George Cruikshank was an enthusiast in all things to which he gave his
mind. He did nothing in a halfhearted way. Whether preparing to address
a great Exeter Hall audience on the evils of drunkenness, or marching at
the head of his riflemen, or arraying himself in a table-cover to enact
the part of Lord Bateman; in small things as in great, he was ever at
fever-heat. He would have made a good actor, had he not been incapable
of a moment’s repose; he would have been an admirable Temperance
advocate, had it been in him to give himself pause in order to think
over the heads of his discourse; he would have been a good volunteer
officer, had it been possible for him to sit quiet in his saddle. But he
seemed to be troubled with an excess of life. Life at fever-heat is
the dominant characteristic of all his work. The “quiet spaces” in his
etchings are rare.
Having been converted by his own “Bottle” to total abstinence from
fermented liquors, he could be nothing less than an earnest and a
vehement worker in the cause. He threw himself heart and soul into
it; and during the thirty remaining years of his life his zeal never
slackened, and he had never made sacrifices enough in it. His impulsive
advocacy often took ludicrous forms. He sometimes offended people by his
denunciations of even the most moderate drinkers, but he never made an
enemy by his _gaucherie_ or his downright phrases imported into quiet
circles, because the parity of his motive and the well-known impetuosity
of his nature excused him. I can remember, in the first year of his
total abstinence, meeting him at a ball given in Fitzroy Square, by Mr.
Joshua Mayhew, the father of Horace and the Brothers Mayhew. He danced
and was light-hearted with the youngest; but when at supper the wine
began to circulate, he stole round to the head of the table, and, laying
his hand upon the shoulder of the venerable host (who was a very haughty
and quick-tempered old gentleman), said, in a deep, warning voice, “Sir,
you are a dangerous man.” Mr. Mayhew had a glass of wine in his hand,
and was about to drink a toast to the health of one of his sons,
when Cruikshank’s hand fell upon his shoulder. “I look upon every
wine-drinker,” Cruikshank added firmly, “as a dangerous man, sir.” The
company, knowing the hot temper of their host, expected an explosion
of rage; but it was staunched by Horace Mayhew, who burst into a hearty
laugh, and told his father to go on, for “it was only dear old George.”
In the same way, when dining at the Mansion House, Cruikshank, at the
passing of the loving-cup, would go through an extraordinary pantomime
before all the company, expressive of his horror of strong drinks. He
would shake his hand angrily at the Lord Mayor, and raise his arms with
horror while his neighbour quaffed of the cup. The company humoured
the eccentric old gentleman; for, in their hearts, they could not but
respect his downright earnestness. He lost no opportunity. Returning
home at the head of his volunteer corps, he showed his jaded officers,
who had freely taken beer, how fresh he was--on two oranges.
“Ah! you may laugh,” he would say, when his friends bantered him about
his aggressive protests in society; “you may laugh, but I can tell you
this----the presence of the old jackdaw checked the drinking, if didn’t
stop it, and I am very grateful to feel sure of that.” * As Mr. Sala has
observed, “the veteran sticks bravely to his text.” And well he might,
for his temperance renewed his youth. “He neither smoked tobacco nor
drank fermented liquors in his old age; but he was a hearty eater,
an early riser, and a vigorous walker and his reward was that which,
according to Gray, is only felt by boys at school--a perpetual
‘sunshine of the breast.’” He was fond of showing this vigour renewed by
temperance, at every possible opportunity; for he very wisely regarded
it as his most forcible argument. It enabled him, in his old age, to
capture a burglar on his own premises. The story runs that when he was
following the burglar to the station, with the police, he drew him
under a lamp, and told him that he could see drink had brought him to
this--adding that he himself drank nothing but water. “I wish I’d ha’
known that,” said the ruffian, “I’d ha’ broken your head for you.”
Cruikshank delighted to show an audience how he could hold a tumbler
full of water steady upon the palm of his outstretched hand. At eighty,
he was seen in costume at a fancy dress ball at Willis’s Rooms, joining
heartily in the dance, and letting everybody know that it was “water
that did it.”
