Cruikshank was alive, and living within half an hour’s drive of Mr. Forster’s library, when he put the case in this roundabout, and, I must say, unwarrantably uncivil way. But let us see what this story was that came from across the Atlantic in the columns of the Round Table. It is Dr. Shelton Mackenzie who speaks.’ “In London I was intimate with the brothers Cruikshank, Robert and George, but more particularly the latter. Having called upon him one day at his house (it was then in Myddelton Terrace, Pentonville), I had to wait while he was finishing an etching, for which a printer’s boy was waiting. To while away the time, I glady complied with his suggestion that I should look over a portfolio crowded with etchings, proofs, and drawings, which lay upon the sofa. Among these, carelessly tied together in a wrap of brown paper, was a series of some twenty-five or thirty drawings, very carefully finished, through most of which were carried the well-known portraits of Fagin, Bill Sykes and his Dog, Nancy, the Artful Dodger, and Master Charles Bates—all well known to the readers of “Oliver Twist.” There was no mistake about it; and when Cruikshank turned round, his work finished, I said as much. He told me that it had long been in his mind to show the life of a London thief by a series of drawings engraved by himself, in which, without a single line of letterpress, the story would be strikingly and clearly told. ‘Dickens,’ he continued, ‘dropped in here one day, just as you have done, and, whilst waiting until I could speak with him, took up that identical portfolio, and ferreted out that bundle of drawings. When he came to that one which represents Fagin in the condemned cell, he studied it for half an hour, and told me that he was tempted to change the whole plot of his story, not to carry Oliver Twist through adventures in the country, but to take him up into the thieves’ den in London, show what their life was, and bring Oliver through it without sin or shame. I consented to let him write up to as many of the designs as he thought would suit his purpose, and that was the way in which Fagin, Sikes, and Nancy were created. My drawings suggested them, rather than individuality suggesting (sic) my drawings.’”
Mr. Forster adds,—“Since this was in type I have seen the Life of Dickens published in America (Philadelphia: Peterson Brothers) by Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, in which I regret to find this story literally repeated. The only differences from it as here quoted are that 1847 is given as the date of the visit; that besides the ‘portraits’ named, there are said to have been ‘many others who were not introduced;’ and that the final words run thus: ‘My drawings suggested them, rather than his strong individuality my drawings.’”
In 1872, George Cruikshank published his “Statement of Facts” on this subject, and on his subsequent controversy with Mr. Harrison Ainsworth. This is his final reply to Mr. Forster. I give it that the reader may draw his own conclusions.
“A question has been asked publicly” says the artist, “and which, I grant, is rather an important one in this case, and that is, Why have I not until lately claimed to be the originator of ]Oliver Twist’? To this I reply, that ever since these works were published, and even when they were in progress, I have in private society, when conversing upon such matters, always explain that the original ideas and characters of these emanated from me; and the reason why I publicly claimed to be the originator of ‘Oliver Twist’ was to defend Dr. R. Shelton Mackenzie, who was charged Mr. John Forster, in his ‘Life of Mr. Charles Dickens with publishing a falsehood * (or a word of ‘the letters,’ as he describes it), whereas the Doctor was only repeating what I had told him at the time ‘Oliver Twist’ was in progress. Mr. Forster designates Mackenzie’s statement as ‘a wonderful story,’ or marvellous fable and in a letter from the Doctor in the Philadelphia Press, December 19th, 1871, he says, the wonderful story was printed in an American periodical years before Mr. Dickens died;’ and then asks, did not Mr. Forster inquire into this matter at the time for surely he must have known it.’ And I presume Mr. Dickens must have heard of this ‘wonderful story the truth of which he did not deny—for this reason because he could not. And with respect to Mr. Ainsworth’s insinuation as to my ‘labouring under a delusion’ upon this point, as all my literary friends at that time knew that I was the originator of ‘Oliver Twist,’ and as Mr. Ainsworth and I were at that time upon such intimate terms, and both working together on Bentleys Miscellany, is it at all likely that I should have concealed such a fact from him? No, no! he knew this as well as I did, and therefore, in this matter at any rate, it is he who is ‘labouring under a delusion.’ And I will here refer to a part of my letter, which was published in the Times, December 30th, 1871, upon the origin of ‘Oliver Twist,’ wherein I state that Mr. Ainsworth and Mr. Dickens came together one day to my house, upon which occasion it so happened that I then and there described and performed the character of ‘Fagin,’ for Mr. Dickens to introduce into the work as a ‘receiver of stolen goods,’ and that some time after this, upon seeing Mr. Ainsworth again, he said to me, ‘I was so much struck with your description of that Jew to Mr. Dickens, that I think you and I could do something together.’ Now I do not know whether Mr. Ainsworth has ever made any allusion to this,—perhaps he disdains to do so,—but perhaps he may give this also a ‘positive contradiction,’ and if he does, then all I have to say is, that his memory is gone.”
