CHAPTER I. AT GILLRAY’s GRAVE.

THE LIFE of GEORGE CRUIKSHANK

By BLANCHARD JERROLD

In Two Volumes--Volume Two

1882

THE LIFE OF GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.

EPOCH I. (continued).

CHAPTER XI. THE COMIC ALMANAC.

In 1835 the late Mr. Tilt, publisher, of Fleet Street, started the Comic

Almanac, and engaged George Cruikshank to illustrate it. It was a happy

idea, exactly suited to the more popular side of the mood and genius of

the artist; and Cruikshank entered upon his task with zest For nineteen

years this annual comic and satirical commentary on passing and probable

events, not only furnished him with a regular income, giving him work on

which he might reckon with certainty in estimating his very fluctuating

resources; but it afforded him the opportunity, in which he always

delighted, of recording in his own quaint, original manner, his opinions

on the questions of the day.

[Illustration: 017]

In the nineteen volumes to which the Almanac ran, there are nearly two

hundred and fifty etchings by him; and among these there are some of his

happiest bits of observation, of his shrewdest exposures of folly and

vice and cant, and of his original fancy. After looking over these

nineteen volumes, and noticing that the wit and earnestness of purpose

are as fresh and strong in that of 1853 as in the first volume, the

reader cannot refuse to endorse what Thackeray said of Cruikshank’s

humour--viz., that it is so good and benevolent, any man must love it.

While in his illustrations of books the many-sided artist continued to

express his serious or tragic power, which Mr. Ruskin has asserted to

be as great as his grotesque power, though warped by “habits of

caricature”; in these pleasant annual volumes, in the letterpress

of which he had the assistance of his friends, Thackeray, Gilbert

à Beckett, Albert Smith, Robert Brough, Horace and Henry Mayhew, he

maintained his original popularity with the laughter-loving sections of

the British public.

[Illustration: 019]

In 1835, when the first almanac appeared, the water cure was amusing

the public. Cruikshank’s first plate shows one enthusiast under the

water-butt, another under a burst water-pipe, and a third in an elegant

attitude, being pumped upon by his servant, and remarking, “Well, I

could not have supposed that being ‘pumped upon’ was such a luxury! and

so invigorating! And to think that so good a thing should hitherto

have been thrown away upon _qui tam_ attorneys, sprained ankles, and

pickpockets!” Then Mr. Rigdum Funnidos (originated by the late Mr.

Vizetelly, I am informed by his son Henry), enters upon the scene, and

continues year after year to be the _nom de plume_ of a succession of

wits and humourists; and Cruikshank unfolds his series of plates of the

months, each season being indicated by some humorous incident or some

happy notes of observation of our London streets. The ice-carts and

slides of January; the muddy streets and bustling postmen of St.

Valentine’s day,--how unlike (with their great leather bags) the postmen

of our day! the winds of March outside Mr. Tilt’s shop, blowing even

a dog’s tail over his back; showery April, with a wonderful group

of Cockneys standing up; the sweeps of Mayday; June, at the Royal

Academy--a bit of Cruikshank at his brightest; July, in Vauxhall

Gardens, with the band in cocked hats, and the famous master of the

ceremonies in pumps; Cruikshank’s old friend, the dustman, eating his

first oyster in August; Greenwich Fair in September; going into the

country by the stage coaches in October; Guy Fawkes in November; and the

Christmas pudding, with a laughing company welcoming it, in December. As

pictures of the humorous side of London life upwards of forty years ago,

these spirited etchings, which teem with life, are invaluable.

The fun of Mr. Rigdum Funnidos was of a kind that has found many

imitators. In the “proceedings of learned societies” we find that the

fossil remains of an antediluvian pawnbroker had been dug up within a

mile of Hog’s Norton; that a successful method of converting stones

into bread has been transmitted to the New Poor Law Commissioners, and a

three-and-sixpenny medal presented to the ingenious discoverer thereof;

then that a laborious investigator has reckoned that there are exactly

nine millions, one hundred and sixty-four thousand, five hundred

and thirty-three hairs on a tom-cat’s tail, which he defies all the

zoologists of Europe to disprove. Later on (1839) Thackeray contributed

“Stubbs’ Diary” and “Barber Cox, or the Cutting of his Comb,” to the

pages of Funnidos. From the first, Cruikshank hit hard at quacks and

shams. The first almanac has an “advertisement extraordinary” of the

“British Humbug College of Health,” and some amusing testimonials from

Gudgeon and Gosling, who have been cured by “Morising Pills.” The moral

at the close of the almanac is, “While we venerate what is deserving

of veneration, let us not forget that quackery, knavery, bigotry, and

superstition always merit exposure and castigation.”

The versatility and the perennial vigour and vivacity of Cruikshank’s

genius is nowhere more strikingly displayed than in the variety with

which he has treated of the seasons in the Comic Almanac. One year March

is illustrated by a meeting of workmen going to work, and roysterers

returning home, day and night being nearly equal. Next March the cook is

tossing pancakes. April is now shown upon the famous hill in Greenwich

Park, and now in a wet return from the races. One November we have Lord

Mayor’s Day, with one of Cruikshank’s dense crowds, and the next year we

are treated to a delicious bit of humour.

Guys in council over the gunpowder plot May now famishes the artist

with one of his happiest bits of suburban scenery, “all a-growing,”--a

housewife exchanging old garments for spring flowers; and now such

a crowd of lean-shanked charity boys, with such a beadle as only the

“inimitable George” could draw before Leech’s time, are beating the

bounds. July furnishes a whimsical scene of the dog-days--with London

dogs fighting, drawing carts, playing Toby in a Punch and Judy show,

running under a truck, and an aristocratic dog looking haughtily down

from a first-floor window. (Landseer took more than one hint from

Cruikshank’s animals.) June “down at Beulah,” a December dance; May

“settling for the Derby”--a wonderful assemblage of broad and long

faces; July at the seaside, with cockneys donkey-riding--“long days

and long ears;” a November fog; December--“a swallow at Christmas,” a

procession of the many substantial items of Christmas cheer, making a

procession into the prodigious maw of John Bull. The fountain of humour

is inexhaustible. The satirical contrasts also, are capital. Premium,

a smart gentleman, with the ladies smiling upon him; Discount, in the

dumps, and shabby, with the ladies’ backs resolutely turned towards him.

The Parlour and the Cellar, each getting drunk after its fashion. The

“Shop and the Shay,” two delightful bits of London life. Then there

is the British Museum in 2043, with a gibbet, the pillory, a stage

coachman, a Whig, a Tory, and a tax-gatherer’s book among the

curiosities.

In 1844, Cruikshank began a series of large folded drawings, with a most

humorous etching of the probable effects of over-female emigration. An

importation of the fair sex from the savage islands has been effected,

“in consequence of exporting all our own to Australia;” and the dark

ladies are making eyes at a crowd of anxious men, who are advancing

towards them, while in the distance would-be husbands are running to the

scene. The faces of the imported squaws on shore, as well as those in

the boats, being landed from the big ship, are the creations of a most

searching humorous observer. Cruikshank’s cartoon of Guy Fawkes treated

classically is wonderfully funny. The artist explained it himself in his

own rough fantastic way.

“Having been advised,” he said, “by my friends to publish a sketch of my

cartoon” (the great cartoon competition for the Houses of Parliament was

going on in 1844) “intended for exhibition at Westminster Hall, I think

the public, upon seeing it, will require some explanation of it. The

subject has often been treated, and sometimes rather ill-treated, by

preceding artists. Being forcibly struck by the grand classical style,

I have aimed at it, and I trust I have succeeded in hitting it. At all

events, if I have not quite come up to the mark, I have had a good bold

fling at it. The first thing I thought it necessary to think of (though,

by-the-bye, it is generally the last thing thought of in historical

painting) was to get a faithful portrait of the principal character. For

that purpose I determined to study nature, and strolled about London and

the suburbs on the 5th of November, in search of a likeness of

Fawkes, caring little under what Guys it might be presented to me.

Unfortunately, some had long noses and some had short; so, putting this

and that together, the long and the short of it is, that I determined

on adopting a living prototype, who has been blowing up both Houses of

Parliament for several years, and if not a Guy Fawkes in other respects,

is at least famous for encouraging forking out on the part of others.

Having got over the preliminary difficulty,

“I set to work upon my cartoon; and being resolved to make it a greater

work than had ever before been known, I forgot the prescribed size,

for my head was far above the consideration of mere fact, and I did not

reflect, that where Parliament had given an inch, I was taking an ell as

the very lowest estimate.

[Illustration: 029]

“Having strolled towards Westminster Hall to survey the scene of my

future triumphs, it struck me that I had carried the grand classical

to such a height as to preclude all chance of my cartoon being got in

through the doorway; and I therefore, with the promptitude of a Richard

the Third, determined to ‘off with his head’ by taking a slice off the

top of the canvas. This necessary piece of execution rather spoiled

the design, but it enabled me to throw a heaviness into the brows of my

principal figure, which, if it marred the resemblance to Fawkes, gave

him an additional look of the Guy at all events. It then occurred to me

that I might diminish the dimensions by taking a couple of feet off the

legs; and this happy idea enabled me to carry out the historical notion

that Fawkes was the mere tool of others, in which case, to cramp him in

the understanding must be considered a nice blending of the false in art

with the true in nature. The Guy’s feet were accordingly foreshortened,

till I left him as he appeared when trying to defend himself at his

trial, with hardly a leg to stand upon. Besides, I knew I could fresco

out his calves in fine style, when once I got permission to turn the

fruit of my labours into wall fruit on the inside of the Houses of

Parliament.