* Grace Stebbing’s article on Cruikshank in the _Graphic_.
It was very difficult to obtain from him the toleration of tobacco smoke
in his company; for, after he had given up alcoholic stimulants, he
threw away his pipe. He would say to a man of letters whom he favoured,
laying his hand upon his arm, and turning those fierce eyes of his full
upon him, “I want you to give up drinking and smoking, and you tell me
that if you don’t smoke you can’t write. Now, I’ll meet you half-way.
Give up the drink, and you may smoke---_just a little_.” But, as a rule,
he was as stern in the matter of tobacco as in that of beer or gin. One
evening M. Legros, the distinguished French artist, lighted a cigarette
in his hall as he was leaving Mornington Place. “To that vice,” said
“the inimitable George” in his deepest tone, “I was a slave for many
years, but now I am a free man.”
To it also, it must be added, he owed one of his most imaginative and
delightful etchings,--“The Triumph, of Cupid,”--published in his “Table
Book.”
His earnestness was extravagantly expressed in all things. As a furious
anti-Papist, he would draw aside and shake his coat when Sisters of
Charity or a Catholic priest passed him. “Do you see that fellow in
front?” he suddenly asked a friend with whom he was walking. It was a
workman quietly enjoying his pipe. “Do you know what I would do to him
if I were a man of fortune? I’d kick him! To think that any man should
be fool enough to place a tube between his lips, and go puff, puff,
puff!” This was his “counter blast.” And he glared at the workman as he
passed on. He had himself been an inveterate smoker for more than forty
years!
On another occasion he drew sharply up before the windows of his old
wine merchant, and called out, “Give me back my thousand pounds!”
When the Crystal Palace was opened at Sydenham, Cruikshank, in his rage
that it had not been made a Temperance palace, drew some extravagant
drawings of the opening ceremony for Messrs. Cassell, one of which
represented the Archbishop of Canterbury bestowing his blessing upon a
public-house.
Dining one day at Grampian Lodge, Forest Sill, with his friend Dr.
Rogers, he suddenly began to tell the company that he had had a vision
the night before. Then he related it with much gesticulation, and with
dramatic effect.
He had seen two devils in council. One had said, “England is moral,
prosperous, happy--this will never do. How can we put an end to it? Her
crops are splendid; look, for instance, at her barley, her-” The
second devil interrupted: “I have an idea. Her barley, which makes such
splendid food, let us teach them to soak it, to sour it, to make it
ferment; in short, to turn it into a tempting poison.”
“Agreed!” cried the first devil.
“Why,” the second devil continued, “we will actually make them drink it
of their own accord; they shall lift the poison to their own lips with
their own hands.”
“Ha! ha!” shouted the first devil; “and then of course, there will be
murder, robbery, violence, and misery all over the land.”
“The devils have had their way,” the old man added his keen eyes
glancing round the table to mark the effect of his vision.
He was indeed, as a writer called him, a “muscular teetotaler.”
“In his time,” a Temperance writer * records to his honour, “he must
have attended thousands of temperance meetings, and at these few men
were more welcome.
* The Temperance Record, February 7th, 1878.
The style of his advocacy was peculiar, he passed from grave to gay with
facility, but he never lost sight of the great object he had in view.
He seemed for years, to be deeply impressed at the numerous murders
that were taking place, all of them, or nearly so, being in the last
instance, if not in the first, attributable to drink. He used to
exclaim, with deep fervour, ‘Can nothing be done to stop these dreadful
murders?’ The clear remedy of total abstinence from that drink which
was their inciting cause then came naturally from his lips; but though
individuals responded to his appeal, the general mass of the public
remained unmoved. Sometimes he would suggest a deputation to the House
of Lords. But though this idea was not acted upon, yet he lived to see
that august assembly collect evidence well fitted to be of service
to them, and also to the public at large. Mr. Cruikshank’s powers of
mimicry were also very great, and often has he convulsed his audience
with his inimitable acting; but, at the same time, there was no
mistaking his deep earnestness, and the sincerity with which he
expressed the convictions of his heart.
