The Life of George Cruikshank in Two Epochs, Vol. 1. (of 2)

To the Tom and Jerry plates Thackeray returned in a Roundabout Paper in the Cornhill Magazine, after a visit to the British Museum to renew his acquaintance with the lively pair, or Thomas and Jeremiah—his “witty way,” he says, of calling them. He found the reading so-so—“even a little vulgar, well, well.”

“But the pictures!” he exclaims. “Oh! the pictures are noble still!” That George Cruikshank did not withdraw his name or his etching-needle from the adventures of Tom and Jerry, at any time of their career of extraordinary success, is proved by one or two facts. When, after all the theatres had been filled with dramatic versions of Egan’s “Life in London,” and the author himself prepared an extravaganza on his book for Astley’s in 1822, the songs and parodies introduced into it appeared “with a highly finished picture of the pony races, by George Cruikshank.”

“It is not generally known,” says Mr. Hotten, “that George Cruikshank painted a public-house sign to celebrate the success of Dusty Bob in ‘Torn and Jerry.’ Walbourn, the comedian, who personated this character with extraordinary success, kept the ‘Maidenhead’ public-house at Battle Bridge, and the artist painted a whole-length portrait of him in character, which was hung out as his signboard. Moncrieff (who dramatized ‘Tom and Jerry’) used to say that the three characters, Tom, Jerry, and Logic, stood for George Cruikshank, Robert Cruikshank, and Pierce Egan; that many of the adventures in the book were in part autobiographical, and that the portraits of the heroes in the pictures bore a striking resemblance to the portraits of the three artists in actual life.” If the artist did not paint a public-house sign, like Hogarth, he carefully etched a large portrait of Mr. Walbourn as Dusty Bob, with his fantail under his arm, which was published in St. James’s Street; and prepared another copy of this same portrait, with a thin additional line round the print, inscribed above, “Messrs. Reid and Co.‘s Entire,” and below, “W. Walboum, Wine and Spirit Merchant, Maidenhead, Battle Bridge.” * Nor is this all; George was “in at the death,” to use a phrase appropriate to Egan’s work. On the 1st February, 1823, a broadside was issued “for Pierce Egan,” from his “Tiny Crib,” 71, Chancery Lane, price one shilling, bearing an affecting title, “The Tears of Pierce Egan for the Death of Life in London; or, The Funeral of Tom and Jerry. By T. Greenwood, Esq. Dedicated to I. R. and George Cruikshank.” The broadside which represents the joy of the Charlies at Tom and Jerry being “floored” by death, and the funeral procession of Tom and Jerry, is marked “G. Cruikshank fecit.” The back resembles a sack of flour upon a post, and the front view suggests the idea of ‘Dusty Bob in a Blanket.’ ‘Lumber-Troopers,’ two very stout men, seated at a table, smoking and drinking; other designs around.” *

Dusty Bob was always a favourite character with George. The two brothers, who enjoyed their frolics together very much in their early days, having resolved to go to a masquerade at Covent Garden, Robert, who was fond of dress, selected a gorgeous cavalier costume, while George resolved to appear as a dustman. The dustman of those days, in his Sunday clothes, was a picturesque object, with his well-blacked fan-tailed hat, white flannel jacket, scarlet plush breeches, white stockings, and neat gaiters. He had a liberal display of linen, and about his neck a bright-tinted “Barcelona” kerchief. But George Cruikshank resolved to go as the workaday dustman, as he had studied him in his low haunts. He obtained a dustman’s old patched suit, begrimed his face and hands artistically, put a dirty clay pipe in his mouth, and strolled on a summer’s evening from Dorset Street to Covent Garden Theatre, where, with all a dustman’s roughness, he presented his ticket. The collector hesitated, amazed that so low a fellow could have obtained possession of the ticket.

“Haint it reg’lar?” shouted the dustman.

The difficulty was cleared up by the appearance of the splendid cavalier Robert, who took the dustman’s arm into the theatre, where he executed the “double shuffle,” to the great diversion of the dissipated company.

That the adventures of Tom and Jerry and Logic were in some degree the experiences of Egan and the brothers Cruikshank can hardly be doubted.* It is quite clear that the artists “went the rounds” of dissipation, if only to make up their pictures. Egan was at home in the scenes which he described; nor, as we have seen, were the young Cruikshanks, in those days, puritanical in their ways of life. George, we find, was reputed to be so wild, that Professor Wilson, who admired his genius, admonished him to bring himself down to a bottle at dinner, and to moderate his amusements.