“It will now be naturally asked why my cartoon was not exhibited

with others, some of which were equally monstrous, in the Hall of

Westminster. The fact is, if the truth must out, the cartoon would not

go in. Though I had cramped my genius already to suit the views of the

Commissioners and the size of the door, I found I must have stooped much

lower if I had resolved on finding admittance for my work. I wrote at

once to the Woods and Forests, calling upon them to widen the door for

genius, by taking down a portion of the wall: but it will hardly be

believed, that though there were, at the time, plenty of workmen about

the building, no answer was returned to my request. Alas! it is all

very well to sing, as they do in Der Freischutz, ‘Through the Woods

and through the Forests,’ but towards me the Woods and Forests proved

themselves utterly impenetrable.

“It will be seen that the arch-conspirator--for so I must continue to

call him, though he could not be got into the archway--has placed his

hat upon the ground, a little point in which I have blended imagination

with history, and both with convenience. The imagination suggests that

such a villain ought not to wear his hat; history does not say that

he did, which is as much as to hint that he didn’t; while convenience,

coming to the aid of both, renders it necessary for his hat to lie upon

the ground; for if I had tried to place it on his head, there would have

been no room for it There was one gratifying circumstance connected with

this cartoon, which, in spite of my being charged with vanity, I must

repeat. As it was carried through the streets, it seemed to be generally

understood and appreciated; every one, even children, exclaiming as it

passed, ‘Oh! there’s a Guy!’

“George Cruikshank.”

There was some bitterness in this jesting; for Cruikshank felt conscious

of the latent power to execute a cartoon about which there should have

been no buffoonery. Alas! his lines had been cast in humble places. He

had lived to earn his bread from day to day in the grotesque market; and

the solemn and poetic side of his genius had been left unworked, or had

been only partially and fitfully developed as he became an illustrator

of books.

In the Almanac which included the Guy Fawkes cartoon appeared

Cruikshank’s Father Mathew, a nice man for a small party. Father Mathew

appears in the shape of a pump or filter to a convivial domestic circle,

and holds parley with them. The animated pump, with the extended handle

for a warning arm, and the spout for a nose, is an old Cruikshankian

figure. “Touch not--taste not,” says the preacher-pump: “if you _must_

take anything, take the Pledge.”

Paterfamilias, with a severe frown and aggressive attitude, has turned

upon the intruder. “Dost thou think,” he says, “because thou art

virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” Pater’s friend is more

insinuating, and has an excuse. “Why, you see, old gent,” he remarks,

“the case is this--the ladies insist upon my singing a comic song, and I

should like to know how I am to manage that over a glass of pump-water.”

The grandfather pleads: “Won’t you allow an old gentleman a little warm

elder wine this cold night?” And the buxom lady of the house is coaxing:

“Pray take a chair, sir, and taste my home-made wine, or a glass of our

home-brewed ale.” These suggested compromises expressed very faithfully

the mood of the artist’s mind at the time. His sympathies inclined him

towards the Apostle of Temperance; but he was not yet prepared to go

over, body and soul, to the cause. The picture is accompanied by an “Ode

to Father Mathew,” conceived in a spirit of hearty opposition, that only

goes towards proving that Cruikshank was at the half-way house of elder

and home-made wines and home-brewed beer, between the punch bowl and the

pump. The ode is in the fine old style:--

“Oh, Father Mathew I why dost thou incline

Against all spirits thus to whine?

To preach against good liquor is a scandal.

Why to such rash conclusions jump--

To airy, dull, unsocial pump,

Why give a handle?

Water is very well--but then ‘tis known

That well is always better let alone.

Washing is water’s only function,

Save when a little drop poured in--

To brandy, whisky, rum, or gin,

Makes glorious grand junction.”

The kindly humourist’s etching-needle was inspired by every good cause.

These almanacs have all morals underlying the fun. Cruikshank liked to

have an object in view. No class, no creature was too humble for his

sympathy. Landseer never drew anything better than the plate of the

Dog-Days--suggested by “the Dogs Bill” of 1843. Two hard-working, very

radical dogs who are drawing a truckful of hardware, scowl at a pair of

genteel dogs, extravagantly arrayed, and smoking cigars, who cross their

path. First radical dog says he believes they don’t know the side “their

tails hang on,” they are so proud--adding, “Why, a cousin of mine, as

lives at Barking, tells me as how the celebrated dog Billy has grown so

proud that he has _declined_ to kill any more rats. And as to cigars!

why bless you, there ain’t a _Puppy_ about Town but wot has got a cigar

stuck in his mouth.” In a corner a watch-dog and a dancing dog are

talking over their grievances; while in the distance a lady tells her

footman to take care her spaniel, Duchess, does not get her feet

wet. The dogs are inimitable. Bloomers, crinoline, over-population (a

Cruikshankian plate showing the housetops covered with the superabundant

humanity), the “steamed-out” stage-coachman, the “fast man,” female

parliaments, baby-jumpers, cheap excursion trains, taking the census,

the effect of the Peace Society (a regiment hay-making), Jullien as the

President of the French Republic, “with entire new politics and polkas,”

a pack of knaves, being a meeting of the betting interest,--these are

but a few notable pictures of the crowded gallery. Cruikshank revelled

in the fun, and sought to extract wisdom from it He had an old-fashioned

idea of woman and her rights, and was sharp with his needle over female

suffrage, ladies in pantalettes, and women of mind.

[Illustration: 041]

Henry Mayhew wrote some verses on a woman of mind, during one of the

years of his editorship (1847), beginning,--

“My wife is a woman of mind,

And Deville, who examined her bumps,

Vow’d that never were found in a woman

Such large intellectual lumps.

‘Ideality’ big as an egg,

With ‘Causality’--great--was combined;

He charg’d me ten shillings, and said,

‘Sir, your wife is a woman of mind.’”

Cruikshank’s picture of her is one of his stereotyped, ill-favoured,

stuck-up, figureless ladies, of whom a friend said one day, when looking

over some sketches, in Amwell Street, “Why, George, your females are all

shaped like hour-glasses.”

For pure fun nothing could be better than the “Banquet of the Black

Dolls,” in commemoration of the reduction of the Duty on Bags. The doll

who occupies the chair has before her a Grand Potage de Dripping,

and the menu includes Pâté de Horseshoes, Omelette de Old Iron, Bones

Boil-é, Rag-out de Superior White Linen Rag, Fricassée de Broken Glass,

and Poudin Kitchen Stuff.

The arrival of Tom Thumb, and his reception by the élite of society, as

the bills said, and the brilliant court he held under a shower of John

Bull’s gold in Piccadilly, suggested two scenes to hard-working and most

moderately-paid Cruikshank. The first is called “Born a Genius.” In a

garret a poor artist sits in despair and poverty--his empty plate upon

the table, his tattered boots upon the floor. The second is called “Born

a Dwarf.”

[Illustration: 044]

The little man reclines upon a sofa, with a jewel-case and full

money-bags beside him. He toys with a trinket, having finished his

foie-gras and champagne.

He had seen inexcusable personalities in the paper, he remarked; and

when Lemon said to him, “We shall have you yet,” George shouted in

reply, striking one of his theatrical attitudes, “Never!”

[Illustration: 049]

He had repented of his early days of unscrupulous caricature. It must be

remembered, always to Cruikshank’s lasting honour, that, his wild youth

past, he refused scores of tempting offers of work that did not quite

commend itself to his conscience. He used to say he would illustrate

nothing which he did not feel.

Later, when _Punch_ goodnaturedly rallied him on his temperance

eccentricities, he declared that he had a great mind to go down to Fleet

Street “and knock the old rascal’s wooden head about.”

[Illustration: 050]

[Illustration: 051]

CHAPTER XII. LORD BATEMAN AND THE TABLE BOOK.

Between 1837 and 1847, in addition to his work with Dickens and

Ainsworth, and in his _Omnibus_ and “Comic Almanac,” Cruikshank threw

off some of his most popular minor drawings and etchings. Within this

decade he etched many of his plates for the “Waverley Novels,” he

illustrated “Peter Parley’s Tales about Christmas,” “Rambles in the

Footsteps of Don Quixote” (1837), “More Hints on Etiquette” (1838),

“Lympsfield and its Environs” (1838), “The Life of Mansie Waunch (1838)

for Blackwood, “Land-Sharks and Sea-Gulls” (1838), “Rejected Addresses”

(1838), “Out and About,” a boy’s adventures, by Hain Friswell (1840),

John O’Neill’s poem of “The Drunkard” (1842), Dibdin’s Songs (1841-2),

“Picnic Papers” (1841), edited by Dickens; Douglas Jerrold’s “Cakes

and Ale” (1842), “Modern Chivalry, or a new Orlando Furioso” (1843);

Martin’s “Vagaries,” a sequel to “A Tale of a Tub” (1843); “The

Bachelor’s own Book, or the Life of Mr. Lambkin, gent” (1844); Harry

Lorrequer’s “Arthur O’Leary” (1844); Maxwell’s “Irish Rebellion” (1845),

“The Old Sailor’s Jolly Boat” (1845), “The Comic Blackstone” (1846),

Mrs. Gore’s “Snow-Storm” and “New Year’s Day” (1845), “Our Own Times”

(1845), the Brothers Mayhew’s “Greatest Plague of Life” (1847), “The

Emigrant,’ by Sir Francis Head, Captain Chamier’s “Ben Brace” (1847),

“Nights at Mess,” and Laman Blanchard’s “Sketches from Life.” He

also began his capital illustrations to “The Ingoldsby Legends,” in

_Bentley’s Miscellany_. To this period, also, his wellknown “John

Gilpin” and “Lord Bateman” (1839) belong.

