albeit
a stalwart worker, and of excellent humour into the bargain, as the
collection of his works abundantly testifies) faded out of the public
mind; while George Cruikshank, in hundreds of original forms of
fancy--now humorous, now moral, and now wildly fantastic--presented
himself with an ever-deepening welcome to his contemporaries. When the
street folk were languidly before the print-shop windows, thoughtful men
were looking quietly over their shoulders, perceiving in the artist much
more than the caricaturist of the follies of the hour. “The scene may
be coarse,” says Mr. Reid, “the actors vulgar, their features unnatural;
but beneath all this it will require little attention to discern the
real power of the artist, the reality of conception, the firmness and
correctness of drawing, the truth and almost living force of expression,
especially in the representation of rapid motion, the mastery with which
the unexpressed is suggested, the lively humour or the suppressed irony,
it may be, which pervades the whole.”
Referring to the early times when the young George Cruikshank kept
crowds at the print-shop windows, Thackeray exclaims, in 1840:
“Knight’s, in Sweeting’s Alley; Fairburn’s, in a court off Ludgate
Hill; Hone’s, in Fleet Street--bright, enchanted palaces, which George
Cruikshank used to people with grinning, fantastical imps, and merry,
harmless sprites--where are they? Fairburn’s shop knows him no more; not
only has Knight disappeared from Sweeting’s Alley, but, as we are given
to understand, Sweeting’s Alley has disappeared from the face of the
globe. Stop! the atrocious Castlereagh, the sainted Caroline (in a tight
pelisse, with feathers in her hand), the ‘Dandy of sixty,’ who used
to glance at us from Hone’s friendly windows,--where are they? Mr.
Cruikshank may have drawn a thousand better things, since the days
when these were; but they are to us a thousand times more pleasing than
anything else he has done.
[Illustration: 104]
How we used to believe in them! to stray miles out of the way on
holidays, in order to ponder for an hour before that delightful window
in Sweeting’s Alley! In walks through Fleet Street, to vanish abruptly
down Fair-burn’s passage, and then make one at his ‘charming gratis’
exhibition. There used to be a crowd round the window in those days of
grinning, goodnatured mechanics, who spelt the songs, and spoke them out
for the benefit of the company, and who received the points of humour
with a general sympathising roar. Where are these people now? You never
hear any laughing at H. B.; his pictures are a great deal too genteel
for that--polite points of wit, which strike one as exceedingly clever
and pretty, and cause one to smile in a quiet, gentlemanlike kind of
way.”
Thackeray insists that there is no mere smiling with Cruikshank. “A man
who does not laugh outright is a dullard, and has no heart; even the old
dandy of sixty must have laughed at his own wondrous grotesque image, as
they say Louis Philippe did, who saw all the caricatures that were made
of himself. And there are some of Cruikshank’s designs which have the
blessed faculty of creating laughter as often as you see them.” The
reviewer takes an instance. “There is a fellow in the ‘Points of Humour’
who is offering to eat up a certain little general, that has made us
happy any time these sixteen years; his huge mouth is a perpetual well
of laughter--buckets full of fun can be drawn from it. We have formed
no such friendships as that boyish one of the man with the mouth. But
though, in our eyes, Mr. Cruikshank reached his apogee some eighteen
years since, it must not be imagined that such is really the case.
Eighteen sets of children have since then learned to love and admire
him, and may many more of their successors be brought up in the same
delightful faith!” Few will be disposed to endorse Mr. Thackeray’s
opinion that George Cruikshank reached his apogee about 1822, at the
time when he had his Slap at Slop. Few, I apprehend, will be inclined to
admit that his humour, albeit it is his master-quality, his mainspring,
his invariable motive-power which sets him working at his best, is his
highest gift. He had a perception of tragedy of a very remarkable kind;
and he could realize his solemn meanings with the hand of a master. His
early work, however, was nearly all humorous and satirical, even when he
fell among the fairies; and with this we have to do just now.