If we take “Life in London” in conjunction with the daily hand-to-mouth work which George Cruikshank had been executing for the popular publishers of caricatures, and particularly from the day when Mrs. Humphreys invited him into her shop to take up the etching-needle of her helpless invalid upstairs, we shall see that, although the young artist had what would now be called strong moral proclivities and quick sympathies, he was ready to conform to the spirit of the times, to hit hard, and to make bold steps on very delicate ground.

The miscellaneous work which Cruikshank threw off, in the midst of the labours of a higher class, and more congenial to his genius, between 1820 and 1830, was prodigious. He was, indeed, the pictorial chronicler and satirist and moralist of the time. Before entering upon this part of his labours, let us glance at the best collection of them to which he gave a distinctive form. His “Points of Humour” are among the best expressions of his observation and skill, in his vivacious mood. They delighted his good friend and generous admirer, Thackeray. The mood, the manner of the outlook upon passing events, often suggest Thackeray himself. Cruikshank’s flunkeys were the progenitors of Jeames and Tummus of Thackeray and Leech, as his beadles were the forefathers of Bumble.

“Mr. Cruikshank’s next important public appearance,” says Mr. Thackeray, “was with his ‘Points of Humour’ * (1822 and 1824), after ‘Life in London and Paris’—some twenty copper-plates selected from Various works.”

“The collector of humorous designs,” Mr. Thackeray remarks, “cannot fail to have them in his portfolio, for they contain some of the very best efforts of Mr. Cruikshank’s genius; and though not quite so highly laboured as some of his later productions, are none the worse, in our opinion, for their comparative want of finish. All the effects are perfectly given, and the expression as good as it could be in the most delicate engraving upon steel. The artist’s style, too, was then completely formed; and, for our part, we should say that we preferred his manner of 1825 to any which he has adopted since. The first picture, which is called ‘The Point of Honour,’ illustrates the old story of the officer who, on being accused of cowardice for refusing to fight a duel, came among his brother officers, and flung a lighted grenade down upon the floor, before which his comrades fled ignominiously. This design is capital, and the outward rush of heroes, walking, trampling, twisting, scuffling at the door, is in the best style of the grotesque. You see but the back of most of these gentlemen, into which, nevertheless, the artist has managed to throw an expression of ludicrous agony that one could scarcely have expected to find in such a part of the human figure. The next plate is not less good. It represents a couple who, having been found one night tipsy, and lying in the same gutter, were, by a charitable though misguided gentleman, supposed to be man and wife, and put comfortably to bed together. The morning came: fancy the surprise of this interesting pair when they awoke and discovered their situation. Fancy the manner, too, in which Cruikshank has depicted them, to which words cannot do justice. It is needless to state that this fortuitous and temporary union was followed by one more lasting and sentimental, and that these two worthy persons were married, and lived happily ever after.

“We should like to go through every one of these prints. There is the jolly miller, who, returning home at night, calls upon his wife to get him a supper, and falls to upon rashers of bacon and ale. How he gormandises, that jolly miller! rasher after rasher,—how they pass away frizzling and smoking from the gridiron down that immense grinning gulf of a mouth. Poor wife! how she pines and frets at that untimely hour of midnight to be obliged to fry, fry, fry perpetually, and minister to the monster’s appetite. And yonder in the clock, what agonised face is that we see? By heavens, it is the squire of the parish! What business has he there? Let us not ask. Suffice it to say, that he has, in the hurry of the moment, left upstairs his brs—— his—psha! a part of his dress, in short, with a number of bank-notes in the pockets. Look in the next page, and you will see the ferocious, bacon-devouring ruffian of a miller is actually causing this garment to be carried through the village, and cried by the town-crier. And we blush to be obliged to say that the demoralised miller never offered to return the bank-notes, although he was so mighty scrupulous in endeavouring to find an owner for the corduroy portfolio in which he had found them.

“Passing from this painful subject, we come, we regret to state, to a series representing personages not a whit more moral. Burns’s famous ‘Jolly Beggars’ have all had their portraits drawn by Cruikshank.”

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George Cruikshank’s “Phrenological Illustrations” (1826), “Illustrations of Time” (1827), and “Scraps and Sketches” (1828), in which the celebrated scene “What is Taxes, Thomas?” will be found all published by the artist himself, may be said to have furnished the pictorial material for the first attempt at illustrated journalism. Mr. J. C. Rogers, a friend of Cruikshank’s, describes the transaction as he had it from the wronged artist. *

“The ‘Gallery of Comicalities,’ originated in the circumstance that some forty years ago he (George Cruikshank) was applied to by Mr. Dowling, the editor of Bells Life in London—with whom he had been on terms of intimacy—for leave to reproduce some half-dozen of the etchings from his works called ‘Phrenological Illustrations,’ ‘Illustrations of Time,’ and ‘Scraps and Sketches,’ in the pages of the journal named. Acting on the qualified permission so obtained, Mr. Claremont, the proprietor, to the utter astonishment of the artist, appropriated for his newspaper the whole, or nearly all, of George Cruikshank’s designs, contained in the works in question. When remonstrated with by the artist, and required to stay the issue of the number of the paper in which these appeared, on the ground that it was seriously interfering with the sale of the artists own works, Mr. Claremont, through his editor, peremptorily declined. Consulting a professional friend holding a post in the Court of Chancery, to know whether an injunction might not be obtained to restrain Mr. Claremont in the course he had thought proper to follow, the artist was advised to suffer the wrong rather than enter into litigation, the result of which in any court would entail pecuniary loss.