This controversy, and a subsequent one, arose from Cruikshank’s habit of exaggeration in all things.
One day, at an engraver’s, seeing a drawing of animated pumps (probably one of the series by his brother Robert) upon the table, he shouted, “My pumps!” seized the drawing, made for the door, and was with difficulty persuaded to give it up.
In his eagerness he had a habit of over-estimating the effect of his work, as well as his share in any enterprise in which he had a part. Thus he put down hanging for minor offences; he suppressed fairs, because he exposed the coarseness and vice of Bartholomew Fair;* and so in his later day he was ready, and with thorough conscientiousness, to attribute nearly all the advance of the temperance cause in society to his “Bottle,” “Drunkard’s Children,” and “Triumph of Bacchus.” It was this belief in himself that carried him forward, and kept him alert and vigorous in the cause long after he had completed his threescore years and ten. But it led him into injudicious statements, or over-statements, of which those in regard to his share in “Oliver Twist” was certainly the most unfortunate. His pretensions that he supplied not only subjects for his own plates, but skeletons of chapters to Dickens and Ainsworth, might be disposed of by fifty collateral testimonies to the contrary.
Writing to Forster (January 1838), Dickens says, alluding to the severity of his labours, “I have not done the ‘Young Gentlemen,’ nor written the preface to ‘Grimaldi,’ nor thought of ‘Oliver Twist,’ or even supplied a subject for the plate.”
According to Mr. Ainsworth, Dickens was even so worried by Cruikshank putting forward suggestions that he resolved to send him only printed proofs for illustration.
Cuthbert Bede says, having been informed, of course, by the artist, “It is well known that Cruikshank originated the ‘Life in London.’” But this, as the reader will perceive, is a gross error. To the conception of this work, at any rate, the artist made no claim in Egan’s time, nor, it should be remembered, was he even the sole illustrator. He shared the honours with his brother. Besides, the three heroes bear unmistakable marks of the Egan parentage throughout.
Perhaps the wildest claim Cruikshank ever entered to an idea was that of having originated the pattern of a military hat worn by the Russian soldiers. Having described his own model, he adds: “The Russian soldiers, I find, wear a hat something of this shape now; and no doubt they saw my pattern, and stole my idea.” *
In “the corrections made in the later editions of the first volume” of his “Life of Dickens,” and published in the second volume (October 1872), Mr. Forster notices Cruikshank’s assumption of the responsibility of Dr. Mackenzie’s statement, and remarks, “The worst part of the foregoing fable, therefore, has not Dr. Mackenzie for its author; and Mr. Cruikshank is to be congratulated on the prudence of his rigid silence respecting it as long as Mr. Dickens lived.”
Suppose Cruikshank suggested to Dickens that his subject should be a poor boy thrown upon the skirts of London. It is but the motive, the theme. In all the range of Dickens’s work, there is nothing more essentially his own than “Oliver Twist,” from the name of the hero to the last line of the final chapter. Something like the following scene, which Cuthbert Bede describes, may have taken place between Dickens and Cruikshank. From the bare suggestion that there should be an “awful Jew”—receiver of stolen goods, a Hebrew Blueskin—in the story, to the conception and embodiment of Fagin, there is an immeasurable distance. *
“I was speaking of my first interview with him at his house, Mornington Crescent, Regent’s Park,” says Cuthbert Bede. “He wished me to write a humorous story of modern life, to be illustrated by himself, with a series of designs, something after the style of his ‘Adventures of Mr. Lambkin; or, The Bachelor’s own Book,’ and he jotted down some rough memoranda and sketches (in pencil) embodying his own ideas on the subject. One of these slight drawings was singularly skilful. It represented the shoulders and the tops of the heads of people in the pit of a theatre, as they would appear to a spectator in the gallery—the foreshortening being both curious and difficult. As a matter of course, I gave my best consideration to Mr. Cruikshank’s suggestions and ideas, but submitted to him that I could not see my way to carry them out to our mutual satisfaction; and I also raised objections to the somewhat hackneyed nature of the themes that he suggested, and stated my preference for writing a story that should be wholly and entirely my own original composition. After much discussion pro and con, Mr. Cruikshank yielded to my wishes, and said, ‘Then the tale shall be entirely out of your own head!’ While he spoke, he rapidly drew a fancy sketch of my head, to the back portion of which was affixed a pig-tail, as large as that worn by an old-fashioned Jack Tar. He held this sketch up to his wife, who had just then re-entered the room, and said, in his cheery way, ‘We have settled the point. He does not like my whiskers,’—the hero of the tale, I may add, was to have been readily distinguished in the illustrations by the peculiarity of his whiskers,—‘so he is going to get a tail out of his own head.’ It reminded me of his sketch of the grenadier, whose pig-tail was tied so tightly that he was unable to shut his eyes; also of another pig-tail sketch in the Omnibus, where the gentleman who, has gone to bed ‘half-seas over’ wakes up to sobriety, and, springing out of bed, discovers that his pig-tail has been tied to the bell-rope, and that the house has been aroused through his vain struggles to get free.”