According to Mr. Walter Hamilton, the history of the “Loving Ballad of

Lord Bateman” is, that George Cruikshank “sang the old English ballad,

in the manner of a street-ballad singer, at a dinner of the Antiquarian

Society, at which Dickens and Thackeray were present.

[Illustration: 053]

The latter is reported to have remarked, “I should like to print that

ballad, with illustrations.” But Cruikshank warned him off, saying that

this was exactly what he himself had resolved to do. The original ballad

was much longer than that which Cruikshank illustrated, and to which

Charles Dickens furnished humorous notes; and was not comic in any

respect. Mr. Sala’s version is the more _vraisetnblant_:--

“The authorship of the ballad itself, which has furnished the basis for

no less than three theatrical burlesques--one by a forgotten dramatist

at the Strand, another by Robert Brough at the Adelphi, and a third by

Henry J. Byron at the Globe--is involved in mystery. George Cruikshank’s

assertion, and one to which he doggedly adhered, was that he heard the

song sung one night by an itinerant minstrel outside a public-house near

Battle Bridge; and that he subsequently chanted and ‘performed’ (George

was as good as any play, or as a story-teller in a Moorish coffee-house,

at ‘performing’) the ditty to Charles Dickens, who was so delighted with

it that he persuaded George to publish it, adorned with copper-plates.

But internal evidence would seem to be against the entire authenticity

of the artist’s version. That he had heard some doggerel sung outside

a tavern, and relating to Lord Bateman, is likely enough. ‘Vilikins and

his was immortalised by Robson in Jem Baggs. George Cruikshank’s error,

it strikes us, was more one of omission than of commission. He may have

lyrically narrated the adventures of the ‘Noble Lord of High Degree’

to Dickens; but he assuredly warbled and ‘performed’ them too in the

presence of Thackeray, who in all probability ‘revised and settled’ the

words, and made them fit for publication. Nobody but Thackeray could

have written those lines about ‘The young bride’s mother, who never

before was heard to speak so free,’ and in the ‘Proud Young Porter’

all Titmarshian students must recognise the embryo type of James de la

Pluche.”

“Lord Bateman” was Cruikshank’s delight. The exquisite foolery expressed

in his plates of this eccentric nobleman he would act, at any moment,

in any place, to the end of his life. Mr. Percival Leigh remembers a

characteristic scene at the Cheshire Cheese tavern, in Fleet Street,

about 1842 or 1843. “This,” * he says, “was in G. C.’s pre-teetotal

period. After dinner came drink and smoke, of course; and G. C. was

induced to sing ‘Billy Taylor,’ which he did with grotesque expression

and action, varied to suit the words. He likewise sang ‘Lord Bateman,’

in his shirt-sleeves, with his coat flung cloak-wise over his left arm,

whilst he paced up and down, disporting himself with a walking-stick,

after the manner of the noble lord, as represented in his illustration

to the ballad.”

Six-and-twenty years afterwards we find the bright-hearted old man still

with spirits enough for his favourite part.

* Letter to B. J., Feb. 18,1878.

“One day,” says Mr. Frederick Locker, “he asked us to tea, and to hear

him sing ‘Lord Bateman’ _in character_, which he did to our infinite

delight. He posed in the costume of that, deeply interesting but

somewhat mysterious nobleman. I am often reminded of the circumstance;

for I have a copy of ‘Lord Bateman’ (1851), and on the false title is

written--

‘This Evening, July 13, 1868,

I sang LORD BATEMAN to

My dear little friend Eleanor Locker.

George Cruikshank.’”

This in his seventy-sixth year!

Within the busy decade, 1837--1847, Cruikshank executed many separate

etchings for _Bentley’s Miscellany and Ainsworth’s Magazine_. His work

is to be found scattered far and wide. One month he appears as the

illustrator of a humorous song or scena by J. Blewitt--“The Matrimonial

Ladder” (the ladder was a favourite form with him for conveying the

various aspects of a subject)--or Keeley in the new comic song of “Wery

Ridiculous”; the next he is the whimsical illustrator of Beaufoy’s

Advertisement of his Cure for the Toothache--wood drawings engraved by

Orrin Smith. Nor had he quite put aside his habit of expressing himself

pictorially on political events. In 1843 he published, from Mr. David

Bogue’s shop in Fleet Street, a separate design entitled “The Queen and

the Union. No Repeal! No O’Connell!” It was a woodcut enclosing text

in type, the text being Cruikshank’s own declamation against the Irish

Agitator. Britannia and Erin are represented in the drawing seated,

with joined hands, on the shores of the Channel; while the “blustering,

foul-mouthed bully, with one foot on Britannia’s shoulder, and the other

on Erin’s harp, has raised an axe to sunder the friends.” Frontispieces

and covers he designed by the score,--now to “A Tale of a Comical

Stick,” and now to _The Yorkshireman_, a religious and literary journal;

and now again a headpiece to one of Mrs. S. C. Hall’s “Sketches of Irish

Character,” or a frontispiece to a book on “Prisons and Prisoners.”

To every item of this extraordinary quantity and variety of pictorial

labour Cruikshank gave his utmost energy. He was a most faithful worker,

who never stinted himself, even when the humblest or least important

subject was in hand. Let me note, however, some exceptions.

* Letter to B. J.

In 1843 he had quarrelled with Mr. Bentley, and purposely put bad work

in them. This was his revenge--and to the end of his life he never

perceived the fault he committed in this act. “One day,” says Mr.

Locker,* u at my house, he explained how these (the bad etchings) had

been etched. It appears that he had quarrelled with Mr. Richard Bentley

(he was a singularly kind-hearted man, but, I fancy, had a somewhat

remarkable faculty for quarrelling with almost every one with whom he

was connected in business), and was obliged to fulfil his contract to

supply an etching for each monthly number of Bentley’s Miscellany, and

he did them as badly as he possibly could, and etched his name under

them so illegibly as to be quite indecipherable: ‘And,’ said he, ‘I used

to take out my watch, and put it beside me on the table, and give myself

just--’ (mentioning the number of minutes) ‘for each plate.’”

It was after another and a final parting from Mr. Ainsworth, on the sale

of his magazine, that Cruikshank, “left in the lurch,” to use his own

phrase, started his “Table-Book,” with Gilbert à Beckett as editor, and

Bradbury and Evans as printers and publishers. The artist has put on

record the manner in which he and the eminent Whitefriars firm came

together:--

[Illustration: 059]

“I will not go into the details of how I assisted this _author_

(Ainsworth) with head and hand work in these novels, but I did my best

to design and suggest; and my time was so much occupied in performing

this duty, and also with some other matters, that I was not able to

bring out my _Omnibus_ as an _annual_, as I had intended to have done;

but I now determined to bring it out again in monthly numbers; and as

Bradbury and Evans (the fathers of the present firm) had printed that

work for me, I went to their office to see what stock there was of the

_Omnibus_ on hand, and to make arrangements for the republishing of it;

and when I mentioned this to my friend Bradbury, he said, ‘Ah, it is a

pity that work was ever stopped; we should have been glad to have bought

it of you, and will buy it now, if you would like to sell it.’ I replied

that I did not wish to dispose of it, but if they would like to join

me, I should be glad to have them as partners. ‘Agreed,’ said both

Mr. Bradbury and Mr. Evans; and as these friends of mine were _men of

business,_ as well as _gentlemen and men of honour, in this case there

was a written agreement_ clearly and legally drawn out, and duly signed

by both parties. But their engagements at that time were so many, that

a considerable time elapsed before arrangements could be made for the

republishing of the _Omnibus_; so they then suggested, as it was such

a long time since my _Omnibus_ had been on the road, that it would,

perhaps, be better to start another vehicle of the same build, but under

another name. To this I agreed; and thus originated ‘The Table Book,’

which was edited by my friends the late Gilbert à Becket and Mark

Lemon.”

The “Table Book” includes two of Cruikshank’s most powerful and perfect

etchings--viz., “The Triumph of Cupid” and “The Folly of Crime.” The

fertility of imagination manifest in “The Triumph of Cupid” is amazing.

The execution is that of an original master. No man who ever held an

etching-needle has surpassed the truth and beauty and boldness of the

touches by which hundreds of figures live, a happy tumultuous throng,

in this octavo plate. The central figure is the artist, in slippers

and embroidered dress-ing-gown, before his fire, smoking a handsome

meerschaum pipe, gazing abstractedly into the fire; and upon the cloud

of smoke from his lips, his dreams of the triumphs of Cupid rise till

they fill the room.

[Illustration: 064]

Cupid perches himself upon his foot, and toasts a heart at the

fire; jumps upon the back of Old Time who bears the clock upon the

mantelpiece; is enthroned in a triumphal car, with kings and princes,

bishops and generals, lawyers and stock-jobbers, drummer-boys and

jack-tars and sweeps, clown and harlequin, and even slippered pantaloon,

and Chelsea pensioners upon wooden stumps, for his court. The car is

drawn by subdued lions and leopards.