He did his utmost, when the teetotalers had failed at the Crystal
Palace, to establish a teetotal palace in the old Surrey Zoological
Gardens; and he was drawn in state from the Hampstead Road to Walworth,
in a carriage and four, to open a bazaar in aid of the scheme. He even
prepared a design for the building. But although many went to cheer the
honest, earnest old man, few remained to invest, and the design fell
to the ground. It may have been some consolation to him and to his
Temperance friends to mark, afterwards, the services which the Crystal
Palace was destined to render to the cause of Temperance, for a drunkard
has hardly ever been seen under its shining roof.
Cruikshank could never convert his mother to his views. She lived with
him during the latter years of her life, and died under his roof, in
the care of a most reverent and attentive son.. She had always been a
careful, sober body, and would not be coerced, because her son could
not take his beer or toddy without committing excesses. She had been a
handsome woman in her days, a grandson records, and it was picturesque
to see the lame old lady, leaning upon her crutch, and wrapped in a
plaid,--with her shrivelled features and wild grey hair,--raise her
withered arm, and with the old fire declare that she would not surrender
her principles. A glass of beer with dinner, and a little toddy at
bedtime, she had always taken, and she took them to the end, and George
had to submit.
Addressing, on one occasion, a Temperance oration to a Bristol audience,
he appealed to his female hearers not to believe that “nourishing
stout” was necessary to nursing-mothers; and he pointed to himself as a
melancholy example, saying, “My mother first lifted the poisoned chalice
to my lips.” His aged mother read this in the morning paper. Her wrath
was violent. “What!” she cried, “am I to be told publicly, at eighty
years of age, that I, who always begged and prayed him to be sober,
taught him to drink?” Her son did not return home for several days; but
he heard of his speech in no uncertain tones when he presented himself
to the old lady, who had, in his youth, often physically chastised him
for his excesses.
Perhaps the best specimen of his manner of laying his subject before an
audience is the speech which he delivered at the Grand Demonstration of
the National Temperance League, in the Guildhall, on the 19th of
November, 1864. It wants his by-play, his dramatic delivery, his
grotesque movements, and then the solemn sounds of his voice, to be
completely understood; but it is sufficiently original and suggestive as
reported:--
“My Lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,---My worthy friend the doctor
has given you a very excellent discourse upon his own profession. It So
happens that as I was coming to this meeting I met with a gentleman who
had just been to consult his medical man; and finding I was coming to
this meeting, he laughed at all idea of abstaining from intoxicating
drinks. He told me he had been to see a very eminent member of the
medical profession. I asked him what was the result.
“He said the physician told him he wanted a stimulant and prescribed one.
I said, ‘What did you give him:’
“He replied, ‘Of course, I gave him the usual fee--a guinea.’ I said, ‘I
can show you how to save that guinea in future. If you will give me half
of it. I will give it to some good charity, and the other half you may
keep in your pocket.’ He said, ‘How is that?’ I said, ‘Instead of going
to the physician, go to the publican, and tell him what is the matter
with you, and he will prescribe the same thing; and if the landlord is
not in, say the same to the potboy, and he will do as well. Rely upon
it, they will prescribe exactly the same thing as the doctor, and the
effects will be the same. Now, I must say one word, if you please, to
defend a very eminent prince who has been mentioned here to-night. I am
sorry to say it happened to be my fate to hold up to ridicule the
Prince Regent--very often indeed; but he was not such a bad man as he is
represented to be. It must be recollected that if he committed excess in
the way of drinking, it was then the fashion for all the eminent persons
to get drunk. No man was considered a liberal man--no man was considered
a gentleman, in fact, unless he made his companions drunk; and
therefore, with all due respect to my friend Mr. Scott, who mentioned
the circumstance, it must be recollected that about half a century back
it was the fashion--it is a fearful thing, but it was the fashion--of
gentry to get drunk; therefore we ought to make allowances. But now,