A chronological _catalogue raisonné_ of the works of George Cruikshank
would present to the reader a picture of his prodigious activity as an
artist, that would be absolutely astonishing. It comprises something
over five thousand subjects, ranging from childish drawings of ships,
illustrating halfpenny sheets for infants, to finished historical
scenes, and the ambitions conceptions of a fine imagination. The first
efforts of the boy show an untutored hand, but at the same time an
observant eye. The children’s lottery pictures, drawn and etched about
his twelfth year (“the first,” he says, “that George Cruikshank was
ever employed to do and paid for”); the etchings of horse-racing and
donkey-racing, executed about his thirteenth year, are the original work
of a sharp observer. Coal-heavers, Lord Nelson’s funeral car, Scavengers
reposing, Salisbury Square, Fleet Street (the boy-artist, as we have
noted, lived about this time in Dorset Street); the fashions about the
year 1804-5, rude illustrations to popular songs, the Town at Kingsgate,
Margate, and Temple.
[Illustration: 108]
Mr. Cadwallader shouting “murder” out of the window at the studio of Mr.
Pimpernel, the portrait-painter; the Pimpernels restraining him, and the
scandaliser of the artistic neighbourhood seizing hold of the curtains,
and the united strength of the family hanging on to his coat-tails; the
curtains give way, and the poste of people are sent sprawling.--From
“More Mornings at Bow Street.”
Gardens--all put forth before the year 1810--are interesting, not for
any remarkable artistic merit in them, but as indicating the active
intelligence and alert life of the boy. Directly afterwards we have
distinct evidence of the latent whim, humour, and fancy which were to
carry young Cruikshank to a place in the art history of his country,
equal at least to that of the poor demented genius who was wearing out
his remnant of life in old Mrs. Humphrey’s shop, and who was about to
make his final appearance, dishevelled and unclad before his wondering
customers, on the eve of his death. Colonel Pattypan and Sir John
Sugarstick (1808 or 1809), Metropolitan Grievances (1811-12), Double
Bass, Proposals for Practical Duets, adapted to any instrument (1811);
Matthews the Comedian, singing a song in a piece called “The Beehive”
(1812); Sir Francis Burdett taken from his house; Bonaparte, being
an illustration to a song sung at the Surrey Theatre by Mr. Elliston
(1811), will reward examination by the student of Cruikshank’s genius,
as affording distinct germs of the various powers of his mind at a
later time. Colonel Pattypan and Sir John Sugarstick are essentially
Cruikshankian in their humour.
Between 1811 and 1816 we have to note rapid strides in strength, in
range of experience, and development of sympathy with the progress
of the world. Feeling and sentiment underlie nearly all Cruikshank’s
creations. Within this interval Cruikshank broke ground, and made
a stand as a political caricaturist. He began to make his mark as a
satirical illustrator in the _Meteor_ (1813). For this “Monthly Censor”
George Cruikshank drew the cover. The allegorical design represents a
meteor personified by a humorous little fellow, bearing a lantern, and
flying through space. Beneath him Satire holds up a mirror to Folly;
and a champion shielded by a “free press,” armed with Truth and Justice,
protects himself against Licentiousness, Fraud, and Hypocrisy. The
projectors of the _Meteor_, it will be seen, meant well. National
Frenzy, or John Bull and his Doctors, preparing John Bull for General
Congress; Tabitha Grunt on the Walking Hospital; Napoleon’s Trip from
Elba to Paris, and from Paris to St. Helena, “A Swarm of Bees hiving
in the Imperial Carriage! who would have thought it?” and, finally, the
coloured etching of the Battle of Waterloo,--are coarsely executed in
the style of Isaac and Robert Cruikshank, and of Rowlandson; but they
are remarkable for that power of telling a story, and of concentrating
every figure and detail of a picture upon the effect or emotion to be
produced, for which Cruikshank in his prime was unrivalled. The progress
is continuous to 1820; and the work thrown off becomes prodigious.
Besides illustrations of the O. P. Riots at Covent Garden Theatre
(1819), fashionable portraits, and other haphazard work, he produced
“The Humourist (1820)--his first remarkable separate work--‘in which
the special and peculiar humorous powers of the artist are developed in
forty subjects, drawn from the living present” in London.
Very early in his career George Cruikshank came in contact with Hone. Of
this connection, Dr. K. Shelton Mackenzie has given an account which is
stamped with the authority of the artist, since, in “The Artist and the
Author,” he cites the doctor as armed with information given by himself.
“In the year 1819, while Cruikshank was a mere youth; Mr. William Hone
observed his peculiar ability, and determined to exercise it At that
time the political condition of this country was about as unpleasant and
unsatisfactory as it could be. The people clamoured for reform, which
the Government steadily and sturdily resisted.