“These illustrations, I have said, first appeared in the columns of Bells Life in London, under the heading, ‘Gallery of Comicalities.’ They were afterwards published separately by Mr. Claremont. A very large number were sold, and large profits realized. George Cruikshank neither received nor would have accepted a single farthing.... George Cruikshank never contributed directly to the ‘Gallery of Comicalities,’ His designs, obtained in the manner described, were copied by an ordinary wood engraver from his etchings. The average cost of these, he informed me, would not exceed thirty shillings each. Mr. Claremont, finding the thing a profitable venture, continued the publication, and employed Kenny Meadows and others to furnish new designs. It is asserted that if there were any designs by his brother Isaac Robert, they were no doubt appropriated in the same immoral manner.”

“The Gallery of Comicalities” was a great success. Mr. William Bates, of Birmingham, says of it, in Notes and Queries, “I am happily able to count myself among those collectors who possess these witty sheets—the delight of my boyhood—in a perfect state.” The eight series into which the gallery is divided, introduces us for the first time to Kenny Meadows and John Leech, as well as to rich stolen fruit from Cruikshank’s highly productive orchard; and, according to Mr. Bates, to plentiful gleaning from the works of Isaac Robert Cruikshank. Here Meadows’ sketches from Lavater appeared, including “The Phisogs of the Traders of London,” and giving a foretaste of his “Heads of the People and in the gallery are some of poor Seymour’s sketches of the “Sporting Cockney,” and drawings by Chatfield,—an artist now forgotten, but a light in the early times of Douglas Jerrold, Dickens, Thackeray, Meadows,—and Leech’s early drawings; and the great variety of subjects treated with a vigorous, fresh, racy humour by them and others, are a foretaste of Punch that was to start in a few years. The popular appetite for caricature, and for humorous and sarcastic commentaries on the subjects of the day, was diffused among the people by Cleave’s coarser and cheaper pictorial gallery.

The taste for pictorial journalism was distinctly the creation of our caricaturists. Founded by James Gillray and his humbler contemporaries, it was developed by the genius of Rowlandson and George Cruikshank, and so popularised by the latter, that his drawings were, as we have seen, actually carried into the columns of a newspaper. Even this paper he may be said to have indirectly created. Bells Life in London originally appeared in 1824, as Pierce Egan’s Life in London, and Sporting Gazette. Egan was, when Tom and Jerry took the town by storm, the sporting contributor to the Weekly Dispatch; and the success of this work so roused the jealousy of the Dispatch conductors, that they gave Egan his congé. His dismissal, and the popularity he enjoyed at the moment, emboldened him to start a paper on his own account. It flourished awhile, and in 1827 Mr. Egan sold it to a Mr. Bell, who placed his name upon the title-page, where Egan’s had stopd. So that the journal which Mr. Cruikshank was indirectly instrumental in creating, rewarded him by unceremoniously transferring his drawings to its columns, and thus inaugurating the pictorial journalism of England.

The Phrenological Illustrations which Mr. Bell treated so unceremoniously had enjoyed more than a year’s extraordinary popularity, and had even been a topic in Christopher North’s “Noctes.” *

“Tickler. James, a few minutes ago you mentioned the name of that prince of caricaturists, George Cruikshank; pray, have you seen his Phrenological Illustrations?