my Lord Mayor, to come to this very serious question. This hall is the
place where the great City feasts are held, and the question is, is it
possible that there can be any grand entertainment given without mixing
up with it the intoxicating cup? What will be said? It is very well
for you, my lord, who are almost an abstainer yourself--very well for
you--but what will be said of another Lord Mayor who comes here and
gives a dinner without wine and beer? What will be said of him? He will
be called a shabby fellow; and the question is, whether the guests will
not all be melancholy. It will, perhaps, be somewhat in this style:
‘Have a little more soup?’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘More fish?’ ‘No, thank
you.’ ‘Bit of fowl?’ ‘No.’ ‘Venison?’ ‘No.’ ‘What, can’t you eat any
more?’ ‘No, I don’t like it: I want something to drink.’ There is the
serious thing: what is to be done? There is one way of settling that
question. It is supposed that there can be no sociality, no comfort, no
enjoyment, without intoxicating drinks. Now, I recommend the next Lord
Mayor who may succeed our honoured chairman, if he be in favour of the
moderate use of these delightful drinks, to be so good as to ask the
present company to come to dinner. Wouldn’t you enjoy yourselves? And
then, when we have had enough to eat, and want something to drink, here
you are (holding up a glass of water)--Mr. Chairman, your very good
health! Ladies and gentlemen, your good health! (drinking the toast.) We
should have a jolly time of it. (Loud and long-continued cheering.) Mr.
Morley says we will take the sherbet without the punch. That is the way
in which these things are looked at; but supposing that it is
impossible that any social enjoyment can be had without the use of these
stimulants, let us take another view of the question. I have had the
honour of dining here, and I have enjoyed myself very much, not only in
the time when I used to take wine myself--because I recollect there
was such a time as that--but when I have been a teetotaler I have been,
here, and enjoyed my dinner very much indeed, without any of these
drinks. But supposing we had this hall upon the occasion of the Lord
Mayor’s feast with the most elegant people in the world (for I believe
of all the people in the world the British people are the best looking
and the best dressed): imagine the scene! The tables are set out in
the most splendid manner; everything looks grand and happy; but what
is going on outside? Ay! my friends, the most splendid monument in the
world where this drink is used in moderation as it is in this country,
may in the inside be a splendid monument of good order, taste, and
sobriety, but at the outside there is filth and dirt and crime through
drink. I say, suppose these social meetings cannot be enjoyed without
these drinks, let us look at the outside. Now, there are a certain
number of circumstances or acts committed in society, which are always
injurious, not only to the individual himself, but also to society at
large. Now, I do not mean to say that every teetotaler is an honest man.
There may be some dishonest fellows amongst them. I have heard of two
in the last thirty years. This reminds me, by-the-bye, of a teetotal
turnkey at Coldbath Fields. There were two youths brought into the
prison, who were teetotalers, and the other turnkeys jeered the teetotal
turnkey upon it. He said, ‘It is true that there are two teetotalers
here, but they are here only for begging, whereas you have about fifteen
hundred brought in who drink, and they are most of them committed for
stealing.’ There are a number of besetting sins connected with drinking,
such as robberies, brutal assaults, garotting, house-breaking, suicide,
and murder. By-the-bye, speaking of murder, there has been a very strong
feeling existing for many years, and still increasing, against the
punishment of death. I think it is a very horrible thing indeed to hang
anybody; but, my friends, do not forget that it is a still more horrible
thing for one to be murdered. Do not let us forget that. There was a
young man in the country a little while ago hanged for murder--quite a
young man. It was a sad thing indeed, no doubt, to see this poor fellow
gibbeted; but what was he hanged for? He had been drinking on the
Saturday night, and he murdered a young woman as she was going to church
on the Sunday morning. Do not forget that these horrible, detestable,
damnable crimes are committed under the influence of drink. We will
talk about doing away with the punishment of death after we have stopped
murders. I had the honour of speaking in the Mansion House when Mr.