The blind beggar is waylaid by the little god, and brought to the

ground. He has floored a dustman on his rounds. He makes the Great Mogul

sue for mercy. He drags a little black page from under the armchair, and

puts gyves upon his wrists. All is clearly and beautifully grouped, and

frankly and boldly, and at the same time delicately, drawn. It is as

precise and luminous as Durer. It is perfect etching, by one who knew

the limits as well as all the capabilities of his exquisite art.

“The Folly of Crime” has been not extravagantly described by a writer

in the _London Quarterly Review_ (1873) as a very great work indeed. He

says it is perhaps the artist’s highest effort: I should rather say it

“is clearly and beautifully, and at the same time precise and luminous

by one who knew the value of his exquisite art. He says it suggests an

undeveloped power of the highest order--albeit the management of the

direct and reflected lights is most admirable, and the skill throughout

is consummate. “Without lingering over the framework of lesser groups,

though these are sufficiently impressive,” says the reviewer, “let us

go straight to the central picture. A murdered man lies stark in the

shadow. The murderer springs forward to catch at, a bowl of pearls,

snake-like and seemingly incandescent, that are borne swayingly before

him on the head of a grinning fiend. The ground smiles at his feet. He

falls, and, as he falls, the light from the pit leaps up, catching his

bloody hand, and the fatal knife, and the long ears of his fool’s-cap,

and gleaming in his despairing eyes; while all the air is filled with

chattering and mowing demons, whose eyes and teeth also glitter white

and cruel. And the horror of the man’s face is terrible.” The little

morals framed around the central picture complete the awful story. The

murderer lies--always wearing the fool’s-cap--in his bed, with a heavy

weight upon his chest, snakes hissing in his ears, and the scales

of justice held steady before his eyes. He is upon the treadmill. He

crouches in a corner of the condemned cell. A convict, he carries a

weighty burden upon his shoulders, marked “for life.”

The many light, playful, and fanciful sketches that are included in the

one thin volume to which in “The Table Book” ran, are trifles light as

air, when compared with those two great efforts of Cruikshank’s genius,

at its ripest and brightest. They mark the highest point of his ascent.

In the sequel we shall find him executing much noteworthy, honourable

Work,with the zeal of a great moral preacher; but he will not surpass

these two noble etchings.

[Illustration: 067]

George Cruikshank worked, as he reader knows, with great care and

deliberation. He thought out his subject well before beginning to

realize his conception. He made, to begin with, a careful design upon

paper, trying doubtful points on the margin of the paper. The design

was heightened by vigorous touches of colour. Then a careful tracing was

made, and laid, pencil side down, upon the steel plate. This was carried

to the printer, who having placed it between damp paper, and passed

it through the press, returned it, the blacklead outline distinctly

appearing upon the etching ground. And then the work was straightforward

to the artist’s firm hand. The firmness and fineness of his touch are as

conspicuous in his wood drawings as in his etchings.

“It was the custom of the artist,” according to his nephew, Percy

Cruikshank, “before parting with his plates, to have India-paper proofs

of the etchings, and this being ‘before letters’--that is, before the

title was engraved on the plate--made them the more valuable. He also

insisted on the engraver’s supplying him with a proof of his drawings

on wood when completed. This, in time, formed a scarce and choice

collection, of which he knew the value full well. The centralizing all

that was Cruikshankian within himself was the end which crowned the

work. The late Prince Consort being desirous of possessing a collection

of George’s proofs, offered a considerable sum for them; but the artist,

although pressed for money, not considering it sufficient, respectfully

declined the proposal.”

[Illustration: 069]

To return to the “Table Book.” The miscellaneous etchings and drawings

in this book are mostly arrows aimed at folly as it was flying at

that time. The railway mania, clairvoyance, emigration, the fashions,

furnished Cruikshank with inexhaustible humorous or grave material. His

etching of Mr. John Ball in a Quandary, or the Anticipated Effects of

the Railway Calls, is one of those wondrously filled drawings, in the

composition of which he stands alone. John Bull is in his armchair, with

a great railway bell clanging over his head. Hosts of pestilent demons

cover him, and are stripping him. Some are hoisting his hat, some are

bearing away his wig, others have perched ladders against his capacious

paunch, and are dragging his money and his watch from his waistcoat

pockets. The greedy imps are tugging his gloves from his hands,

unfastening his neckcloth, and pulling his boots off. Liliputian

lawyers, at hand, are demolishing a barrel of oysters, and leaving a

plentiful supply of shells for their clients. Imps, driving a little

locomotive, have attached it to Bull’s cash-box, and are making off with

it; and in the distance the pictures are marked for sale. Then we have

a few bits of Cruikshankian humour called “‘Heads of the Table,”--the

final head being a capital study of an old gentleman who is _entre deux

vins_, saying, “Well, we’ll just take another glass--and then--we’ll

join the--the ladies.” Opposite this page is a drawing of a family, and

also of their shoes.

[Illustration: 071]

[Illustration: 072]

I will now endeavour to afford the reader an idea of the man who created

the extraordinary variety of artistic work of high excellence briefly

described in the foregoing chapters. George Cruikshank was eminently a

convivial man. He was born in a boisterous and coarse convivial time;

when Lords and Commons boxed at Jackson’s; went to see monkeys set to

fight terriers at Cribb’s; fought “Charleys” and turnpike-men; and drank

hard and played high at Crockford’s. Their humble imitators were the

associates of Robert and George Cruikshank. George’s associates were

tavern frequenters for the most part: in those days taverns were used

by many of the men who now frequent clubs. The portrait of him drawn by

Maclise was Cruikshank in his earlier and humbler time, when he was in

the hands of the caricature vendors. The writer in _Fraser_ says: “Here

we have the sketcher sketched; and, as is fit, he is sketched

sketching. Here is George Cruikshank (see Frontispiece)--the George

Cruikshank--seated upon the head of a barrel, catching inspiration from

the scenes presented to him in a pot-house, and consigning the ideas of

the moment to immortality on the crown of his hat....

[Illustration: frontispiece]

Of George Cruikshank the history is short. He stands too often and too

well before the eyes of the public to render it necessary that we should

say much about him; and we confess that of his earlier annals we know

little or nothing.... The first of Cruikshank’s works known to us are

his caricatures of George IV. and his friends. Tories as we were and

are, and as we trust we still shall be, these comic picturings haunt our

imagination. The poor old king in every attitude of ludicrous distress

(the ‘Fat in the Fire’ was perfection); Copley (sketched, as we have

been assured, merely from description, and yet a great likeness);

Castlereagh (but even the professed caricaturist could not destroy the

gentlemanly grace of that noble face and figure); the ‘Waterloo man,’

with his sword dropping into the scale against the pen; the various

persons, jailors, jockeys, lawyers, and the rest, were first-rate. As

Cruikshank himself says of Gillray, ‘He that did those things was a

great man, sir,--a very great man, sir.’ To Cruikshank, however, they

were productive of nothing but the fame of their cleverness and the

odium of their politics; as Hone, for whom and his blockhead authors

George’s talents floated the dire rubbish of the ‘House that Jack

Built,’ and other witless productions, never paid him for what he had

done. In all these stupid productions there were loud puffs at the power

of the _press_. George never knew anything of it when in their hands

but as a _screw_.* However, what he did, gave him fame and name....

Of course, George is, like all other men of undoubted genius, a most

ill-used gentleman. As Mathews laments that the general obtuseness of

the public will not recognise his talents for tragedy,--as Liston mourns

over the delusion which applauds him in _Sam Swipes and Paul Pry,_ and

does not permit him to appear as the Damon or Strephon of a sighing

opera,--so Cruikshank is shocked at the evil fate which consigns him to

drawing sketches and caricatures, instead of letting him loose in his

natural domain of epic or historical picture.

* According to a Reviewer of “Three Courses and a Dessert,”

in _Fraser_ (June 1830), the whole sum received by

Cruikshank from Hone was £18; but this was not so.

Let him content himself; he can draw what will be held in honoured

remembrance when ninety-nine out of every hundred of the great ‘masters’

of our ‘schools’ and a still larger proportion of all the R.A’s

and A. RA.’s that ever existed, or ever are doomed to exist, will be

forgotten. The historical which _we_ should cultivate is such as that

which appears in his recently published ‘Sketch-Book,’ where, for

example, the life of Bonaparte, whether as eagle soaring over the

Alps, or eagle chained to a perch, is depicted in all its stages, from

artillery lad on watch, through triumph, splendour, and flight to the

little cock-hatted and round-paunched exile of St. Helena.”

Many years later Cruikshank had not quite given up his dream of the

epic or historical picture; for the dream had been encouraged by the

criticisms of some of the most thoughtful of his contemporaries, who

set him on a level with Hogarth and Durer, and said that posterity would

delight in him as one of our most venerated old masters.

But our present concern is with George Cruikshank as he lived, and

moved, and impressed his friends. They all speak cordially of him. Poor

Samuel Phillips, who was hearty in spirit, albeit he lived for many

years at death’s door, says of him: “George is popular among his

associates. His face is an index of his mind. There is nothing anomalous

about him and his doings. His appearance, his illustrations, his

speeches, are all alike--all picturesque, artistic, full of fun,

feeling, geniality, and quaintness. His seriousness is grotesque, and

his drollery is profound. He is the prince of caricaturists, and one of

the best of men.”

In a whimsical account of an amateur strolling excursion, in which

Cruikshank was one of the company (1847), supposed to be written by Mrs.