“The Adventures of Mr. Lambkin” were entirely Cruikshank’s own, and they were the least successful, and deservedly so, of his works.
Never has a single figure enacted by mortal artist been so talked and written about as Fagin. * How and when he was conceived, where the artist found his model, what share Dickens had, and what part belonged to Cruikshank of “the awful Jew,” are points of controversy which have been kept alive in society as much by Cruikshank’s own acting of his idea, and his many accounts of his conception, as by the deep impression made by that dreadful wretch glaring in the condemned cell. The writer of the obituary notice of Cruikshank in the Daily News himself heard Cruikshank relate that Fagin was sketched from a rascally old Jew whom he observed in the neighbourhood of Saffron Hill;” and, he added, “I watched him for weeks, studying him.” Fagin possessed Cruikshank’s mind to the end of his life. He was always ready to talk about him, and to act him.
“Sitting down,” says Cuthbert Bede, describing one of his visits to the artist in the Hampstead Road, “and crouching in the huddled posture of ‘the Jew—the dreadful Jew—that Cruikshank drew’—to quote Thackeray’s words—fiercely gnawing at his finger-nails, tossing his hair loosely about his head, and calling up a look of wild horror into his eyes, the artist, with the great histrionic powers that he possessed, seemed to have really transformed himself into the character of the Jew whom he so forcibly depicted. His features somewhat helped him in this impersonation, though those of Sir Charles Napier required no distortion of art, but were so exceedingly like to those of Cruikshank’s Jew, that he was popularly called in the army by the name of ‘Old Fagin.’”
Cruikshank told Horace Mayhew how he hit upon the figure of Fagin in the condemned cell. He had been thinking it over many days, and could not satisfy himself. “At length, beginning to think the task was almost hopeless, he was sitting up in bed one morning, with his hand covering his chin, and the tips of his fingers between his lips, the whole attitude expressive of disappointment and despair, when he saw his face in a cheval glass, which stood on the floor opposite to him. ‘That’s it,’ he involuntarily exclaimed, ‘that’s just the expression I want!’ and by this accidental process the picture was formed in his mind.”
He was never tired of talking on the subject. Fagin possessed him, just as Dickens lived in his characters, and made them talk in his letters and speeches. Mr. Austin Dobson, who met Cruikshank at breakfast at Mr. Frederick Lockers house on the 14th of December (1877), writes to me, “He told us many particulars respecting his work, and especially his visits to prisons and criminals in connection with ‘Oliver Twist.’ Finally, I asked him if the popular story of the conception of Fagin’s wonderful attitude in the condemned cell was correct. He replied rather energetically, ‘False!’ You will remember that in that version the drawing was the result of accident. The artist was biting his nails in desperation, when suddenly he caught the reflection of his perplexed face in a cheval glass—hence Fagin. Cruikshank’s account was different. He had never been perplexed in the matter, or had any doubt as to his design. He attributed the story to the fact that not being satisfied whether the knuckles should be raised or depressed, he had made studies of his own hand in a glass, to the astonishment of a child-relative looking on, who could not conceive what he was doing. He illustrated his account by putting his hand to his mouth, looking, with his hooked nose, wonderfully like the character he was speaking of,—so much so, that for a few minutes afterwards Mr. Locker playfully addressed him as ‘Mr. Fagin.’ I did not see at the time why he was so tenacious. But, of course, what he wished to impress upon us was that the drawing of Fagin in the cell, which shares with Sikes attempting to destroy his dog the post of honour in ‘Oliver Twist,’ was the result, not of a happy accident, but his own persistent and minute habit of realization; and though there appears to be a modern disposition to doubt that a man can know anything about his own past, I for one shall always prefer Mr. Cruikshank’s story to the others.”