Charles Pearson, the City solicitor, brought on the question about the
convicts; and I told the Lord Mayor then, that if we could do away
with intoxicating liquors altogether, we might wheel out that dreadful
instrument the gibbet into the Old Bailey, and make a bonfire of it. I
believe you will find, if you go into the question, that there is hardly
a murder committed in this country out of a hundred--I may say out of
a thousand--not ten out of ten thousand--but drink has something to
do with it. Remove the drink, and you will stop murder. But there is
a gentleman who ought to have been speaking instead of myself, and
therefore I will not detain you much longer; but I will say this, my
friends, and call your attention to it especially, that the teetotal
question has now been before the world for about thirty years, and
during that short time I challenge any one to point out any teetotaler
who has been committed for a brutal assault upon his wife, or for
garotting, or picking pockets, or house robbery, or murder. I challenge
the world to produce one single case wherein any real teetotaler has
been convicted of one of those crimes. Then, if this be so, what have we
to do but to spread this Temperance movement throughout the length and
breadth of the land? and then we should stop, if not all crimes, if not
all offences, still the great majority of them; and that is what we are
aiming at. And recollect this, my friends, that we are not a society
formed merely for the purpose of reclaiming the drunkard. It is a very
good thing to do so, and I am sorry to say that my time is so occupied
that I am almost in despair. I have six most dreadful cases in hand at
the present moment There is nobody to assist them. I could not go to the
brewer or distiller, and ask them to give me funds for the support of
these people whom they have rained; and why not? Because there is blood
upon the money. I would not have it. But I had to-day a letter imploring
me for help from the nephew of an old friend of my father. What am I
to do? I have a lady in the country at this moment, the wife of a
barrister, who is starving for want of help, and whose husband has been
ruined by drinking. My time is occupied, and my friends are gone, and
I am called upon for all I can afford. But, my friends, if you do away
with these drinks, you do away with these cases. But it is utterly
impossible to go into the evils arising out of these drinks in the time
I have to speak--they are so extensive; all I have to say is, ‘Go on and
prosper!’ and prosper we shall. I cannot sit down without saying that I
look upon this meeting to-night to be one of the grandest movements that
this cause has ever had. I say it from my heart, and think that those
gentlemen who have assisted in getting up this meeting deserve our best
thanks.”
The idea of a temperance Lord Mayor’s Banquet suggests, no doubt, many
vastly amusing incidents and episodes to the mind of the comic writer,
but honest-hearted George Cruikshank could not, and would not, in his
latter dav, see any element of fun in drunkenness, and he was quite in
earnest in recommending the next Lord Mayor to fill his loving-cup with
pump water. *
* Since Cruikshank delivered the above speech, a Temperance
banquet has been held at the Mansion House.
The account he gave, moreover, of his trouble about the many people who
were seeking his assistance, was true of his experience year after year.
His doors were besieged. He was waylaid by petitioners for his known
bounty (the recklessness of which, as we have seen, Dickens reproved)
whenever he went abroad. A poor man himself, for ever in money troubles,
even to the end of his laborious life, his heart lay always open to a
tale of distress. He was never without “cases” on hand.
It has been remarked of his Temperance days, by one of his friendliest
critics, that his style suffered from the contraction of his ideas and
sympathies, “and it cannot be questioned that with the general public
his reputation declined in proportion to the increase of his popularity
among the teetotalers.” He lost heavily, in a pecuniary sense, by his
Temperance advocacy. Publishers ceased to employ him. He remarked that,
for the last ten years of his life, he was without commissions. He had
refused none, he would say. He was willing to work, and he held that his
powers were unimpaired.
Temperance preacher; to them the inimitable George, the illustrator
of Boz, the kindly satirist, the creator of “Points of Humour,” the
illustrator of Grimm, was dead.
And, firmly believing this, the brave old man held on in the rigid
course of duty he had laid down for himself. He had seen all the horrors
which lie behind drunkenness; in his early time he had himself been a
tavern hero; and he had dedicated the remainder of his life to the work
of warning the rising generation out of the path in which he himself had
stumbled.