[Illustration: 112]
Then came the straggle between Right and Might; and, by means of what
was called the strong arm of the law,’ the right was baffled for
the time, albeit not beaten. To add strength to ‘the strong arm’ in
question, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and six Acts were passed.
These were enactments avowedly framed to prevent the expression of
public opinion, whether at public meetings or by the medium of the
press. The anti-press ordinances of July 1830, which were the means
of hurling the Bourbons from the throne of France, were scarcely more
tyrannic than the gagging Acts in question. They drove Cobbett to
America. We believe that they were especially levelled against him and
his plain-speaking ‘Register.’ They nearly drove the multitude into
insurrection. They did resist, but the resistance was in vain; for the
Government, believing that ‘strong measures’ were necessary, did not
hesitate to take them. The manner in which the expression of public
opinion was sternly and ruthlessly ‘put down’ at Manchester on the too
famous 16th of August, 1819, showed that the Government would have quiet
at any cost.
“At this crisis the late Mr. William Hone, who felt warmly in politics,
and had a particular antipathy to Castlereagh, Canning, Sidmouth, and
Wellington, determined to try what might be done by bringing the Fine
Arts against the Ministry. At that time Canning was chiefly known as
a flashy, clever speech-maker, who, after having fought a duel with
Castlereagh, had finally returned to the Government, and held a place
under him, whose want of capacity he had formerly denounced. Castlereagh
himself, with an unhappy notoriety as one who had used unscrupulous
means to effect the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland,
was the most unpopular man in the kingdom, not only on that account,
but because, scorning the people, he had never concealed his feelings
towards them, and had denounced their ‘ignorant impatience of taxation.’
Lord Sidmouth, to whom Canning had given the ‘sobriquet’ of ‘The
Doctor’ (from his father, Dr. Addington), was peculiarly hated, as Home
Secretary, and the ostensible person on whom devolved the ungracious
task of employing ‘the strong arm of the law’ against the multitude;
and ‘The Duke,’ though only Master-General of the Ordnance, and (if we
remember rightly) not in the Cabinet, was disliked at that time, from a
general belief that he had recommended that all disaffection should be
summarily dealt with, as he had dealt with the French, by cannon-ball
and bayonet. The four thus named were the principal members of Lord
Liverpool’s Cabinet. The Premier himself was a nobody. His fitness for
the high and responsible office may be judged from the fact that,
some time before he was seized with paralysis, which ended in utter
prostration of mind and body, he mentioned to a friend that ‘for years
he had not opened an official despatch without apprehension and alarm.’
“At such a crisis, and against such a Ministry, William Hone had the
boldness to enter the lists. He commenced the publication of cheap
pamphlets, in which the literature was below par, and the main reliance
was upon the _telling_ points of the woodcuts. The first was ‘The
Political House that Jack Built,’ with thirteen cuts after designs by
George Cruikshank. This was a parody upon the old nursery rhyme. It
_took_ amazingly.
Upwards of 100,000 copies sold. George Cruikshank was too young at the
time to have any very decided politics, but there is no doubt that then,
as now, his sympathies were with the people. At any rate, he did his
work well. Every one laughed at what Hone had issued; and though it did
the Ministry a thousand times the actual damage which even Cobbett’s
‘Register’ could have done, they could not prosecute it. The
Attorney-General would have been laughed out of Court, had he attempted
anything of the kind. The light arrows of ridicule went through the
armour which a heavier weapon could not enter. All the world laughed;
Canning, Castlereagh, and Company enjoying the joke, no doubt, as well
as the rest of the people.” * But George Cruikshank was working for
William Hone, according to his own showing, in 1817 or 1818, when he
produced his “Bank Note not to be Imitated”--a modest work to which he
was wont to revert to the end of his life with infinite satisfaction,
because he attributed to it the withdrawal of Bank of England one-pound
notes, and consequently to “the punishment of death” for such offence.
In a letter to Whitaker, dated from the Hampstead Road, in 1875, he
said, entitling his account “How I put a stop to Hanging”:--
* The London Journal, November 20th, 1847.
“Dear Whitaker,--About the year 1817 or 1818 there were one-pound Bank
of England notes in circulation, and, unfortunately, there were forged
one-pound bank notes in circulation also; and the punishment for passing
these forged notes was in some cases transportation for life, and in
others death.