There is, no doubt, truth in all these stories. Cruikshank studied often in Petticoat Lane, to begin with, and probably fixed his model of Fagin there. That he himself told Horace Mayhew, many years ago, how he caught sight of his own image as he sat up in bed, and adopted it for Fagin in the condemned cell, I know. And finally, that he studied his hands in his glass, with that careful observation of details by which he reached such intensity in the expression of an emotion, or a dramatic incident, by all who knew him will be accepted as an ordinary illustration of his “habit of realization.”
On Cruikshank’s illustrations to “Oliver Twist,” how many critics have dwelt; and by them, how many writers have pointed their moral. Ruskin, in his chapter on Vulgarity, * turns for his illustration to Landseer and Cruikshank.
“Cunning,” he remarks, “signifies especially a habit or gift of over-reaching, accompanied with enjoyment and a sense of superiority. It is associated with small and dull conceit, and with an absolute want of sympathy or affection. Its essential connection with vulgarity may be at once exemplified by the expression of the butcher’s dog in Landseer’s ‘Low Life.’ Cruikshank’s ‘Noah Claypole,’ in the illustrations to ‘Oliver Twist,’ in the interview with the Jew, is, however, still more characteristic. It is the intensest rendering of vulgarity absolute and utter with which I am acquainted.”
Mr. Paget, in his admirable article on Cruikshank’s genius, already quoted, becomes eloquent on the prodigious effect upon his time which the pictorial moralist achieved, and especially by his illustrations to “Oliver Twist”:—
“More than forty years have passed since the appear-of these works; * and if we were asked who, through that period, has been the most faithful chronicler of the ways, customs, and habits of the middle and lower classes of England, we should answer, George Cruikshank. In his pictures of society there is no depth which he has not sounded. From the murderer’s cell to the pauper’s deathbed there is no phase of crime and misery which has not served him to point a moral. But his sympathies are never perverted, or his sense of right and wrong dimmed by the atmosphere in which he moves. He is a stern though kindly moralist. In his hands vice is vice—a foe with whom no terms are to be kept. Yet, with what true feeling, what consummate skill, does he discriminate the shades of character, the ranks and degrees of crime, the extent and limits of moral corruption! In none of his works is this so apparent as in what we are inclined to rank as the most refined and complete of all, namely, the illustrations to “Oliver Twist.” Charles Dickens and George Cruikshank worked cordially hand in hand in the production of this admirable work, and neither will grudge to the other his share in the fame which has justly attended their joint labours. The characters are not more skilfully developed, as the story unfolds itself, by the pen of Dickens, than by the pencil of his colleague. Every time we turn over this wonderful series, we are more and more impressed with the genius that created, and the close observation of human nature which developed, the characteristics of Oliver through every varying phase of his career, from the memorable day when he ‘asked for more’;—of Sikes, the housebreaker (compare his face in the frontispiece of the first column, where he has just brought Oliver back to the Jew, with that at page 216 of the third volume, where he is attempting to destroy his dog); of Fagin—from the ‘merry old gentleman’ frying sausages, to the ghastly picture of abject terror which he presents in the condemned cell; of Noah Claypole,—mark him as he lies cowering under the dresser in Mrs. Sowerberry’s kitchen, with little Oliver standing triumphant over him with flashing eye and dilated nostril, and again behold him lolling in the armchair, whilst Charlotte feeds his gluttonous appetite with oysters; of Charlotte herself; of Mrs. Corney; of the workhouse master; the paupers; the boy-thieves; of Messrs. Blathers and Duff, the police officers; and the immortal Mrs. Bumble—a character which has furnished new terms to our vocabulary, and the glory of producing which may be fairly divided between the author and the artist Nor is the portraiture of Mrs. Bedwin, the housekeeper, who only appears once—but by that single appearance makes us familiar with her whole history and character—less admirably conceived and executed. The same may be said of Mr. Brownlow and Mr. Los-borne. Nor is this perfection the result of a lucky hit or happy accident, by which a far inferior artist may sometimes succeed in producing what is acknowledged by the eye as the impersonation of the impression produced on the mind by the art of the novelist or the poet. It is the result of deep study and profound sympathy, with all the varied action of the human heart. It is genius, the twin-brother of that which inspired Garrick and Kean, and which, in its rarest and most refined developments, brings before our eyes even now new beauties latent in the characters of Hamlet and of Rosalind. We say this in no spirit of exaggeration, but with a profound conviction that no hand could have produced such works as those of George Cruikshank, which was now the index of the organ of a heart deeply imbued with the finest sympathies of humanity, and an intellect highly endowed with power of the keenest perception and the subtlest analysis.”