“Shepherd. That I hae,—he sent me the present as’ copy to Mount Benger; and I thocht me and the haill hoose wud hae fain distracted wi’ lauchin. O sirs, what a plate is yon Pheeloprogeniteeveness! It’s no possible to make out the preceese amount o’ the family, but there wad seem to be somewhere about a dizzen and a half—the legitimate produce o’ the Eerish couple’s ain fruitfu’ lines. A’ noses alike in their langness, wi’ sleight vareeities, dear to ilka pawrent’s heart! Then what kissing, and hugging, and rugging, and ridin on backs and legs, and rockin o’ craddles, and speelin o’ chairs, and washing o’ claes, and boilin o’ pirtawties! And ae wee bit spare rib o’ flesh twurlin afore the fire, to be sent roun’ lick and lick about, to gie to the tongues of the contented crew a meat flavour, alang wi’ the wershness o’ vegetable maitter! Sma’ wooden sodgers gaun through the manuel exercise on the floor—ae nine-pin stannin by himself amang prostrate comrades—a boat shaped wi’ a knife, by him that’s gaun to be a sailor, and on the wa’, emblematical o’ human Pheeloprogenitiveness (O bit that’s a kittle word!) a hen and chickens, ane o’ them perched atween her shouthers, and a countless cleckin aneath her outspread wings! What an observer o’ nature that chiel is! Only look at the back of the faither’s neck, and you’ll no wonner at his family, for is’t no like the back o’ the neck o’ a great bill?” Tickler declares that Language is almost as good, and North himself says: “Not a whit inferior Veneration.” Then Tickler observes: “George Cruikshank’s various and admirable works should be in the possession of all lovers of the Arts. He is far more than the Prince of Caricaturists,—a man who regards the ongoings of life with the eye of genius; and he has a clear insight through the exterior of manners into the passions of the heart. He has wit as well as humour—feeling as well as fancy—and his original vein appears to be inexhaustible. Here’s his health in a bumper.”

The Cruikshank of twenty years later would have been inexpressibly shocked at the manner in which the Shepherd responded:

“George Cruikshank! But stop a wee, my tumbler’s dune. Here’s to him in a caulker, and there’s no mony folk whose health I wad drink, during toddy, in pure speerit.”

Thackeray bears witness to the popularity of the Phrenological Sketches as quaintly as Christopher North:—

“He is the friend of the young especially. Have we not read all the story-books that his wonderful pencil has illustrated? Did we not forego tarts, in order to buy his ‘Breaking-up,’ or his ‘Fashionable Monstrosities’ of the year eighteen hundred and something? Have we not before us, at this very moment, a print—one of the admirable ‘Illustrations of Phrenology’—which entire work was purchased by a joint-stock company of boys, each drawing lots afterwards for the separate prints, and taking his choice in rotation? The writer of this, too, had the honour of drawing the first lot, and seized immediately upon ‘Philoprogenitiveness—a marvellous print (our copy is not at all improved by being coloured, which operation we performed on it ourselves)—a marvellous print, indeed, full of ingenuity and fine jovial humour. A father, possessor of an enormous nose and family, is surrounded by the latter, who are, some of them, embracing the former. The composition writhes and twists about like the Kermes of Rubens. No less than seven little men and women in nightcaps, in frocks, in bibs, in breeches, are clambering about the head, knees, and arms of the man with the nose; their noses, too, are preternaturally developed—the twins in the cradle have noses of the most considerable kind; the second daughter, who is watching them; the youngest but two, who sits squalling in a certain wicker chair; the eldest son, who is yawning; the eldest daughter, who is preparing with the gravy of two mutton-chops a savoury dish of Yorkshire pudding for eighteen persons; the youths who are examining her operations (one a literary gentleman, in a remarkably neat nightcap and pinafore, who has just had his finger in the pudding); the genius who is at work on the slate, and the two honest lads who are hugging the good-humoured washerwoman, their mother,—all, all, save this worthy woman, have noses of the largest size. Not handsome, certainly, are they, and yet everybody must be charmed with the picture. It is full of grotesque beauty. The artist has at the back of his own skull, we are certain, a large bump of philoprogenitiveness. He loves children in his heart: every one of those he has drawn is perfectly happy, and jovial, and affectionate, and as innocent as possible. He makes them with large noses, but he loves them; and you always find something kind in the midst of his humour, and the ugliness redeemed by a sly touch of beauty.”

Pursuing this current of genial criticism, Thackeray has pointed out that in Cruikshank’s “Sketch Book” the observer may gather a good deal of information regarding the character of the individual man. “What strikes his eye as a painter; what moves his anger or admiratiqn as a moralist; what classes he seems most especially disposed to observe, and what to ridicule. There are quacks of all kinds, to whom he has a mortal hatred; quack dandies, who assume under his pencil, perhaps in his eye, the most grotesque appearance possible—their hats grow larger, their legs infinitely more crooked and lean; the tassels of their canes swell out to a most preposterous size; the tails of their coats dwindle away, and finish where coat-tails generally begin. Let us lay a wager that Cruikshank, a man of the people, if ever there was one, heartily hates and despises these supercilious, swaggering, young gentlemen; and his contempt is not a whit the less laudable because there may be tout soit peu of prejudice in it. It is right and wholesome to scorn dandies, as Nelson says it was to hate Frenchmen; in which sentiment (as we have before said) George Cruikshank undoubtedly shares....