Gamp, Dickens has vividly described the illustrator of ‘Oliver Twist’:--

“I do assure you, Mrs. Harris, when I stood in the railways office that

morning, with my bundle on my arm, and one patten in my hand, you might

have knocked me down with a feather, far less porkmangers which was a

lumping against me, continual and sewere all round. I was drove about

like a brute animal and almost worritted into fits, when a gentleman

with a large shirt-collar, and a hook nose, and a eye like one of

Mr. Sweedlepipes’s hawks, and long locks of hair, and wiskers that I

wouldn’t have no lady as I was engaged to meet suddenly a turning round

a corner, for any sum of money you could offer me, says, laughing,

‘Halloa, Mrs. Gamp, what are _you_ up to?’

“I didn’t know him from a man (except by his clothes); but I

says faintly, ‘If you’re a Christian man, show me where to get a

second-cladge ticket for Manjester, and have me put in a carriage, or

I shall drop.’ Which he kindly did, in a cheerful kind of way, skipping

about in the strangest manner as ever I see, making all kinds of

actions, and looking and vinking at me from under the brim of his hat

(which was a good deal turned up), to that extent, that I should have

thought he meant something but for being so flurried as not to have

no thoughts at all until I was put in a carriage along with an

individgle--the politest as ever I see--in a shepherd’s plaid suit with

a long gold watch-guard hanging round his neck, and his hand a trembling

through nervousness worse than an aspian leaf. Presently they fell into

conversation.

“‘P’raps,’ he says, ‘if you’re not of the party, you don’t know who it

was that assisted you into this carriage!’

“‘No, sir,’ I says, ‘I don’t indeed.’

“‘Why, ma’am,’ he says, a-wisperin, ‘that was George, ma’am.’

“‘What George, sir? I don’t know no George,’ says I.

‘“The great George, ma’am,’ says he. ‘The Crookshanks.’

“‘If you’ll believe me, Mrs. Harris, I turned my head, and see the werry

man a-making pictures of me on his thumb nail, at the winder! While

another of em--a tall slim, melancholly gent, with dark hair, and a

bage vice--looks over his shoulder, with his head o’ one side as if

he understood the subject, and cooly says, ‘I’ve draw’d her several

times--in _Punch_,’ he says too I The owdacious wretch.’”

The melancholy gent with the “_bage vice_” was Leech.

In those days, and down to those days, Cruikshank was

convivial--sometimes to excess. It was not for nothing that Maclise had

drawn him seated upon a beer barrel.*

* His brother Robert drew his portrait as a young man, his

hair and whiskers uncombed, cross-legged, in a contemplative

mood, his dress in disorder, and called it “George in a

Brown study.” It was a picture of him in his days of

dissipation, when his sister-in-law would occasionally seize

and wash and comb him, while he laughed at the absurdity of

his position. He was very sensitive in later life about any

allusion to his appearance. When Mrs. Stowe, in her book of

London impressions, roughly described him as “an old man,

with a keen eye and grey hair,” he was deeply mortified, and

he addressed an expostulation to the papers. His portraits,

by himself, in oil, abounded in his studio. They were marked

with touches of chalk, giving a fresh curl to the whisker, a

fiercer flash to the eye, a more effective arrangement of

the hair; but not one was finished.

His fortunes threw him early among humble boon companions, at Grimaldi’s

club and elsewhere, as we have seen; and his wild exuberant spirits and

lively sense of humour made him king among them. Later, when Dickens

knew him, he would fall away occasionally from his new and more

dignified friends (who were not ascetics), and run a wild career for

a night in his old haunts. Dickens used to describe one wonderful

day--among others--he had passed with “the inimitable George.”

Dickens was living in Devonshire Place, and was just setting to work

one morning in his library, when Cruikshank, unwashed and “smelling of

tobacco, beer, and sawdust,” as Dickens described him, burst into the

room. He said he had been up all night; was afraid to go home, and

begged for some breakfast. While he was breakfasting, Dickens did his

utmost to persuade him to go to bed. But George resolutely set his face

against it.

He said he dared not even think of Islington. Seeing the state of

affairs, Dickens closed his desk, and proposed to accompany his friend

to face the domestic storm with him. But Cruikshank would only consent

to a walk--the farther from Islington the better.

Dickens, under such circumstances, was an admirable friend. His cheery

talk and wise counsel had great weight with Cruikshank; but each time

he artfully turned the truant’s face east, he drew back with a--“No, no,

Charley--not that way.”

And so they walked about the streets for hours, strolling in the course

of the day into the famous aviary of the Pantheon in Oxford Street.*

Here Cruikshank came suddenly face to face with one of Mrs. Cruikshank’s

intimate friends. The scene which ensued, Dickens used to say, was one

exquisitely farcical. And the manner in which he set forth the episodes

of the long day in the streets, with Cruikshank’s droppings into various

hostelries, and his final dejected departure homewards, utterly worn

out, and having exhausted his faithful friend, was in his happiest vein.

* Dickens used to tell, with humorous details, how “George,”

On another occasion, was refused admittance because he was

plashed to the shoulders with mud.

“I remember him about 1846,” said Mr. W. H. Wills, another old friend.

“He was then flirting with Temperance. I wanted him to dine at my house;

but he excused himself, saying he should be led into temptation, and

he had resolved to be a water-drinker thenceforth.” He did not go to

dinner, but dropped in later--much excited; and when his host pushed the

water-bottle towards him, he gently added brandy. The guests departed,

leaving the hilarious George, with two others, to finish the evening;

and when the trio got into the street, they found the old difficulty in

restraining Cruikshank’s boisterous spirits. After trying in vain for

something more than an hour to lead him home, they left him--climbing up

a lamp-post!

The same friend hastens to tell me how generous this wild _bon-vivant_

was, even in his more convivial moods:--

“The force of George Cruikshank’s character lay in the single-minded

earnestness with which he carried out his objects. These throughout his

life were numerous and always good. Zeal and energy glowed out of him

upon whatever he undertook, whether saving a family from starvation (and

there are instances in which he could only have done this at the risk

of stinting himself), or rehearsing the character assigned to him in a

private play, or commanding a regiment of volunteers, or advocating and

advancing the temperance cause at every conceivable sacrifice of time

and money. It was not until after his second marriage that he took to

temperance. In his first wife’s lifetime he sacrificed to the jolly

god rather oftener than occasionally; and surely no man drank with more

fervour and enjoyment, nor carried his liquor so kindly, so merrily.

Then was the time to hear him sing ‘Lord Bateman’ in character,

and costume improvised from table-covers, table-napkins, and

antimacassars--anything he could lay hands on--with the laughing help

of his host. He was what Albert Smith called ‘great fun’ in this song at

any time.

“Even when dependent upon his pencil and etching-needle for means of

existence, if any good was to be done for a decayed brother artist or

literary friend, George was only too ready (for his own prosperity) to

throw down his tools, and stroll about the country with a theatrical

company, or go anywhere to solicit subscriptions and make speeches, or

to settle to his worktable again to make gratuitous sketches for bazaars

and charities. When acting in Edinburgh, for Leigh Hunt’s benefit, with

Charles Dickens and his brilliant _dramatis personae_, news came to him

that a country editor, with a large family, whom he had often previously

helped, was on the edge of ruin for the want of fifty pounds. ‘I _must_

send it to the poor fellow,’ he said to Dickens, ‘immediately.’ ‘That

would be very kind to him,’ answered Dickens, ‘but very unkind to

yourself. By-the-bye, have you got fifty pounds in your pocket?’ ‘Oh

dear, no,’ was Cruikshank’s reply, ‘but I want you to lend me the money

to send to him--now--at once.’ Dickens’s rejoinder was not resort to his

cheque book, but the remark that he knew George’s incapable friend would

be as badly off as ever after the execution had been paid out of his

house, even if the money was sent. ‘Then,’ he added, ‘you would deny

yourself all sorts of things and be miserable till you paid me back.

That I can’t stand, so I must decline.’”

On the day of his death, his old friend and fervent admirer repaid his

kindness by sketching this loving portrait of him:--

“Only a few days ago there was extant--nay, it may be said, flourishing,

in the midst of the life and bustle of the Great City, and to all

seeming as lively and bustling as any citizen there--a hale, bright,

active, elderly gentleman, whose age might, by the majority of cursory

age-judges, have been set down as ‘a good sixty-five,’ but who was in

reality closely verging upon ninety. A quarter of a century before his

death he had looked--so those who knew him well loved to declare--much

older than when he was past fourscore. Like the American lady mentioned

by Dickens, he seemed to have grown old, ‘got over it,’ and become

young again. He was slightly below the middle height, spare but solid of

frame, somewhat long-armed and short-legged, as powerful and long-lived

men are apt to be, and very broad in the chest. His head, scarcely bowed

or blanched to the very last, was massive and well-shapen. He had a high

forehead, blue-grey eyes full of a cheerful, sparkling light, penthouse

brows, somewhat high cheek-bones, a prominent aquiline nose that Caesar

would have liked to look upon, and a mouth cut in firm, sharp lines,

and from whose corners grew an ambiguous pair of hirsute ornaments which

were neither moustaches, nor whiskers, nor beard, but partook vaguely of

the characteristics of all three. But, beyond these, there was curious

and original individuality in his hair, which, after its fashion,

marked him as typically as the well-known _mèche_ marks the portraits of

Napoleon L and M. Emile de Girardin. The elderly gentleman’s _chevelure_

had dwindled down to a few thin locks, indigenous, it is to be

feared, to his occiput, but which, by careful combing, and an artful

contrivance--so rumour ran--of wire and ‘elastic,’ had been seduced over

his temples and his parietal bone. Thus to the greater justice could

point triumphantly to the fact that his sparse wisps of hair were still

mellow brown in hue, and soft as silk in texture. His face was full

of wrinkles; but the furrows seemed to have been ploughed more by hard

work, sedulously and unwearyingly performed, than by the mere plodding

footsteps of the dragging years. In his port and mien, indeed, until

almost the very moment when the hand of the Grim Sergeant was laid upon

his shoulder, there was but little of the feebleness and less of the

caducity of age. Its garrulity he had; but his friends rejoiced in

the good old man’s loquacity, recognizing, as they did, the undimmed

clearness of his understanding and tenacity of his memory. Nor, with

one singular exception, to which we shall subsequently allude, did that

memory play him the woful tricks to which the very aged are so often

subject. He could remember perfectly well trifling occurrences which

happened in 1800, but he did not forget events of moment which had end

he repudiated the imputation of baldness, and with happened in 1877.