Mr. Sala has described the “rough but superb” etchings to the “Sketches by Boz,” which prepared the world for the finer and profounder work in “Oliver Twist,” and he instances “The Streets—Morning”—-an exquisite bit of observation. But can anything surpass, as a picture of close and various study of life, the “Parish Engine”—from the superb beadle at the door, to the urchins rejoicing over the excitement? As pictures of manners, dress, and the habits of the people some forty years ago, they have the value of historical records. Those times live again, under our wondering eyes, by the help of the artist’s genius; and none can deny the immense value they are in helping the younger generation to understand the fresh and racy humour of the text.
Mr. Sala very properly questions whether Cruikshank would have succeeded even with “Pickwick.” “While,” he adds, “to illustrate such works as ‘Martin Chuzzlewit,’ and the later novels of Dickens, he would have been manifestly out of place,” he might have “been in his element” with “Nicholas Nickleby.” Thackeray, however, once pointed out that Cruikshank would never have managed to draw Sir Mulberry Hawk’s cabriolet horse. But he was never more at home than in his illustrations to the life of his old Islington friend and boon companion, Joe Grimaldi, which Dickens unwillingly consented to edit for Mr. Bentley.
Dickens put the manuscript in order, and strung it together—dictating connecting bits to his father, whom Mr. Forster describes as revelling in the work. John Dickens revelled in work as well as play; in a bowl of gin punch, which it was his delight to mix at the Rainbow, in Fleet Street, and over which I have heard him tell many a capital story, not more than in his work as first manager of the Parliamentary staff of the Daily News.
Dickens described the manuscript of the life of the celebrated clown as twaddle, and was astonished at its success. “Seventeen hundred Grimaldis have been already sold,” he wrote to Forster, “and the demand increases daily!” Perhaps he did not rate at their full value George Cruikshank’s etchings, which had a habit, in those days, of making “twaddle” palatable to the public very often. Over Grimaldi, Dickens and Cruikshank parted as author and artist; but they continued fast friends for many years after.
Early in 1839, on the conclusion of “Oliver Twist,” Charles Dickens handed over the editorship of Bentley’s Miscellany to Harrison Ainsworth; and with this transfer, George Cruikshank’s etching-needle passed from the pages of the old to those of the new editor.
Cruikshank by no means stood alone as illustrator at the outset of Bentley’s Miscellany. Samuel Lover illustrated his own “Handy Andy,” and Buss and Phiz appeared as etchers. Dickens, in announcing vol. ii. in a theatrical address, said: “The scenery will continue to be supplied by the creative pencil of Mr. George Cruikshank.” In the second volume, by way of illustration to “The Autobiography of a Joke”—Dr Charles Mackay’s first appearance, he tells me, as a magazine writer—Cruikshank drew one of his wonderful jovial bottles dancing upon the table. It was in the third volume, beginning with the year 1838, that Cruikshank stood alone as illustrator. Early in 1839, Dickens transferred the editorship of the Miscellany to one of his “most intimate and valued friends,” Mr. Ainsworth.
In the first volume of 1840 we find illustrations by Alfred Crowquill in the Miscellany; in the second volume of the same year Leech appeared, both on wood and steel. The woodcuts—especially one of “a highly respectable man”—are full of humour and fresh observation.
Extraordinary as the advance had been which Cruikshank had made by his powerful dramatic illustrations to “Oliver Twist,” his illustrations to Mr. Ainsworth’s romances, and particularly to “The Tower of London,” and “Windsor Castle,” and “The Miser’s Daughter”—proved that he had yet higher laurels to win. His etchings on steel show a greatly superior technical handling to his earlier work with the needle. He obtained effects which Rembrandt would not have disdained. He showed for the first time that he could realize a middle distance, as well as a foreground and a background. And then he had in perfect subjection, and ready to his hand and mind, all the vast store of observation of men and things, he had been inde-fatigably accumulating from his boyhood His plates to these three works are absolutely astonishing, when they are analysed, for the amount of original thought,—for the technical skill in rendering infinite varieties of light and shade, of emotion, of scenery,—which they comprehend.