“At that time I resided in Dorset Street, Salisbury Square, Fleet
Street, and had occasion to go early one morning to a house near the
Bank of England; and in returning home between eight and nine o’clock,
down Ludgate Hill, and seeing a number of persons looking up the Old
Bailey, I looked that way myself, and saw several human beings hanging
on the gibbet opposite Newgate prison, and, to my horror, two of these
were women; and, upon inquiring what these women had been hung for, was
informed that it was for passing forged one-pound notes. The fact that
a poor woman could be put to death for such a minor offence had a great
effect upon me--and I at that moment determined, if possible, to put
a stop to this shocking destruction of life for merely obtaining a few
shillings by fraud; and well knowing the habits of the low class of
society in London, I felt quite sure that in very many cases the rascals
who forged the notes induced these poor ignorant women to go into the
gin-shops to ‘get something to drink,’ and thus _pass_ the notes, and
hand them the change.
“My residence was a short distance from Ludgate Hill (Dorset Street);
and after witnessing this tragic scene I went home, and in ten minutes
designed and made a sketch of this ‘_Bank-note not to be imitated_.’
About half an hour after this was done, William Hone came into my room,
and saw the sketch lying upon my table; he was much struck with it, and
said, ‘What are you going to do with this, George?’
[Illustration: 120]
“‘To publish it,’ I replied. Then he said, ‘Will you let me have it?’
To his request I consented, made an etching of it, and it was published.
Mr. Hone then resided on Ludgate Hill, not many yards from the spot
where I had seen the people hanging on the gibbet; and when it appeared
in his shop windows, it created a great sensation, and the people
gathered round his house in such numbers that the Lord Mayor had to send
the City police (of that day) to disperse the crowd. The Bank directors
held a meeting immediately upon the subject, and after that they issued
no more one-pound notes, and so there was no more hanging for passing
forged one-pound notes; not only that, but ultimately no hanging, even
for forgery. After this Sir Robert Peel got a Bill passed in Parliament
for the ‘Resumption of cash payments.’ After this he revised the Penal
Code, and after that there was not any more hanging or punishment of
death for minor offences.
“In a work that I am preparing for publication I intend to give a copy
of ‘The Bank Note,’ as I consider it the most important design and
etching that I ever made in my life; for it has saved the lives of
thousands of my fellow-creatures; and for having been able to do this
Christian act I am indeed most sincerely thankful, and am, dear friend,
yours truly,
“George Cruikshank.
“263, Hampstead Road,
“December 12th, 1875.”
Here it will be seen Cruikshank assumed much. In the catalogue of his
collected works, printed by the Executive Committee for securing the
collection to the nation, he went further, saying, “So the final effect
of _my note_ was to stop hanging for all minor offences.” The labours of
the famous writers and speakers who advocated a milder code went,
then, for nothing! It was in connection with William Hone that George
Cruikshank suddenly rose to supreme popularity--out rivalling his
compeers, including Rowlandson, then poor and dissipated like Gillray,
and near his end. Cruikshank’s own father’s latest political caricature
had appeared in 1810.
The work which Cruikshank did for Hone, as “The Political House that
Jack Built,” “The Political Showman at Home,” and, lastly, a “Slap
at Slop,” produced at the time of Queen Caroline’s trial, enjoyed an
extraordinary popularity, and commanded an immense circualation.
[Illustration: 125]
“The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder” * was a great success. The drawings,
“all by Mr. George Cruikshank,” as Mr. Hone advertised, were severely
satirical throughout from the first, where the royal husband drunk, with
a broken wine-glass in his hand, the garter falling from his leg, cards
and dice and bottles scattered at his feet, and the candles guttering in
the sockets, maunders alone to where the fat Adonis is being borne away
in a barrow to the “English cry” of “Cats’ meat.” “Non mi Ricordo” was
another squib of this year.
* The edition before me, dated 1820, is the thirteenth.
In the “Political Showman at Home,” with twenty-four cuts by Cruikshank,
the satire is biting, and the ideas are plentiful. The showman, by way
of introduction, addresses his readers: “Ladies and gentlemen, walk up!
walk up! and see the curiosities and creatures--all alive! alive O! Walk
up! now’s your time! Only a shilling. Please to walk up!