“I come forth,” he said, in one of his earliest temperance harangues,
“to set by my humble example the opinion of this unthinking world at
defiance.”
But the public had come to regard him simply as a keen a sense of the
ridiculous as most men. I can see clearly what is ridiculous in others.
I am so sensitive myself, that I am quite alive to every situation,
and would not willingly place myself in a ridiculous one; and, I must
confess, that if to be a teetotaler was to be a milksop, if it was to
be a namby-pamby fellow, or a man making a fool of himself or of others,
then indeed I would not be one--certainly not; but if, on the contrary,
to be a teetotaler is to be a man that values himself, and tries by
every means in his power to benefit others; if to be a teetotaler is to
be a man who tries to save the thoughtless from destruction; if to be
a teetotaler is to be a man who does battle with false theories and bad
customs, then I am one. I have been a convert but a short time, not much
over twelve months. I only wish that I could say, with Dr. Gourley, that
I had never taken a glass of spirits in my life; I wish that I had acted
upon the principles of total abstinence only thirty years ago; for if
I had, I am convinced that at this time I should have been much better,
both in body and mind. I have experienced much benefit already, both
physically and mentally. I never did sneer at or scorn the question of
Temperance, yet I never thought that I should stand up as a teetotal
advocate; but I am proud that I have been put into the position in which
I am now placed.
Later on, still conscious of the disadvantage at which he was placing
himself as an artist, he said to another audience--.
“When I left off drinking wine altogether, and became a total abstainer,
I became a healthier and stronger man, more capable of meeting the heavy
responsibilities that were upon me, and for the following two years I
had my life renewed, and all the elasticity of my schoolboy days came
back to me. Domestic afflictions then came upon me, ending in death, and
my spirits and health were crushed down. In this extremity I applied
to my medical adviser. He said, ‘Medicine is of no use to you; you
must drink wine again.’ I refused, and my medical friend called in some
others of his profession; he told me they had had a consultation, the
result being that all of them agreed it was necessary I should drink
wine to restore my sinking constitution. I replied,
“‘Doctor, I’ll take your physic, but not your wine. Let me try everything
else first, and only when there is no other chance give me wine, because
I feel there is a great principle at stake in this matter.’ I have said,
and I believe, wine is unnecessary, even as a medicine, and I do not
wish to do a single act which would tend to weaken or destroy the weight
and force of that conviction. And here I stand. I have not tasted the
vile and destroying enemy, and I am almost restored to health, without
having risked the violation of my principles. I call this a triumph; and
I stand here as an evidence that wine is totally unnecessary, even as a
medicine.”
Much later, we find the preacher an octogenarian--albeit rudely buffeted
by the world, and well-nigh forgotten as a living artist--still true to
his noble text. “Alcoholic liquors,” he exclaimed to an audience, little
more than two years before his death, “were recommended to keep up
strength! But what kept up his strength? He had not taken a drop of
wine, beer, or any alcoholic drink, for twenty-seven years, and he would
be eighty-three next September, if he lived till then. What was it,
then, that kept up his strength? Since he had given up drinking beer and
smoking, he had had a higher enjoyment of life, because all his nervous
system was in proper tone.”
Cuthbert Bede, who knew Cruikshank intimately in his teetotal days, has
drawn this graphic picture of the Temperance advocate at home:--
“Though I had interchanged letters with Mr. George Cruikshank for
several years, it was not until early in the autumn of 1853 that I made
his personal acquaintance. He had asked me to write a serial story for a
projected publication to be illustrated by himself ; and, as it would
simplify matters if we could talk over the subject together, I went up
from the country to London to call upon him. He was then living in
Mornington Crescent, near to Regent’s Park. Numerous portraits had made
me familiar with his personal appearance, so that I needed not to be
told who was the gentleman who so courteously received me downstairs,
and then took me upstairs to his comfortable studio, where he introduced
me to his wife. Some of our first conversation, indeed, was on the
subject of his portrait; for, among the pictures on his walls, I had
noticed the original of the portrait by Frank Stone, which was engraved
on steel for the Omnibus, and was certainly a far more flattering
representation of George Cruikshank than the caricaturist’s sketches of
himself. I told him that I considered the best portrait of himself was
to be found in his own etching, ‘The Reverie,’ published in his Table-
Book, and in every respect a wonderfully fine specimen of his art and
genius. I also referred to his own account of ‘My Portrait,’ in the
_Omnibus_, in which, with his own pen and pencil, he portrayed himself,
and made comments on a curious description of himself that had been
given in a publication called ‘Portraits of Public Characters’; how he
was said to be of the medium height, with a forehead of a prominently
receding shape, with a handsome pair of whiskers, and hair partaking of
a lightish hue; and, moreover, how the ludicrous and extraordinary
fancies with which his mind was constantly teeming often imparted a sort
of wildness to his look frighten from his presence those unacquainted
with him.