It is deeply to be lamented that Cruikshank’s connection with Harrison Ainsworth *—a connection in which the artist found some of his finer inspirations—was marred by quarrels, and was sundered finally with a controversy, which is the counterpart of that he engaged in with the biographer and the friends of Charles Dickens. I suspect that Thackeray involuntarily led Cruikshank to claim more than his proper share in the successes he and Harrison Ainsworth had together.
“With regard to the modern romance of ‘Jack Sheppard,’” Thackeray remarks, “in which the latter personage (Jonathan Wild) makes a second appearance, it seems to us that Mr. Cruikshank really created the tale, and that Mr. Ainsworth, as it were, only put words to it. Let any reader of the novel think over it for a while, now that it is some months since he has perused and laid it down—let him think, and tell us what he remembers of the tale. George Cruikshank’s pictures—always George Cruikshank’s pictures. The storm in the Thames, for instance; all the author’s laboured description of that event has passed clean away—we have before our mind’s eye the fine plates of Cruikshank. The poor wretch cowering under the bridge arch, as the waves come rushing in, and the boats are whirling away in the drift of the great swollen black waters; and let any man look at that second plate of the murder on the Thames, and he must acknowledge how much more brilliant the artist’s description is than the writer’s, and what a real genius for the terrible as well as for the ridiculous the former has; how awful is the gloom of the old bridge, a few lights glimmering from the houses here and there, but not so as to be reflected on the water at all, which is too turbid and raging; a great heavy rack of clouds goes sweeping over the bridge, and men with flaring torches—the murderers—are borne away with the stream.
“The author requires many pages to describe the fury of the storm, which Mr. Cruikshank has represented in one. First, he has to prepare you with the something inexpressibly melancholy in sailing on a dark night upon the Thames; ‘the ripple of the water,’ ‘the darkling current,’ ‘the indistinctly seen craft,’ the solemn shadows,’ and other phenomena visible on rivers at night, are detailed (with not unskilful rhetoric) in order to bring the reader into a proper state of mind for the deeper gloom and horror which is to ensue. Then follow pages of description.... See what a tremendous war of words (and good loud words too; Mr. Ainsworth’s description is a good and spirited one) the author is obliged to pour in upon the reader before he can effect his purpose upon the latter, and inspire him with a proper terror. The painter does it at a glance, and old Wood’s dilemma in the midst of that tremendous storm, with the little infant at his bosom, is remembered afterwards, not from the words, but from the visible image of them that the artist has left us.” Thackeray rates these “Jack Sheppard” plates among the most finished and the most successful of Cruikshank’s performances; dwelling lovingly on the conscientiousness of the artist, and that shrewd pervading idea of form which is one of his principal characteristics. They bear witness to the minuteness as well as to the fidelity of the artist’s observation. Not the smallest object, nor its proper place in his design, escapes his eye. He has stored up in the camera of his brain the many ways in which a chair may fall, as well as the thousand and one lights and shadows of expression which play upon a man’s face as he progresses through the chapters of his life.
Thackeray, let it be said, was always unjust to Harrison Ainsworth. He caricatured him unmercifully in Punch, and never lost an opportunity of being amusing at his expense. His reasoning in regard to “Jack Sheppard” is manifestly unjust and unsound. “Jack Sheppard” was the natural sequence to “Rook-wood,” which, in popular parlance, had taken the town by storm, and had suddenly made the young author famous. “Dick Turpin’s Ride to York” became the talk of all England. Colnaghi published a separate set of illustrations, by Hall, of the principal scenes described by Mr. Ainsworth. Cruikshank was called in only to furnish some illustrations to the second edition.
The success of “Rookwood” directed the mind of Bulwer to “Paul Clifford,” and probably suggested to Dickens his “Oliver Twist.” Even Cruikshank himself admits that “Jack Sheppard” was “originated” by the author. A fashion for highwaymen and burglars as heroes of romance had been set by Ainsworth; and Bulwer and Dickens dived into the haunts of thieves to get at their argot, or “patter flash,” * and their ways of thinking and acting. Both made great hits. “Paul Clifford” and “Oliver Twist” were the two books of the day. Mr. Ainsworth, irritated at the unceremonious manner in which his ground had been invaded, put forth “Jack Sheppard” (1839), on assuming the editorship of Bentley’s Miscellany. It was as natural a step from “Rookwood,” especially after “Paul Clifford” and “Oliver Twist,” as chapter two is from chapter one, Mr. Ainsworth had his revenge upon the trespassers, for “Jack” threw “Oliver,” for the moment, into the background. This gave umbrage to Mr. John Forster. Mr. Ainsworth says:—“I am sorry to think that the success of ‘Jack Sheppard’ should have led him (Forster) to regard me as a momentary rival to his idol, but he assuredly treated me as one. My little burglar was certainly the lion of the day. The story was dramatised and played simultaneously at half a dozen theatres. Every street-boy yelled ‘Nix my dolly’ and ‘Jolly nose.’ and large profits were made by managers. My own share of theatrical plunder was only twenty pounds, sent me by Davidge, of the Coburg Theatre. For the Adelphi version, made by Buckstone, I never made a single sixpence, although it filled the house to overflowing, and people said that every errand-boy looked forward to the day when he should develop into a full-blown burglar.”