“Here is the strangest and most wonderful _artificial_ cabinet in
Europe!--made of nothing--but _lackerd brass, turnery, and papier
mâchée_--all fret work and _varnish_, held together by _steel points!_
Very crazy, but very curious!
“Please to walk in, ladies and gentlemen--it’s well worth _seeing!_ Here
are the most wonderful of all wonderful living animals. Take care! Don’t
go within their reach--they mind nobody but me! A short time ago they
got loose, and, with some other _vermin_ that came from their _holes
and corners_, desperately attacked a lady of quality; but, as luck would
have it, I and my ‘four-and-twenty men’ happened to come in at the
very moment: we pull’d away, and prevented ‘em from doing her a serious
mischief. Though they look tame, their vicious dispositions are
unchanged. If anything was to happen to me, they’d soon break out again,
and show their natural ferocity. _I’m in continual danger from ‘em
myself_; for if I didn’t watch’em closely, they’d destroy me. As the
clown says, ‘there never was such times,’--so there’s no telling what
tricks they may play yet.
“Ladies and gentlemen,--these animals have been exhibited _at Court_
before the king and all the royal family! Indeed, His Majesty is so fond
of ‘em, that he often sees’em _in private_, and _feeds_ ‘em; and he
is so diverted by’em, that he has been pleased to express his gracious
approbation of all their _motions_. But they’re as cunning as the old
one himself! Bless you, he does not know a thousandth part of their
tricks. You, ladies and gentlemen, may see’em just as they are!--the
Beasts and Reptiles--all alive! alive O! and the Big Booby--all a-light!
a light O!
“Walk in, ladies and gentlemen! walk in! just a-going to begin. Stir ‘em
up! stir ‘em up there with the long pole.
“Before I describe the animals, please to look at the show-cloth
opposite--”
The show-cloth is a drawing of the transparency “exhibited by William
Hone during the illumination commencing on the 11th and ending on the
15th of November, 1820, in celebration of the victory obtained by the
press for the liberties of the people, which had been assailed in the
person of the Queen; the words, ‘Triumph of the Press,’ being displayed
in variegated lamps as a motto above it On the 29th, when the Queen went
to St. Paul’s, it was again exhibited, with Lord Bacon’s immortal words,
‘Knowledge is power,’ displayed in like manner. The transparency was
painted by Mr. George Cruikshank.”
The animals, the beasts and reptiles, are political figures. The
crocodile wears the Lord Chancellor’s wig, the black rats are lawyers,
the scorpion has the Duke’s nose and cocked hat.
Cruikshank’s illustrations to “Slap at Slop” include ideas enough to
enrich half a dozen comic papers of our day. The hitting is hard, but
it is never indecent, and it is always on the right side. The author of
“The Political House that Jack Built” describes Dr. Slop in downright
English: “A minion of ministers, a parasite to despotism throughout
the world; public virtue is the object of his unprincipled hate
and unsparing abuse Hence there is not a ‘public principle that his
mendacity has not perverted’; not a man of disinterested public conduct
that he has not vilified; not a measure of advantage to the country,
emanating from such men, that he has not derided; not a measure of
ministerial profligacy that he has not promoted; not a public job that
he has not bolstered; not a public knave that he has not shielded; not
an inroad upon the Constitution that he has not widened; not a treason
against the people’s liberties that he has not advocated; not a sore
upon the people’s hearts that he has not enlarged.” *
* Dr. Stoddart (afterwards Sir John Stoddart), contributor
to, and editor of, the _Times_, from about 1810 to 1815 or
early in 1816, was attacked as Dr. Slop by Moore. He was
removed in consequence of the unmeasured violence and
coarseness of his attacks on Napoleon. “The Corsican
scoundrel” was a common phrase of his. He started the _New
Times_, in opposition to Mr. Walter’s journal; but although
he conducted it with distinguished ability, it failed, and
died after a short life.
Dr. Mackenzie, who saw all these squibs when they first appeared, and
remembered the effect they immediately made, bears testimony to their
popularity and to their value as political agents:--
“During the excitement of the period, when the sympathy of the multitude
was unquestionably in favour of Queen Caroline, and even most of
the non-political portion of society thought that, under existing
circumstances, her husband should not have proceeded against her as he
did, Hone sent out several other brochures with illustrations by Greorge
Cruikshank. That was about six-and-twenty years ago--we saw them at the
time, and we have not seen them since--but we have a vivid recollection
of every one of them. There was the ‘Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder,’
described as a National Toy, with fourteen step-scenes, and
illustrations in verse, and eighteen other cuts. There was ‘Non Mi
Ricordo,’ founded on the convenient forgetfulness of Theodore Majocci,
the principal witness against the Queen.