“Against dandy footmen he is particularly severe. He hates idlers, pretenders, boasters, and punishes these fellows as best he may. Who does not recollect the famous picture, ‘What is Taxes, Thomas?’ What is taxes, indeed! Well may that vast, over-fed, lounging flunkey ask the question of his associate Thomas, and yet not well, for all that Thomas says in reply is, I don’t know. O beati plushicolo, what a charming state of ignorance is yours! In the Sketch Book many footmen make their appearance: one is a huge, fat Hercules of a Portman Square porter, who calmly surveys another poor fellow,—a porter likewise, but out of livery,—who comes staggering forward with a box that Hercules might lift with his little finger. Will Hercules do so? Not he. The giant can carry nothing heavier than a cocked-hat note on a silver tray, and his labours are to walk from his sentry-box to the door, and from the door back to his sentry-box, and to read the Sunday paper, and to poke the hall fire twice or thrice, and to make five meals a day. Such a fellow does Cruikshank hate and scorn worse even than a Frenchman.

“The man’s master, too, comes in for no small share of our artist’s wrath. See, here is a company of them at church, who humbly designate themselves ‘miserable sinners.’ Miserable sinners, indeed! O what floods of turtle-soup, what tons of turbot and lobster-sauce, must have been sacrificed to make those sinners properly miserable! My lady there, with the ermine tippet and draggling feathers, can we not see that she lives in Portland Place, and is the wife of an East India Director? She has been to the opera over-night (indeed, her husband, on her right, with his fat hand dangling over the pew-door, is at this minute thinking of Mademoiselle Léscadie, whom he saw behind the scenes)—she has been to the opera over-night, which with a trifle of supper afterwards—a white and brown soup, a lobster salad, some woodcocks, and a little champagne—sent her to bed quite comfortable. At half-past eight her maid brings her chocolate to bed, at ten she has fresh eggs and muffins, with, perhaps, a half-hundred of prawns for breakfast, and so can get over the day and the sermon till lunch-time pretty well. What an odour of musk and bergamot exhales from the pew! how it is wadded, and stuffed, and spangled over with brass nails! what hassocks are there for those who are not too fat to kneel! what a flustering and flapping of gilt prayer-books! and what a pious whirring of Bible-leaves one hears all over the church, as the doctor blandly gives out the text! To be miserable at this rate, you must, at the very least, have four thousand a year; and many persons are there so enamoured of grief and sin, that they would willingly take the risk of the misery to have a life-interest in the Consols that accompany it, quite careless about consequences, and sceptical as to the notion that a day is at hand when you must fulfil your share of the bargain.

“Our artist loves to joke at a soldier, in whose livery there appears to him to be something almost as ridiculous as in the uniform of the gentleman of the shoulder-knot. Tall life-guardsmen and fierce grenadiers figure in many of his designs, and almost always in a ridiculous way. Here, again, we have the honest, popular English feeling which jeers at pomp or pretension of all kinds, and is especially jealous of all display of military authority. ‘Raw recruit,’ ‘ditto dressed,’ ditto ‘served up,’ as we see them in the Sketch Book, are so many satires upon the army. Hodge with his ribbons flaunting in his hat, or with red coat and musket, drilled stiff and pompous, or that last, minus leg and arm, tottering about on crutches, do not fill our English artist with the enthusiasm that follows the soldier in every other part of Europe. Jeanjean, the conscript in France, is laughed at, to be sure, but then it is because he is a bad soldier; when he comes to have a huge pair of moustachios and the croix d’honneur to briller on his poitrine cicatrisé, Jeanjean becomes a member of a class that is more respected than any other in the French nation. The veteran soldier inspires our people with no such awe: we hold that democratic weapon the fist in much more honour than the sabre and bayonet, and laugh at a man tricked out in scarlet and pipeclay.”