He was, to sum up, a light-hearted, merry, and, albeit a teetotaler, an

essentially ‘jolly’ old gentleman, full physically of humorous action

and impulsive gesticulation, imitatively illustrating the anecdotes

he related; somewhat dogged in assertion and combative in argument;

strong-rooted as the oldest of old oaks in old true British prejudices;

decidedly eccentric, obstinate, and whimsical; but in every word and

deed a God-fearing, queen-honouring, truth-loving, honest man.

“This was the famous George Cruikshank, caricaturist, social satirist

and moralist, illustrator of books, engraver on steel and copper,

draughtsman on wood, painter in oils and water-colours, the doughtiest

champion, in his degree, of the temperance cause; and, albeit his

‘foaming bowl’ was for many years replenished only from the pump, the

Prince of Good Fellows.”

The Prince of Good Fellows looked very much as his later friends

remembered him, some five-and-thirty years ago, as I can well remember.

The ingeniously arranged _chevelure_ was within artful elastic bands

drawn over the skull, when I was a boy. I was one of many youngsters who

would creep round his chair clay pipe in his mouth (he always smoked a

long clay pipe while he smoked at all) and his brandy-and-water before

him, talking loudly and eagerly, gesticulating like a Frenchman, and

turning now one ear and now the other, to catch the conversation of the

company. A man incapable of rest, with a swift, glancing, steely eye, a

mobile mouth, and a grotesquely fierce general aspect, aggravated by

the hook-nose, which was awry; prodigal in the matters of whisker,

shirt-collar, and wristband; old-fashioned enough, even in the year

1845, to strike boys. *

* George Cruikshank was very careful about any portrait of

him that was drawn or painted. One in coloured chalks by his

friend Mill, that hung in his Amwell Street studio,

satisfied him entirely. The eyes were at their fiercest, and

the whiskers were superb. One day, when Cruikshank was

illustrating Scott, Mr. Lockhart called, and, remarking the

portrait, said drily, “I saw a man, very like that, in

Italy, executed for murder.” Some people would have been

offended, but Cruikshank was delighted. He affected the

brigand look.

In his social habits and relations, Cruikshank was a most modest,

self-respecting man. He never courted great folk, he submitted to no

form of patronage, and he never pretended to ape the manners and

habits of the fashionable world. He lived the first half of his life

in Pentonville,* and the second in Camden Town. He confined his

acquaintance to congenial friends; and when these happened to be persons

of rank and wealth, in its unfashionable neighbourhood. In this he

set an example which many of his brother artists--his inferiors in

genius--might have followed with advantage to their fame. He stood, at

the end of his life, in strong contrast with the _petits maîtres_ in

the arts, who give themselves fashionable airs, decorate their houses

extravagantly, and spend their too easily acquired gains in slavish

imitations of Mayfair life. Cruikshank, in his _Omnibus_, reproved, in

his own quaint way, a writer who had said that he was a collector of

curiosities.

* Among the visitors to Amwell Street was the Baron de

Berenger, a remarkable adventurer and spectator. George

Cruikshank, when a young volunteer, had been intimate with

Charles Ransom of his corps, who as a print colourer at

Ackermann’s, and who, as a volunteer, was remarked as a good

shot. Being a well-mannered young fellow, he was patronized

by Mr. Hammerley the banker; and at this gentleman’s house

he met the Baroness de Berenger, a German widow. He married

her, and assumed the title of Baron de Berenger. Being a man

fond of athletics, he conceived the idea of turning Cremorae

Farm, Lord Cremome’s place at Chelsea, into a suburban

gymnasium and place for field sports. Cremorne Farm became

the Stadium, and flourished under the Baron’s management. He

rode out always attended by his four sons on horseback,

dressed in grey military tunics, and with swords at their

sides. This cavalcade occasionally clattered along Amwell

Street, Pentonville, to pay a business visit to Cruikshank,

who, with his brother, was illustrating with sporting

etchings the guide-book to the Stadium.

“No single symp--I was about to say that no single symptom of a

curiosity, however insignificant, is visible in my dwelling, when by

audible tokens I was (or rather am) rendered sensible of the existence

of a _pair of bellows_. Well, in these it must be admitted that we

_do_ possess a curiosity. We call them ‘bellows,’ because, on a close

inspection, they appear to bear a much stronger resemblance to ‘bellows’

than to any other species of domestic implement; but what in reality

they are, the next annual meeting of the great Scientific Association

must determine; or the public may decide for themselves, when admitted

hereafter to view the precious deposit in the British Museum.” Then

follows an amusing account of the old bellows, with a sketch of them.

“The origin of the bellows I know not,” says their owner; “but a

suspicion has seized me that they might have been employed in the Ark,

had there been a kitchen fire there; and they may have assisted in

raising a flame under the first tea-kettle put on to celebrate the

laying of the first stone of the great wall of China.”

Cruikshank, moreover, took exception to the description of his person by

the same writer. If careless about his house, he was vain of his person.

The writer said: “In person, G. C. is about the middle height, and

proportionbly made. His complexion is something between pale and clear;

and his hair, which is tolerably ample, partakes of a lightish hue.

His face is of the angular form, and his forehead has a ‘prominently

receding shape.” Cruikshank closed with his antagonist:--

“As Hamlet said to the ghost, I’ll go no further! The indefinite

complexion, and the hair ‘partaking’ of an opposite hue to the real one,

may be borne; but I stand, not upon my head, but on my forehead! To

a man who has once passed the Rubicon in having dared to publish his

portrait, the exhibition of his mere profile can do no more injury than

a petty larceny would after the perpetration of a highway robbery. But

why be tempted to show, by an outline, that my forehead is innocent of

a shape (the ‘prominently receding’ one) that never yet was visible in

nature or in art? Let it pass, till it can be explained.

“‘He delights in a handsome pair of whiskers.’ Nero had one flower flung

upon his tomb. ‘He has somewhat of a dandified appearance.’ Flowers soon

fade, and are cut down; and this is the ‘unkindest cut of all.’ I, who,

humbly co-operating with the press, have helped to give permanence to

the name of dandy--I, who have all my life been breaking butterflies

upon wheels in warring against dandyism and dandies--am at last

discovered to be ‘somewhat’ of a dandy myself.

‘Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come!

Revenge yourselves’ as you may; but, dandies all,

I have not done with you yet.”

The “inimitable George,” however, was a dandy--in his way.

Old-fashioned, tumbled, eccentric, his dress had a studied look. The

strong individuality of the vivacious and active little man (for he was

under the middle height) appeared to be preserved by attention to the

elaboration of a costume unlike that of any of his neighbours. It was

foppishness like that of the late Marquis of Lansdowne, whose buff and

blue had become a fancy dress at the end of his life.

I cannot do better than conclude this description of the George

Cruikshank of the first epoch, by an account of him, in 1840-42, written

by his old friend W. L. Sammons, who is now a Temperance light at the

Cape, but who has a vivid recollection of his friend in days when they

met over a mug of ale. It comes to me from Cape Town. The scene opens in

Amwell Street, Pentonville:--“The same evening a friend or two dropped

in--Douglas Jerrold and, I think, Laman Blanchard, the editor of

Cruikshank’s _Omnibus_,--and the former Mrs. Cruikshank was present and

presided, and threw a charm over the tea and supper tables; and I saw

and revelled, as it were, through all the gems, both ancient and modern,

signed “G. Ck.,” in the Royal workshop, and lingered over that famous

notorious Screen in it, covered by him with texts of thought for present

and future use, in the shape of “Odd People and Things”--queer “head and

tail pieces”--strange “monstrosities of Fashions” for the day--noses,

dresses, and phizes of all dimensions and shades, ready for adaptation

according to the age and epoch required. George Cruikshank was

particularly busy on this day, because of “The Miser’s Daughter,” by

Ainsworth, that he was illustrating for _Bentley’s Miscellany_, and

he assured me if not finished by such an hour and such a day he

should forfeit fifty pounds; and yet he risked the uncertainty to show

hospitality to his friends.

“During this visit to London, dear George took me the round of several

of the theatres and gardens--Old Vauxhall, that we had seen as boys,

when unknown to each other, being closed, and the great “M. C.”