“He read these and similar passages to me, and was immensely tickled at
their egregious absurdity. In truth, his manner at once impressed me as
being peculiarly gentle, and kind, and genial. Instead of assuming any
airs of superiority, I found him possessed of all the humble modesty and
chivalrous courtesy of the truly great artist and thorough gentleman;
and although I was quite young, and he was in his sixty-first year, he
treated me as though I had been his equal, if not superior, in ability.
We had so much to talk about, and he had so much to show me, that my
first interview with George Cruikshank had been prolonged to nearly four
hours before I became aware how quickly the time had flown. The time had
then arrived for their luncheon, or early dinner; and as both Mr. and
Mrs. Cruikshank pressed me to stay, and I had by this time overlapped
the hour at which I had made another engagement, I readily and
peculiarity to his manner, which would suffice to consented to remain,
and we went downstairs to dinner. ‘There will be nothing else than a leg
of mutton,’ said Cruikshank. ‘I happen to know that, for I came in with
it,’ I replied; ‘for as I knocked at the hall door the butcher’s boy was
down in the area, delivering the leg of mutton to the cook.’ Cruikshank
seemed to be greatly amused at this, for he laughed heartily, and said
to his wife, ‘My dear, Mr. -------- came in with the mutton.’ Something
in the occurrence seemed to mightily tickle his fancy, for more than
once he repeated the words to his wife, ‘My dear, Mr. -------- came in
with the mutton!’ It was while I was eating it that I terribly
forgot myself. The day was very sultry; it was five hours since I had
breakfasted; we had been busy talking, and I felt thirsty. So, while the
parlourmaid was handing something to me. I asked her to give me a glass
of beer. She replied, ‘We have no beer, sir.’ ‘Then,’ I said, ‘please
to bring me the sherry.’ ‘There is no sherry, sir.’ Whereupon my
host interposed, and laughingly explained that he could not allow the
introduction of any alcoholic liquor into his house; and that, while
I was his guest, I must content myself with drinking water. Then I
suddenly remembered that which I ought not to have forgotten, even for
a moment, that my host had devoted himself to teetotal, who, six years
before, had drawn the eight scenes of ‘The Bottle,’ and had thereby
struck a powerful blow at one of the greatest vices of the age.
“I duly apologized for my forgetfulness; and the incident naturally led
Cruikshank to dilate on that important theme, in furtherance of which he
so steadily devoted his great powers to the very end of his career,
with a persistent courage and devoted zeal that won for him the genuine
respect and admiration of those even who could not wholly agree with him
in details. I was one of those. I could travel with him, very willingly,
up to a certain point, after which our paths parted, and we ‘agreed
to differ.’ I could accompany him to temperance, but not to total
abstinence. During the remainder of the time that we occupied over
dinner, we scarce spoke on any other subject than that which gave ism,
and that I was sitting at the table of the artist rise to the scenes
of ‘The Bottle,’ ‘The Drunkard’s Children,’ ‘The Gin Trap,’ ‘The Gin
Juggernaut’--and, at a later period, his large oil-painting, ‘The
Worship of Bacchus.’