It would be doing Cruikshank shameful injustice to deny the attraction of his marvellous etchings, full of life, keen observation, and that happy dramatic power he had, which led him to feel and to embody the conception an author whom he illustrated; but, at the same time, it would be folly to accept him at his own estimate of his share in the “Jack Sheppard” success. Mrs. Keeley has quite as strong a right to some of the common glory as George. It is surprising that he never laid claim to Paul Bedford’s “Jolly Nose.” * While the excitement lasted, Cruikshank made no claim to any share in the story, and he enjoyed to the full the immense success of his etchings.
On the completion of “Jack Sheppard” and the “Tower of London,” Cruikshank quarrelled with Mr. Bentley, ** He had a tendency, as one of his best friends has remarked, to quarrel with all persons with whom he had business relations; and when he did quarrel, his words knew no bounds. In his “Popgun” he has drawn himself holding a publisher by the nose with a pair of tongs. *** His temporary separation from Mr. Bentley led him to start a magazine of his own, the Omnibus, and to turn from Mr. Ainsworth to Laman Blanchard as literary co-operator. Of this presently.
On the retirement of Ainsworth from Bentley’s Miscellany, business relations were resumed between himself and the artist; and Cruikshank was advertised as illustrator of Ainsworth’s Magazine. And at this point Cruikshank passed from his humorous to his more ambitious and higher phase.
“The Tower of London” appears to have made a strong effect on Cruikshank’s mind. In the Omnibus he drew some curious bits of observation of the wreck of that part of the Tower which the fire had attacked, and in his illustrations to Ainsworth’s story he manifested a desire to express the historical power as an artist that was in him. He composed pictures free from exaggeration, and grand and impressive both in conception and treatment. Having substituted steel plates for copper, he felt that he was upon more lasting work, and he laboured hard to produce pictures of the highest finish. He was right: some of the finest work he has left lies between Ainsworth’s pages, and indicates a range of power in the artist which he was never destined to prove fully. The fates had been against him in early life; and he was, although even much later he could not bring his eager and intrepid mind to admit it, too old to take his seat in an academy, and get through the drudgery, without which not even the most bountifully gifted artist can do himself justice. In these Rembrandt-like scenes in the Tower, he taught the world that his idea that he was a great historical painter who had lost his way, was no wild and vain fancy.
The new arrangement was one of the most lucrative Cruikshank ever enjoyed, receiving forty pounds monthly for his plates. It opened a connection, during which Cruikshank executed, as he rightly believed, “a hundred and forty-four of the very best designs and etchings” he ever produced. It is a pity that such a connection should have ended in an unworthy quarrel in which Cruikshank, with his usual vehemence and wildness in statement, made charges against his author which it was utterly impossible for him to justify. He has described their relations in this way:—
“I must here first state that, as large sums of money had been realized from my ideas and suggestions for the work of ‘Oliver Twist,’ it occurred to me one day that I would try and get a little of the same material from the same source; and as Mr. Ainsworth and I were at the time upon the most friendly—I may say brotherly—terms, I suggested to him that we should jointly produce a work on our own account, and publish it in monthly numbers, and get Mr. Bentley to join us as the publisher. Mr. Ainsworth was delighted with the idea of such a partnership, and at once acceded to the proposition; and when I told him I had a capital subject for the first work, he inquired what it was; and upon my telling him it was the Tower of London, with some incidents in the life of Lady Jane Grey, he was still more delighted, and then I told him that I had long since seen the room in the Tower where that beautiful and accomplished dear lady was imprisoned, and other parts of that fortress, to which the public were not admitted; and if he would then go with me to the Tower, I would show these places to him. He at once accepted my offer, and off we went to Hungerford Stairs, now the site of the Charing Cross Railway Station; and whilst waiting on the beach for a boat to go to London Bridge, we there met my dear friend, the late W. Jerdan, the well-known editor and part proprietor of the Literary Gazette, who inquired where we were going to. My reply was, that I was taking Mr. Ainsworth a prisoner to the Tower. With this joke we parted. I then took Mr. Ainsworth to the royal prison, and when we arrived there, I introduced him to my friend Mr. Stacey, the storekeeper, in whose department were these ‘Chambers of Horrors’; and then and there did Mr. Ainsworth, for the first time, see the apartment in which the dear Lady Jane was placed until the day she was beheaded, or, in other words, the day on which she was murdered! and which place I had long before made sketches of, for the purpose of introducing them in a ‘Life of Lady Jane Grey,’ and which for many years I had intended to place before the public. I have now most distinctly to state that Mr. Ainsworth wrote up to most of my suggestions and designs, although some of the subjects we jointly arranged, to introduce into the work; and I used every month to send him the tracings or outlines of the sketches or drawings from which I was making the etchings to illustrate the work, in order that he might write up to them, and that they should be accurately described.” Cruikshank goes on to assert that the plates were printed before the manuscript was printed, and sometimes before the manuscript was written.