“In the supernatural,” says Thackeray, “we find Cruikshank reigning supreme. He has invented in his time a little comic pandemonium, peopled with the most droll, good-natured fiends possible. We have before us Chamisso’s ‘Peter Schlemil’ (1824), with Cruikshank’s designs translated into German, and gaining nothing by the change.... He has also made designs for Victor Hugo’s ‘Hans of Iceland.’ Strange, wild etchings were those, on a strange, mad subject; not so good, in our notion, as the designs for the German, books, the peculiar humour of which latter seemed to suit the artist exactly. There is a mixture of the awful and ridiculous in these, which perpetually excites and keeps awake the reader’s attention; the German writer and the English artist seem to have an entire faith in their subject. The reader, no doubt, remembers the awful passage in ‘Peter Schleusihl,’ when the little, gentleman purchases the shadow of that hero: ‘Have the kindness, noble sir, to examine and try this bag.’ He put his hand into his pocket, and drew thence a tolerably large bag of Cordovan leather, to which a couple of thongs were fixed. I took it from him, and immediately counted out ten gold pieces, and ten more, and ten more, and still other ten, whereupon I held out my hand to him. ‘Done,’ said I, ‘it is a bargain; you shall have my shadow for your bag.’ The bargain was concluded; he knelt down before me, and I saw him with a wonderful neatness take my shadow from head to foot, lightly lift it up from the grass, roll and fold it up neatly, and at last pocket it. He then rose up, bowed to me once more, and walked away again, disappearing behind the rose-bushes. I don’t know, but I thought I heard him laughing a little. I, however, kept fast hold of the bag. Everything around me was bright in the sun, and as yet I gave no thought to what I had done.’ This marvellous event, narrated by Peter with such a faithful, circumstantial detail, is painted by Cruikshank in the most wonderful poetic way, with that happy mixture of the real and supernatural that makes the narrative so curious, and like truth.”

The artist, in short, in a wonderfully complete way, embodies the author’s feeling, as well as his idea. He plays, as it were, with the supernatural. Professor Wilson goes even farther. “Nobody, that has the least of an eye for art, can doubt that Cruikshank, if he chose, might design as many Annunciations, Beatifications, Apotheoses, Metamorphoses, and so forth, as would cover York Cathedral from end to end. It is still more impossible to doubt that he might be a famous portrait painter. Now, these are fine lines both of them, and yet it is precisely the chief merit of Cruikshank that he cuts them both, that he will have nothing to do with them, that he has chosen a walk of his own, and that he has made his own walk popular. Here lies genius; but let him do himself justice, let him persevere and rise in his own path, and then, ladies and gentlemen, then the day will come when his name will be a name indeed, not a name puffed and paraded in the newspapers, but a living, a substantial, perhaps even an illustrious, English name. Let him, in one word, proceed, and, as he proceeds, let him think of Hogarth.”

Under such encouragement as this, Cruikshank braced himself for work worthy of his genius, even in the hurly-burly of the daily life he led in London, and with the incessant demands upon him still, as the pictorial moralist and satirist of his time,—demands which he answered richly out of the inexhaustible fund of his fancy and humour,—as we shall see.

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CHAPTER VI. HAND-TO-MOUTH WORK.

Shepherd. “What a subject for a picture by Geordie Cruik-shanks—Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!” *

Exactly. What a picture for the inimitable George! Humphreys in St. James’s Street, Fores in Piccadilly, Fairburn of Broadway, Ludgate Hill, Hodgson and Co. of Newgate Street, W. Hone of Fleet Street, S. Knight of Sweeting’s Alley, J. Dolby of the Strand, poor old Limbird of the same thoroughfare, and many others, all joined in the chorus. “What a subject for a picture by Geordie Cruikshanks”—let the new subject of the moment be what it might—a scene in the condemned cell, characters for Twelfth Night, a frontispiece to a song, His Most Gracious Majesty George the Fourth returning from Westminster Hall in his Coronation Robes, or the Mermaid now exhibiting at the Turf Coffee House in St. James’s Street, or Liston, or the elder Watkins in a new character, or Grimaldi in motley, pattering his last song! I have glanced at the more important work produced by George Cruikshank between 1820 and 1830; and the reader has seen what kind of effect it made in its time, and how it has been judged by critics of high authority. But the full strength of the artist can be estimated only after an examination of the sum of minor work which he got through at the same time. When his “Life in London” and Paris, “Phrenological Illustrations,” “Humourist,” “Points of Humour,” and many series of book illustrations—comprehending a notable quantity of his best creations—are estimated, in conjunction with his hand-to-mouth work for the caricature shops, and the whole has been surveyed at once, the connoisseur stands literally amazed at the immeasurable fecundity of the artist. Within the range of this decade of feverish activity is amassed such wealth of fancy, of invention, of jocund spirit, of sympathy for suffering, of rage over wrong, of minute observation of men and things, and withal such conscientious, ever-improving execution with pencil and needle, and lithographic ink and tinting-brush, upon wood and stone, and steel and copper, as not all the caricaturists or comic artists who have swarmed in Fleet Street since the Queen’s coronation day could equal, if they made a joint show of their best. Cruikshank was lavish with his fancy, and his humour lives upon the smallest subject. He never made one poor little idea stand alone, as the practice is in the comic or satirical cartoons of the present day. It was his wont to support his dominant conception with a score of helpful accessories. He laid every detail under contribution towards the elucidation of the story to be told. His caricatures, as well as his serious pictures, abound in admirable by-play. His power of concentrating interest is unmatched. His chairs and tables speak. There is life in every accessory. Nature morte did not exist for him. “Dead as a door-nail” he could not understand; for under the magnetism of his etching-needle the nail would laugh and speak. He was so full of life himself—a hornpipe dancer in his eighty-fourth year *—that, in spite of him, he infused it into anything he touched. No artist ever threw such movement and infused such vital breath into his pictures, as this untaught man of genius spontaneously breathed into his etchings and woodcuts. A scrimmage by him inclines the beholder to lift his arm to protect himself. When he leads off a dance upon copper, you involuntarily hum a jig. When his characters are merry, you laugh outright with them.