“Our discussion on the subject was preserved with perfect good humour;
so much so, that I ventured to remind him that only a year or so before
he had been converted to teetotalism he had caricatured Father Mathew,
in an etching for the _Comic Almanac_ for 1844, representing him as an
old pump. I reminded my host that these were his sentiments for more
than fifty years of his life, and that he had never during that period
objected to the moderate use of alcoholic liquors, although he had
always vigorously lashed their gross abuse; and I pleaded that I had
not lived for half those years that I had named, and that I might be
pardoned for my forgetfulness in asking his servant for beer and wine.
“Then he told me how the crying sin of the age had sunk deep down into
his heart, especially when he had seen it flourishing, like an upas
tree, in all its foul deformity, in those courts and alleys into which
he was so often led in search of subjects for his pencil; and how the
design for ‘The Bottle’ had gradually grown upon him, and the necessity
for practising what he preached, which he found he could do only by
cutting himself adrift from all alcoholic drinks. He also explained how
his plans to disseminate the scenes of his ‘Drunkard’s Progress,’ in
such a form and at such a low price that they should reach those
masses for whom he specially designed them, were hampered and well-nigh
frustrated, chiefly by the cost of engraving such large drawings on
wood; and how the new art of glyphography had come to his assistance,
and enabled him to draw the eight designs, and to sell them (with Dr.
Charles Mackay’s explanatory poem) for a shilling--which in the year
1847 was an extraordinarily low price for such a production. ‘You will
remember,’ he said, ‘how Maclise represented me seated on a beer-barrel,
getting my inspiration from pothouse scenes, and pencilling them on the
crown of my hat?’ ‘Yes, I remember: it was in the _Fraser_ gallery of
portraits.
And you have amply proved to the world since then that you can turn to
the best account, and for the public good, the people and incidents
that you saw in those places.’ I told him that of ‘The Bottle’ and
‘Drunkard’s Children’ series I preferred the one where the poor girl
commits suicide from Waterloo Bridge--the idea of the body falling from
a height being so vividly conveyed to the eye, as to impress one with
the conviction that we can really see the swift descent of that ‘one
more unfortunate.’”
An instance of Cruikshank’s earnestness in the Temperance cause happened
in May 1854. He had been invited to preside over a meeting of total
abstainers, to be held in Sadler’s Wells Theatre, a place associated in
his mind with the glories of his friend Joe Grimaldi, the clown, and the
days when he was a frequenter of the clown’s club, “The Crib,” hard by.
The great Temperance advocate, J. B. Gough, was to address the audience.
Cruikshank introduced him in his own original way, delivering, as the
papers remarked, a speech full of piquant and incontrovertible truth.
But it was at the close of the orator’s speech that the chairman proved
himself equal to the occasion. Seeing that the audience were under the
spell of Mr. Gough’s eloquence, he rose and exhorted them at once
to come forward and sign the pledge. With this he advanced to the
footlights, bridged the orchestra with a few planks, and stood by to
receive the ladies who came forward in crowds, many of them leading
their children. So delighted was the artist with the number of converts
he led to the table to sign the pledge, that he drew the scene for the
_Illustrated London News_, with himself for central figure.
[Illustration: 168]
I remember attending another meeting in George Cruikshank’s company. It
was a gathering of London pickpockets, called by Mr. Henry Mayhew,
when he was engaged upon his London Labour and London Poor inquiry. The
solemn, but still somewhat grotesque impressiveness of the Temperance
preacher, as he rose, while that dreadful company of keen-eyed vicious
lads were eating the plain Temperance supper which had been provided for
them, to bid them renounce the evils of their way, and as a beginning,
to shun the bottle and the beer-pot, dwelt long in my memory. “Man,”
said Lord Lytton, “has no majesty like earnestness.” That night, honest,
whole-hearted Cruikshank, as with wild gesticulation he talked to “the
dear lads”--for the forlornest and wickedest waif was dear to him--was
clothed in majesty; and it cowed a man at hand, who acknowledged, within
his hearing, that he had smuggled something stronger than water into the
room.
[Illustration: 170]