The “Tower of London” was a great success. Cruikshank states that, while it was running, one bookseller told him that if he and Ainsworth brought out “another work similar in style and interest,” he would take 20,000 a month to begin with, while another offered to take 25,000, or even 30,000. On the completion of “The Tower,” according to Cruikshank, he suggested to Ainsworth “The Plague and the Fire of London.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the author, “that is first-rate.”
It was understood, according to Cruikshank, that both author and artist should set to work on the new subject; but the author unceremoniously seized the artist’s idea, and sold his story to the Sunday Times. After a time, on the intercession of their mutual friend Mr. Pettigrew, Cruikshank says that he consented to work again with the author who had stolen his idea. He even went further; he suggested another story to him, viz., “The Miser’s Daughter,” which he had intended to have worked out by another author in his Omnibus.
“The next romance by Mr. Ainsworth,” says Cruikshank, “which appeared in his magazine, was ‘Windsor Castle,’ and the illustrations to the first part of that work were done by Tony Johannot—the remainder by me; and I will now explain how it came to pass that we two brother artists came to be employed upon the same work. After Mr. Ainsworth had finished ‘Old St. Paul’s,’ he, of course, wanted to produce another work, and to have it illustrated; and, as under the then existing circumstances he could not apply to me, he had to engage another artist. And why he did not employ Mr. Franklin on this occasion I know not, but I believe he went over to Paris, and engaged Tony Johannot to make the drawings and etchings for ‘Windsor Castle;’ and these illustrations were done whilst I was working on my Omnibus. But whether he found this plan to be too inconvenient or otherwise, I cannot tell; but, as he induced my friend Pettigrew to come to me and negotiate for a ‘treaty of peace,’ it is, I think, pretty evident that he wanted the assistance of my head and hand work again. After ‘Windsor Castle’ came the ‘Romance of St. James’s; or, The Court of Queen Anne;’ and after that, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth sold his magazine to his publishers! So it really appeared as if all this gentleman’s promises, like pie-crust, were made to be broken; and, as in this instance, also, there was not any written agreement, the arrangements which he had made, and the engagements he had entered into with me when I agreed to work with him in his magazine, all broke down, and I, as it were, again ‘thrown overboard,’ or ‘left in the lurch.’ And thus ended the second edition of this authors extraordinary conduct towards the artist.”
Cruikshank lays equal stress, in support of his pretensions, on the appearance (March 1842) of a drawing made by him, at Ainsworth’s suggestion, “of the ‘author’ and the ‘artist’ seated, in council, or conversing together in his library.” It is a charming sketch, and both portraits are excellent; but how it proves that the ‘artist’ did the author’s work, or any part of it, as well as his own, it is difficult to conceive. Cruikshank asserted that “after the second edition of Mr. Ainsworth’s extraordinary conduct, the penitent author again sent Mr. Pettigrew to entreat him to be friends once more, and resume work together.” “When I heard this,” says Cruikshank, “my friend the doctor found it was not at all necessary to feel my pulse; for he could plainly see that it beat rather fiercely when, in reply, I said, ‘No, Pettigrew. Mr. Ainsworth has acted towards me in what I consider a most dishonourable manner upon two occasions, and I will take care that he shall not do so a third time.”
To all this Mr. Harrison Ainsworth made answer:—