On the other hand, is his mood solemn, he can make your heart beat quick, and send you shuddering away, with his images in your brain—presences you will find it hard to banish. “The awful Jew that Cruikshank drew” lingered for years in Thackeray’s mind; and the profound impression which it made on the public, when it appeared, has not faded even now.

More searching observation than that of Cruikshank in his prime was never possessed by an artist. His range did not stretch beyond the suburbs of London except perhaps to Margate in the hoy, but all that came within it he made his own. Out of the suburban landscapes he conjured fairy scenes; and Highgate and Hampstead supplied him with distant horizons which his imagination widened at his will. Thackeray declared that Cruikshank had a fine eye for homely landscapes, and yet his trees are as bad as his horses. “Old villages, farm-yards, groups of stacks, queer chimneys, churches, gable-end cottages, Elizabethan mansion-houses, and other old English scenes, he depicts with evident enthusiasm.” His scenes to Brough’s “Life of Falstaff” are exquisitely drawn. Where Falstaff is arrested at the suit of Mrs. Quickly, and again when he persuades her to lend him more money, the old houses are fine picturesque studies.

But London, and London streets and suburbs, constituted Cruikshank’s world in his heyday; and he caught all the phases of this his universe, save and except its upper classes. He lived in the midst of the people; he was of them. His humble fortunes cast his lot, in his early time, among the poorer classes of professional men. He was passionately fond of the stage, and was familiar with the popular comedians of the minor theatres, and the landlords of the houses which they and he frequented. He lived at Islington, and belonged to a club called “The Crib,” which had a room at the Sir Hugh Middleton public-house, of which Joseph Grimaldi,* the clown, was president. Mr. C. L. Gruneisen, who made Cruikshank’s acquaintance at “The Crib,” related how on one occasion, when a member bantered George rather savagely, and he—contrary to his custom—had borne the “chaff” without replying, he presently turned to him, and holding up his hand, showed a caricature of his assailant executed upon his thumb-nail, and said, “Look here! See how I have booked him!”

It was in this and kindred scenes with which Cruikshank was familiar in his prime, and out of the excesses which, as we have seen, Professor Wilson—himself no fastidious liver—tried to tempt him by promises of a higher and wider fame, that Cruikshank drew the matchless gallery of contemporary life, in which the humours, passions, whims, and absurdities of our fathers and grandfathers are snatched from oblivion, and left to inform and brighten the page of the future historian.

“We can submit to public notice,” says Mr. Thackeray, “a complete little gallery of dustmen. Here is, in the first place, the professional dustman, who, having in the enthusiastic exercise of his delightful trade, laid hands upon property not strictly his own, is pursued, as we presume, by the right owner, from whom he flies as fast as his crooked shanks will cany him. What curious picture it is—the horrid rickety houses in me dingy suburb of London, the grinning cobbler, the smothered butcher, the very trees which are covered dust—it is fine to look at the different expressions of the two interesting fugitives. The fiery charioteer who belabours yonder poor donkey has still a glance for his brother on foot, on whom punishment is about to descend. And not a little curious is it to think of the creative power of the man who has arranged this tale of low life. How logically it is conducted! how cleverly each one of the accessories is made to contribute to the effect of the whole! What a deal of thought and humour has the artist expended on this little block of wood! a large picture might have been painted out of the very same materials which Mr. Cruikshank, out of his wondrous fund of merriment and observation, can afford to throw away upon a drawing not twi inches long. From the practical dustmen we pass to those purely poetical. Here are three of them, who rise on a cloud of their own raising, the very genius of the sack and shovel. Is there no one to write a sonnet to these? and yet a whole poem was written about Peter Bell the waggoner, a character by no means so poetic.* And, lastly, we have the dustman in love. The honest fellow is on the spectator’s right hand; and having seen a young beauty stepping out of a gin-shop on a Sunday morning, is pressing eagerly his suit. His arms round the ‘young beauty’s’ neck, her face is hidden behind the dustman’s fantail hat.” That society of dustmen, which Cruikshank used to observe, when he lived in Dorset Street, Salisbury Square, sank deep into his mind. In the Triumph of Cupid, many years later, we shall still find the dustman. He is lying in the foreground, “compelled to bite the dust”—while the artist smokes his long pipe, and Cupid, astride his slippers, toasts a heart at the fire. That long pipe (only it was honest clay, and not the magnificent meerschaum to which George has treated himself in his vision) was his companion for many a year. “Yes, I remember Mr. Cruikshank very well when I was a little girl,” writes an old friend of his. “When he came, a long clay pipe was sent for. He would sit smoking it after dinner, and we were greatly amused by the energetic gesticulation with which he accompanied his conversation.” His was a handsome face, with steely blue eyes that struck through you. They flashed as brightly as the eyes of Mr. Dickens, but they had no merriment—only keenness, and a certain fierceness in them. Those eyes penetrated all the mysteries of London life, and peered through clouds of tobacco-smoke, and over foaming tankards in all kinds of strange and queer places.