[Illustration: 131]
There was the ‘Political Showman.’ There were others which also told
well on the public mind, and there is no doubt very greatly influenced
it in favour of the Queen and against the King and his ministers. It was
impossible for any one to avoid laughing heartily at these publications.
There was no mistaking any one character introduced. There was Canning,
recognized by his bald head and his peculiar attitude. There was
Sidmouth, with an enema-bag in his hand, and thus, if the likeness
were not striking, showed that he was indeed ‘The Doctor.* There was
Wellington, spare in figure, with his Roman nose and keen, cold eye.
There was Castlereagh, duly ticketed as ‘Derry-down-triangle,’ in memory
of the tortures which he allowed to be inflicted in Ireland during the
rebellion of 1798. But chief of all was the King. Never before nor since
was royalty made so ridiculous. The towering wig, the false whiskers,
the padded garments, the enormous bulk, the affectation of juvenility
by ‘the dandy of sixty’ were all inimitable, and not to be mistaken.
Lawrence himself might have painted more powerful portraits of the
Sovereign, but none half so characteristic as these. We remember one
which gave us a back view of ‘big Greorge,’ with the proportions of his
sitting part ludicrously exaggerated, and a star or two stuck upon
the narrow tails of the coat, which did not cover the sitting part, as
aforesaid. It was impossible to avoid laughing at these--the likeness
so good, the figure so correct, the attitude so irresistibly funny. Then
the doggrel letter-press, to explain what wanted no explanation. Fancy
such a figure stuck in the centre of the page, with such a running
commentary beneath as the following:--
‘The dandy of sixty
Who bows with a grace;
The laughable figure
Who wears a crown,
With crosses and badges, and stars of renown,
Who honour and virtue has trampled down,
By insulting the Queen that Jack found.’
“The present generation, examining these things, might wonder at
the effect they had upon the public mind; but we can tell them that
thousands and ten thousands recollect that the effect was extraordinary.
There was a rush and a crush to get them. Edition after edition went off
like wildfire. Of some, as many as a quarter of a million copies were
sold. Some ran into the thirtieth edition. In 1822, Mr. Hone brought
out ‘A Slap at Slop and the Bridge Street Gang,’ a very cleverly
written broadsheet, newspaper size, with fictitious advertisements and
intelligence, every line of which had a direct political or personal
aim. This had also the advantage of George Cruikshank’s illustrations;
and with this concluded his essays in the political line. The system of
government improved hereafter, and the artist thought, no doubt, that a
wider and better field was before him for the exercise of his talents.
Henceforth, then, no one could say of George Cruikshank that he
‘To party gave up what was meant for mankind.’”
Having said that he believed Cruikshank’s attacks upon the Prince Regent
to have been his only effort as a party politician, * and referred to
his “regular John Bull style of treating the Corsican officer, Boney,
as he was pleased always to call Napoleon I.,” Thackeray points out how
soon the caricaturist’s heart relented when the Emperor had yielded to
stern fortune. The fine drawing of Louis XVI. trying Napoleon’s boots
on his gouty feet, is cited in evidence,** But Cruikshank could never
master his bull-dog contempt for Frenchmen, This is clear in all his
drawings where they appear: in those published in “Life in Paris,” as
well as the series first issued between 1817 and 1820, and reissued
by Mr. McLean, of the Haymarket, in 1835. The Cruikshank Frenchmen
are “almost invariably thin, with ludicrous spindle-shanks,
pig-tails, outstretched hands, shrugging shoulders, and queer hair and
moustachios.”
* Which is a mistake. Cruikshank produced some notable
political pictures many years later, as the reader will see.
** He even went the length, in one of his temperance
speeches, of apologising for his attacks on the Prince
Regent.
We have merely glanced at the early caricatures of this indefatigable
observer and worker. “Long before he was out of jackets,” says Mr. Sala,
who knew him well in his later years, and understood every facet of his
brilliant genius, “he had learned to draw with facility, symmetry,
and precision; and if we recollect right, the collected edition of his
original drawings, shown at Exeter Hall some years since, comprised some
comic sketches in pencil of ‘Coalies’ at the old ‘Fox under the Hill,’
executed in the year 1899....