Simpson dead; and I could not fail to perceive how he was petted and

respected by all, lessees, managers, and actors, and readily ushered

into any quarter that caprice, pleasure, or professional duties

required, whether pit-boxes, or gallery; but the “dress circle”

was less to his taste than others, because there life was fossilised,

artificial, and restrained, and dress mere tinsel; and no dialogue

suitable for his reports, or action worthy of his crayons. This may

account, perhaps, for that ‘absence of beauty’ that is said to pervade

his works; because beauty _per se_ is apt to give itself airs and become

unseemly and ungraceful; and George Cruikshank’s high and stern

mission was in ‘the highways and hedges,’ and to reclaim by a moral and

pictorial force the repelling, the vicious, and the vile.

“But I confess to feeling a little disturbed, when at his side, at

seeing so many long necks and bright eyes and glasses turned upon him

from all directions, and to perceive the whispering and commotion in

consequence. Here G. C.’s thumb-nails often served as ample Space for a

photo.

“As a thing of beauty is said to be a joy for ever, so at the period

above stated we had our glorious days together, and may be figuratively

described as ‘being in clover and sleeping in lavender’; for kind George

devoted many hours in taking me to some of his favourite, and it may

be added, requisite haunts, where he gathered his Fame for his simple

wants, without i hoarding. One morning he led me to the burial-ground

of St. James’s Chapel, Pentonville, near his house, and pointed out the

graves of Thomas Dibdin, son of the great sea-songster, and of his old

and ‘mutual friend,’ Joey Grimaldi, whose mortal coils are laid near

each other; and I wish I could remember so as to record the tender and

sympathetic little oration he then delivered.

“At night Sadler’s Wells was the scene of action, but poor Joey being

absent,

‘Greece was living Greece no more,’

and all things were changed since our boyhood Friend Cruikshank reminded

me of that passage (in Dickens’s ‘Life of the King of Clowns’) that

he illustrated in two vols., where Joey and his much better-half, one

evening, disputing about precedency, resolved upon taking poison to end

all contention, and to settle their differences of opinion for ever. But

not taking enough, and forgetting the oft-quoted maxim, now travestied,

‘Drink deep, or taste not any poisonous thing,’

the feeble dose merely kept them awake and talkative, and lying in

the same room, with a slight partition between them, sensations became

unpleasant, and so they held a colloquy in their fears as follows:

‘Joey, are you dead?’ ‘No, Mary,--are you?’ ‘No.’ And then they altered

their minds, and felt disposed to live a little longer, arose, had

a good supper and something warm and comfortable as a sedative and

antidote, and then jogged on a little more in unison.

“On passing through the Queen’s Bench with him, I called his attention

to the prison window, behind the bars of which stood a miserable inmate

with a black box before him, on which was written, ‘Remember the

poor debtors.’ George smiled, and said, ‘Yes, but think of the poor

creditors.’ And this scene I find recorded by him, and his own remarks,

on a small placard at the top of the picture ‘Remember the poor

creditors.’ But what numbers of similar Hogarthian hints he has left

behind him!

Shortly afterwards Cruikshank paid his friend a visit at Bath:--

“‘The Bottle Conjurer’ and smasher of it, and part destroyer of his

contents--I mean George Cruikshank--arrived safely at the city of King

Bladud and the throne of Beau Nash; and he commanded me with a willing

assent to become a second ‘Anstey,’ or little ‘Bath Guide,’ to ferret

all quarters with him--West to East and High to Low--having a monthly

serial still on hand that required certain characters for illustration

(perhaps ‘Jack Sheppard’ or the ‘Tower of London,’ after the _Omnibus_

had ceased running). Friend George began with the upper crust, as

nearest ‘home’ and Lansdown; and leaving his card the day before at

William Beckford’s mansion in the Crescent, went with me where I had

been several times before. Possibly at the foot of Table Mountain it may

not be known that this William Beckford was an esquire and a somebody

in England, the owner and builder of Fonthill Abbey, inheritor but not

enjoyer of immense wealth, and the celebrated author of ‘Vathek’ and

the ‘Halls of Eblis,’ before which, in point of imagination, Byron, or

somebody else, said ‘Rasselas’ must bow.”

Mr. Beckford, notwithstanding original gifts, and the accident of

riches, was a shy and eccentric bird that flew from every one, and

nobody must approach; and so, when we got there, and were passing along

a corridor, door suddenly in our faces, the apology being, ‘he saw Mr.

Beckford coming, and it was more than he dare hazard for any one to

notice him.’ And yet he left a gracious message in the hands of his

house-steward, Mr. F-, who himself kept a stylish establishment and

carriage, ‘to show Mr. Cruikshank all he desired;’ and even added, ‘that

if Mr. Cruikshank knew how much he (Mr. B.) valued his earlier sketches,

he would not have refused some of them when once solicited.’ I asked ‘G.

C.’ the cause of this, and he remarked, ‘at that time he parted with

few of his originals;’ and when we left Lansdown Crescent, he commented

warmly on the treat and pleasure he had derived, and as a red-letter day

in his biography. ‘From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step,’

and so we soon threaded the externals of Royal a black dwarf--or rather

a nutmeg shade--banged a Anstey’s “New Bath Guide.”

Crescents and Circuses, Pulteney and Milsom Streets, and Queen Squares,

and odd holes, lanes,’ and corners, until reaching Avon Street, where

‘the power of sinking could no further go,’ nor the Pig and Whistle meet

with a more picturesque if degraded aspect In this latter neighbourhood

it was requisite for professional purposes and home orders that George

Cruikshank should have a nightly sojourn, if not revel; and so a

suitable tavern was chosen that had a skittle-alley attached, that

except in name or position might form a capital match for that Lion in

the Wood in Wilderness Lane, that he mentions in ‘My Portrait,’ at the

commencement of bis _Omnibus_. Whilst we were there as lookers-on only,

and sipping ‘half-and-half’ out of the same pewter ‘between the acts,’

if they may be so called, or during the ‘intervals,’ at this Beggars’

Opera, friend Cruikshank amused himself by chalking one scene on the

wall, and all eyes were soon upon it, for it was lifelike and spirited.

Oh that I could have removed that wonderful cartoon from its surface,

or preserved a copy! it would now realize the value of many ordinary

frescoes and presumed originals--and more than drunken Morland’s

‘Goat-in-Boots’ signboard. But leaving Bath for Cape Town three months

afterwards, the mind was absorbed in other matters, and both places

and scenes forgotten at the time, but now stand out in bold relief and

vividly.”

[Illustration: 105]

This was George Cruikshank only a few years before he gave himself

wholly up to the cause of Temperance.

[Illustration: 106]

EPOCH II. 1848--1878.

CHAPTER I. AT GILLRAY’s GRAVE.

No great stretch of the imagination is needed to conjure up an

interesting picture in the corner of the graveyard of St. James’s,

Piccadilly, in that momentous June when the forces of France and the

Allies were gathering hastily for the field of Waterloo. It was on the

first of the month. From the famous print-shop of Mistress Humphrey in

St. James’s Street, before which hosts of laughing men and women had

been wont to linger, a coffin was home, containing the mortal part of

the “Juvenal of caricature” as he had been called--of the hapless man of

genius, who had lain, with short flashes of sanity, full six years with

mind unstrung--a dreadful shadow over the mirthful shop. Behind followed

the good Mistress Humphrey and her faithful Betty, her maid; probably

stout Mortimer the picture dealer, possibly Mr. Gifford. Let us think

of Landseer and James Stanley and others to whom poor Gillray had been

known in his bright days, standing by the open grave near the Rectory

House, within full sound of the hum of Piccadilly. And at hand we shall

note a slim young man, with eager, piercing eyes, a hook nose, with fall

whiskers trimmed to the corners of his mouth; a young man with incessant

spasmodic action. His eyes start and his mouth works, as, the service

ended, he gazes into the yawning grave. To his neighbour he says, under

his breath, “A great man, sir--a very great man.”

With a bow to weeping Mistress Humphrey he retires. The good soul, who

has now done her last duty to the poor madman with whom she has borne

patiently and gratefully so long, is pleased to note that Mr. Cruikshank

had not forgotten to pay his last tribute of respect and gratitude to

his master. Mrs. Humphrey, no doubt, regarded the young man whom she had

employed to finish Gillray’s work when he first fell ill, and who had

since managed to keep the crowds laughing before her windows, as a

very poor substitute for the dead genius. And in those days Cruikshank

himself was still very modest, and was proud to be accounted strong

enough to hold the pencil and the needle of the stricken Gillray.

Upon a sensitive, imaginative, observant man like George Cruikshank,

the life of him whom he owned in his early days as his master, with its

awful close, must have made a deep impression. Men said that Gillray had

wrecked his career through frequenting low company, and by intemperate

habits. Cruikshank knew something of this, had seen much of such

company, and was in close companionship with tipplers. Gillray was not

the first man of mark whom he had watched from tavern to tavern, and

so on to poverty and death. Almost his earliest recollections were of

drinking bouts, and their debasing consequences. His boyish sight had

been offended at his father’s house with the spectacle of drunken men

rolled up in carpets, upon whose blank and soddened faces the morning

sun was shining.* He had been saddened as a son by his father’s example,

and inexpressibly shocked by the manner of his death. It appears that

Isaac Cruikshank, who was a heavy whisky drinker, laid a bet with a

boon companion that he would drink more tumblers than his friend without

falling under the table. He won his wager, but his excess brought upon

him the illness of which he died, about his fifty-fifth year. **

* “At a meeting held at Manchester, this great artist gave

an address on Temperance; in the course of which, referring

to the early days of his life, and to the drinking habits

which existed at that period, he said he recollected

gentlemen coming to dine occasionally at his father’s house,

and he was often surprised on coming downstairs of a morning

to find some of them rolled up in the carpet in an

extraordinary manner. His own father took too much drink,

and shortened his life by it. He shortened his life by the

fashion of the day, and left him (the speaker)

uneducated.... He had watched the effects of drink ever

since he had begun to reflect, both among the higher and

lower orders.”--_Poor Richards Almanac_, 1876.