“For Jews, sailors, Irishmen, Hessian boots, little boys, beadles, policemen, tall life-guardsmen, charity children, pumps, dustmen, very short pantaloons, dandies in spectacles, and ladies with aquiline noses, remarkably taper waists, and wonderfully long ringlets,” says Thackeray, “Mr. Cruikshank has a special predilection. The tribe of Israelites he has studied with amazing gusto; witness the Jew in Mr. Ainsworth’s ‘Jack Shepherd,’ and the immortal Fagin of ‘Oliver Twist,’ Whereabouts lies the comic vis in these persons and things? Why should a beadle be coinic, and his opposite a charity boy? Why should a tall life-guards-man have something in him essentially absurd? Why are short breeches more ridiculous than long? What is there particularly jocose about a pump? and wherefore does a long nose always provoke the beholder to laughter? These points may be metaphysically elucidated by those who list. It is probable that Mr. Cruikshank could not give an accurate definition of that which is ridiculous in these objects, but his instinct has told him that fun lurks in them, and cold must be the heart that can pass by the pantaloons of his charity boys, the Hessian boots of his dandies, and the fantail hats of his dustmen, without respectful wonder.”

George Cruikshank also created the ladies of the Sairy Gamp order. We find one in a set of his Lottery Puffs, published in January 1818—a midwife with a prodigious bonnet. And does she not appear as Mrs. Toddles, the ancestress of Mrs. Brown of our day, in the Omnibus? The debt of the humourists and public caricaturists who have lived and flourished (aye, flourished as poor George never did) on the crumbs of his Rabalaisian banquet of humour, is immeasurable. Many of the comic London characters of to-day are only his figures redressed. They are seen through the spectacles which he invented. Only, the fine fancy, the rollicking gaiety, the cumulation of fun in some four inches square of box-wood, are thinly spread over square feet. Think of Cruikshank’s Irishmen! Thackeray says of them,—

“We have said that our artist has a great love for the drolleries of the Queen Island.... We know not if Mr. Cruikshank has ever had any such good luck as to see the Irish in Ireland itself, but he certainly has obtained a knowledge of their looks, as if the country had been all his life familiar to him. Could Mr. O’Connell himself desire anything more national than the following scene? or would Father Mathew have a better text to preach upon? There is not a broken nose in the room that is not thoroughly Irish.”

The observer of all the humours of London life, the member of Mr. Joseph Grimaldi’s club at the Sir Hugh Middleton, and of many other very free-and-easy theatrical, artistic, and literary clubs of the hour, nursed very serious and ambitious designs, even while he threw out his pictorial squibs for his daily bread. It is sad to think that even the mighty quantity of work which he got through, and of work that filled publishers’ pockets, and set up laughing faces from the Highlands to Portsmouth, was never well paid enough to give him ease to do justice to his genius.

In a note to Mr. Hotten* (April 1865) he said, “The first time that I put a very large figure in perspective was about forty years back, in illustrating that part of ‘Paradise Lost’ where Milton describes Satan as

This I never published, but possibly I may do so,” the intrepid old man adds, “one of these days.”

Original Size -- Medium-Size

In a letter to Mr. J. P. Briscoe he explained how, in 1825, Bolster, which forms the frontispiece of Mr. Robert Hunt’s “Popular Romances of the West of England.”

when his caricatures were in all the shop-windows, he was engaged to illustrate Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”

“Previous to the year of 1825, I was engaged to illustrate Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.’ A friend of mine, Mr. Lewis, was to be the editor, and a bookseller in the Strand, near Holywell Street, named Birch, was, I believe, to be the publisher.

“For this work I made two drawings on wood, one was ‘Satan, Sin, and Death, at the Gates of Hell,’ and the other, ‘Satan calling up the fallen Angels.’