“The earliest bread-winning engagement of young George appears to have
been in connection with a satirical periodical called the _Scourge_, and
another light, the _Meteor_, which latter he published conjointly with a
man of letters named Earle. In the time of the Russian campaign of 1812
he was very busy with aquatint tableaux of the disaster and shameful
flight of Napoleon I., whom he always heartily hated; and in the
Waterloo year he ‘illustrated’ a comic song, sung ‘every night with
tremendous applause’ at the old Surrey Theatre, in which the final
downfall of the Corsican usurper and tyrant was narrated in a style
which would have delighted M. Lanfray. But it was in 1820 that
George first made a decided hit.” This, as illustrator of the Hone
publications, the literary portion of which was worthless. Of “that
strange, wayward man, William Hone,” first bookseller and writer of
lampoons and parodies of the Litany and Church catechism, and in the
end antiquary and mild collector of folk-lore, Cruikshank said, in the
fragment of his autobiography which opens his “Omnibus,” in reply to
a remark that he had once been on terms, not only of intimacy, “but of
warm friendship,” with “the most noted infidel of his day.”
The proprietor, Earl, was an unprincipled man, who persuaded George
Cruikshank to put his name to a bill. When it fell due, the drawer was
in the Fleet prison. The acceptor’s mother was not a lady to take such
a deception lightly. She repaired to the Fleet, but obtained no
satisfaction from the debtor. The editor of the _Scourge_, “Jack,” or
“Mad” Mitford, was worthy of the proprietor. He had been an officer
in the navy, but fell through infamous conduct to be the rhymester of
running patterers. His principal work, “Johnny Newcome in the Navy,”
was written in the gravel-pits near Bayswater, where he had hidden, and
whither his publisher sent him a shilling daily, to buy gin and cheese,
in return for “copy.” He died in St. Giles’s workhouse.
“What Mr. Hone’s religious creed may have been at that time, I am far
from being able to decide; I was too young to know more than that he
seemed deeply read in theological questions, and, although unsettled in
his opinions, always professed to be a Christian. I knew also that his
conduct was regulated by the strictest morality. He had been brought up
to detest the Church of Rome, and to look upon the ‘Church of England’
service as little better than popish ceremonies; and with this feeling
he parodied some portions of the Church service for purposes of
political satire. But with these publications _I had nothing whatever
to do_; and the instant I heard of their appearance, I entreated him to
withdraw them. That I was his friend is true; and it is true, also, that
among his friends were many persons, not more admired for their literary
genius, than esteemed for their zeal in behalf of religion and morals.”
This manly vindication of his friend was characteristic of George
Cruikshank. “When Hone was arraigned for blasphemy, Cruikshank,” says
a writer on him in the _London Review_ (December 28th, 1867), who
knew him, “was consulted, and he dictated a letter, begging the
Attorney-General not to take proceedings. This letter, one of Hone’s
little children took to that Crown officer’s private house. But in vain.
The action went on, and the ill-paid artist stood nobly by his friend.
It is even said that the trial was rehearsed in Cruikshank’s studio, and
that he and Hone concocted the defence together.”
When Hone died, Cruikshank insisted upon going to the funeral of
his friend. Dickens used to describe a serio-comic scene with Mrs.
Cruikshank at the time, who implored him to intercede, not only because
she feared George might be indiscreet and get into trouble, but because
she could not bear “those horrid Miss Hones.” Hone, on his side, bore
handsome testimony to the genius of the artist.
Hone’s “Ancient Mysteries Described,” fcap. 8vo, 1823, contains two
illustrations by George Cruikshank; viz., “The Giants in Guildhall,” and
“Fools’ Morris Dance.” In an allusion to the giants, Mr. Hone observed:
“In order to perpetuate their appearance they are drawn and etched by
Mr. George Cruikshank, whose extraordinary talents have been happily
exercised on my more original fancies. As this may be the last time that
I shall ever write Mr. Cruikshank’s name for the press, I cannot but
express my astonishment that a pencil which commands the admiration of
any individual qualified to appreciate art, should be disregarded by
that, class whose omission to secure it in their service is a remarkable
instance of disregard to their own interests as the midwives of
literature.”
[Illustration: 143]