** This story was told to the Rev. Dr. Rogers by George

Cruikshank.

Such experiences, albeit they led Cruikshank to reflect seriously on the

evils of excessive drinking, did not, as we have seen, at once turn him

from the bottle. Mr. Paget remarked in _Blackwood_ that Cruikshank was

a severe anatomist of the vice long before any idea of his celebrated

“Bottle” could have crossed his mind. In his “Sunday in London,”

published in 1833, he depicted the drunkard paying his week’s score. In

one of his Temperance speeches he said: “I am ashamed to say that for

many years I went on following the ordinary custom of drinking, till

I fell into pecuniary difficulties. I had some money at a banker’s; he

fell into difficulties, took to drinking brandy-and-water, and ended by

blowing out his brains.

I lost my money, and in my distress applied to friends who aided me for

a time, but they themselves fell into difficulties, and I was forced to

extricate myself by the most extraordinary exertions. In this strait I

thought, The best thing I can do is to take to water; but still I went

on for some time before I quite weaned myself from my own drinking

habits. I went to take luncheon with my friend Dickens (who, I am sorry

to say, is not a teetotaler); he asked me to take wine, but I told him I

had taken to water, for, in my opinion, a man had better take a glass of

prussic acid than fall into the other habit of taking brandy-and-water;

and I am happy to say that Charles Dickens quite agreed with me, that

a mam had better wipe himself out at once, than extinguish himself by

degrees by the soul-degrading and body-destroying enemy.”

[Illustration: 112]

Immediately after the death of Gillray, we find evidence of the twinges

of conscience which Cruikshank felt, even while he continued to fall, at

intervals, into wild excesses. These were followed by dark passages of

remorse, and by resolutions which were again and again broken. The

fate of the men--and that of Gillray especially--whom he had seen fall

victims to what he was pleased to call the fashionable vice, would

rise before him. But, in an impulsive, convivial moment, his own sad

experiences of time wasted and opportunities gone, and of the friends he

had lost, were often forgotten; and he found himself, as of old, wending

his way home, in the small hours, covered with a sense of disgrace.

Cruikshank was no better, and no worse, than his contemporaries. A

letter in Procter’s * neat hand lies before me. It is dated from Gray’s

Inn Square, March 13th, 1839; and he says:

“I shall be very happy to be one of the number to dine with Macready.

But, remember, I cannot be one of those who will doubtless be found

_under_ the table at four a.m. (as I understand was the case upon a late

occasion).”

* Barry Cornwall.

If, however, Cruikshank was not early a convert to the practice of

temperance, he was, as I have remarked, a preacher betimes.

His “Introduction to the Gout” (1818) is in his best vein. A toper is

seated over his pot, and holding a peach upon his fork, with which he

is about to cool his mouth. An imp--one Gout--approaches from the

fireplace, and with the tongs is about to drop a red coal on the

great-toe of Toper. Another drawing (a lithograph) of this date

is suggestive. It is called “Deadly Lively.” Death has stepped in,

surprising a man and two women, who are drinking in a kitchen, before a

blazing fire. Death is filling the man’s glass; the old woman is falling

from her seat, and the young man is tumbling drunk under the table.

Presently (in the same year) the artist is in a gayer mood as a

satirist. The picture is called “Tit-Bits.” An Irishwoman, overcome by

beer, has fallen into a deep sleep under a tree. Her slumbers give a

yokel an opportunity of stealing one of her chickens, while a cur licks

the tarts in her basket.* Then we have “The Three Bottle Divine,” no

_rara avis_ in those days. It is the head of a heavy, coarse-featured

man, in sporting guise, his face garnished with carbuncles and large

spectacles.

So far back as 1836, Cruikshank gave the public a foretaste of

“The Bottle” in a vignette to a music title. Two individuals are

represented--one old and spectacled, the other young and with an

eyeglass,--examining with horror the contents of a spirit bottle, which

is filled with malignant imps emblematical of alcohol as “doctored by

publicans,” and sold for “Old Tom,” etc. The cork has turned devil, and

throws up his arms in delight at the work of his imps.

* The foregoing were drawn by Cruikshank from Captain Hehl’s

designs.

“Gin” remarks Mr. Thackeray, years before Cruikshank had become a

Temperance advocate, or in the least degree an abstainer; “gin has

furnished many subjects to Mr. Cruikshank, who labours in his own sound

and hearty way to teach his countrymen the dangers of that drink. In

the ‘Sketch-book’ is a plate upon the subject, remarkable for fancy and

beauty of design; it is called the ‘Gin Juggernaut,’ and represents

a hideous moving palace, with a reeking still as the roof, and vast

gin-barrels for wheels, under which unhappy millions are crushed to

death. An immense black cloud of desolation covers over the country

through which the gin monster had passed, dimly looming through the

darkness, whereof you see an agreeable prospect of gibbets with men

dangling, burnt houses, etc. The vast cloud comes sweeping on in the

wake of this horrible body-crusher; and you see, by way of contrast, a

distant, smiling, sunshiny tract of old English country, where gin as

yet is not known. The allegory is as good, as earnest, and as fanciful

as one of John Bunyan’s, and we have often fancied there was a

similarity between the men.”

The similarity, if you look deeply into the two imaginations, is strong

and striking, as it is between the genius of Doré in its grotesque and

moral moods, and that of Cruikshank. Compare Doré’s “Wandering Jew,” his

“Rabelais,” his “Contes Drolatiques,” with Cruikshank’s work about 1826,

and even later, and you cannot fail to discover the strong affinity

between the two great artists. Doré knew nothing of Cruikshank’s work

in his early time, and Cruikshank had never heard Doré’s name when, in

1854, I brought over to England the blocks of his “Wandering Jew.” **

** I introduced George Cruikshank to Gustave Doré in the

Doré Gallery in Bond Street. Doré looked wonderingly at the

vivacious, wild old man as he went through a pantomime in

default of French, to express his admiration of the pictures

the gallery.

In his illustrations to “Sketches by Boz,” Cruikshank first approached

intemperance from that point of view in which he treated it afterwards

in “The Bottle.” His view of the gin-shop comprehends a complete story.

“We have sketched this subject, says Dickens, “very slightly, not only

because our limits compel us to do so, but because, if it were pursued

further, it would be painful and repulsive. Well-disposed gentlemen

and charitable ladies would alike turn with coldness and disgust from

a description of the drunken besotted men and wretched, broken-down,

miserable women, who form no inconsiderable portion of the frequenters

of these haunts; forgetting, in the pleasant consciousness of their own

high rectitude, the poverty of the one and the temptation of the other.

Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but poverty is a greater; and

until you can cure it, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek

relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery with the pittance

which, divided among his family, would just furnish a morsel of bread

for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour If-Temperance

Societies could suggest an antidote against hunger and distress, or

establish dispensaries for the gratuitous distribution of bottles of

Lethe-water, gin palaces would be numbered among the things that were.

Until then, their decrease may be despaired of.” Dickens here glanced,

and only carelessly, at the surface of the great question. This poverty

which he deplored was the result of the drink. The Lethe-water would be

unnecessary if the gin-and-water were stopped. Poverty, dirt, hunger,

promote the publican’s trade; but this trade breeds the misery on which

it thrives. The quartern which the father drinks, helps to raise a

customer in his son, for the trade of the publican’s son. More than ten

years elapsed before this view of the Temperance question was destined

to have complete sway and mastery over the genius of Dickens’s

illustrator; but already he saw deeper into it, because he looked more

earnestly into it than the writer, who had not yet done with the comedy

element of drunkenness.

In 1841, Cruikshank drew for _Bentley’s Miscellany_ an “allegorical

representation of the infatuation of the mob for ardent spirits, and the

drunkenness occasioned by an election, from a design by T. L. F.” * In

1846, he illustrated _Our Own Times_, and in the _London Penetralia_

we find him moralizing with his etching-needle, in the ragged school of

Chick Lane, Smithfield, and satirising, under the head of “A Tremendous

Sacrifice,” the slop-sellers who live in luxury on the work of poor

seamstresses.

* “In the centre of the composition is the pedestal of an

altar, ornamented with a bas-relief of Britannia, on which

is resting a barrel of liquor, inscribed, ‘Ruin Members and

Co.--Poverty--Treadmill--Botany Bay,’ the tap running for

the gratification of an assemblage of drunken wretches, who

eagerly endeavour to get their favourite beverage, excepting

those who are helplessly drunk or fighting.”--_Reid’s

Descriptive Catalogue._

[Illustration: 120]

Cruikshank was now inclining strongly to the work to which he was

destined to give the last thirty years of his life. And in 1847 he gave

himself up heart and soul to the preaching, by example as well as by

tongue and etching-needle, the moral which had haunted him so long, that

had left him no rest till he grappled with and conquered it, since he

had watched the eclipse of Gillray’s genius, and seen his own father

hurried, by a boastful toper’s bet, to his premature grave.

[Illustration: 121]