Title: The Life of George Cruikshank in Two Epochs, Vol. 2. (of 2)
Author: Blanchard Jerrold
Illustrator: George Cruikshank
Release date: January 23, 2014 [eBook #44742]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by David Widger
CONTENTS
THE LIFE OF GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
CHAPTER XI. THE COMIC ALMANAC.
CHAPTER XII. LORD BATEMAN AND THE TABLE BOOK.
CHAPTER I. AT GILLRAY’s GRAVE.
CHAPTER III. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK AS A TEETOTALER.
CHAPTER IV. THE TRIUMPH OF BACCHUS.
CHAPTER V. “FRAUDS ON THE FAIRIES” AND “WHOLE HOGS.”
CHAPTER VI. A SLICE OF BREAD AND BUTTER.
CHAPTER VII. CRUIKSHANK’S LAST TWENTY YEARS.
In 1835 the late Mr. Tilt, publisher, of Fleet Street, started the Comic Almanac, and engaged George Cruikshank to illustrate it. It was a happy idea, exactly suited to the more popular side of the mood and genius of the artist; and Cruikshank entered upon his task with zest For nineteen years this annual comic and satirical commentary on passing and probable events, not only furnished him with a regular income, giving him work on which he might reckon with certainty in estimating his very fluctuating resources; but it afforded him the opportunity, in which he always delighted, of recording in his own quaint, original manner, his opinions on the questions of the day.
In the nineteen volumes to which the Almanac ran, there are nearly two hundred and fifty etchings by him; and among these there are some of his happiest bits of observation, of his shrewdest exposures of folly and vice and cant, and of his original fancy. After looking over these nineteen volumes, and noticing that the wit and earnestness of purpose are as fresh and strong in that of 1853 as in the first volume, the reader cannot refuse to endorse what Thackeray said of Cruikshank’s humour—viz., that it is so good and benevolent, any man must love it. While in his illustrations of books the many-sided artist continued to express his serious or tragic power, which Mr. Ruskin has asserted to be as great as his grotesque power, though warped by “habits of caricature”; in these pleasant annual volumes, in the letterpress of which he had the assistance of his friends, Thackeray, Gilbert à Beckett, Albert Smith, Robert Brough, Horace and Henry Mayhew, he maintained his original popularity with the laughter-loving sections of the British public.
In 1835, when the first almanac appeared, the water cure was amusing the public. Cruikshank’s first plate shows one enthusiast under the water-butt, another under a burst water-pipe, and a third in an elegant attitude, being pumped upon by his servant, and remarking, “Well, I could not have supposed that being ‘pumped upon’ was such a luxury! and so invigorating! And to think that so good a thing should hitherto have been thrown away upon qui tam attorneys, sprained ankles, and pickpockets!” Then Mr. Rigdum Funnidos (originated by the late Mr. Vizetelly, I am informed by his son Henry), enters upon the scene, and continues year after year to be the nom de plume of a succession of wits and humourists; and Cruikshank unfolds his series of plates of the months, each season being indicated by some humorous incident or some happy notes of observation of our London streets. The ice-carts and slides of January; the muddy streets and bustling postmen of St. Valentine’s day,—how unlike (with their great leather bags) the postmen of our day! the winds of March outside Mr. Tilt’s shop, blowing even a dog’s tail over his back; showery April, with a wonderful group of Cockneys standing up; the sweeps of Mayday; June, at the Royal Academy—a bit of Cruikshank at his brightest; July, in Vauxhall Gardens, with the band in cocked hats, and the famous master of the ceremonies in pumps; Cruikshank’s old friend, the dustman, eating his first oyster in August; Greenwich Fair in September; going into the country by the stage coaches in October; Guy Fawkes in November; and the Christmas pudding, with a laughing company welcoming it, in December. As pictures of the humorous side of London life upwards of forty years ago, these spirited etchings, which teem with life, are invaluable.
The fun of Mr. Rigdum Funnidos was of a kind that has found many imitators. In the “proceedings of learned societies” we find that the fossil remains of an antediluvian pawnbroker had been dug up within a mile of Hog’s Norton; that a successful method of converting stones into bread has been transmitted to the New Poor Law Commissioners, and a three-and-sixpenny medal presented to the ingenious discoverer thereof; then that a laborious investigator has reckoned that there are exactly nine millions, one hundred and sixty-four thousand, five hundred and thirty-three hairs on a tom-cat’s tail, which he defies all the zoologists of Europe to disprove. Later on (1839) Thackeray contributed “Stubbs’ Diary” and “Barber Cox, or the Cutting of his Comb,” to the pages of Funnidos. From the first, Cruikshank hit hard at quacks and shams. The first almanac has an “advertisement extraordinary” of the “British Humbug College of Health,” and some amusing testimonials from Gudgeon and Gosling, who have been cured by “Morising Pills.” The moral at the close of the almanac is, “While we venerate what is deserving of veneration, let us not forget that quackery, knavery, bigotry, and superstition always merit exposure and castigation.”
The versatility and the perennial vigour and vivacity of Cruikshank’s genius is nowhere more strikingly displayed than in the variety with which he has treated of the seasons in the Comic Almanac. One year March is illustrated by a meeting of workmen going to work, and roysterers returning home, day and night being nearly equal. Next March the cook is tossing pancakes. April is now shown upon the famous hill in Greenwich Park, and now in a wet return from the races. One November we have Lord Mayor’s Day, with one of Cruikshank’s dense crowds, and the next year we are treated to a delicious bit of humour.
Guys in council over the gunpowder plot May now famishes the artist with one of his happiest bits of suburban scenery, “all a-growing,”—a housewife exchanging old garments for spring flowers; and now such a crowd of lean-shanked charity boys, with such a beadle as only the “inimitable George” could draw before Leech’s time, are beating the bounds. July furnishes a whimsical scene of the dog-days—with London dogs fighting, drawing carts, playing Toby in a Punch and Judy show, running under a truck, and an aristocratic dog looking haughtily down from a first-floor window. (Landseer took more than one hint from Cruikshank’s animals.) June “down at Beulah,” a December dance; May “settling for the Derby”—a wonderful assemblage of broad and long faces; July at the seaside, with cockneys donkey-riding—“long days and long ears;” a November fog; December—“a swallow at Christmas,” a procession of the many substantial items of Christmas cheer, making a procession into the prodigious maw of John Bull. The fountain of humour is inexhaustible. The satirical contrasts also, are capital. Premium, a smart gentleman, with the ladies smiling upon him; Discount, in the dumps, and shabby, with the ladies’ backs resolutely turned towards him. The Parlour and the Cellar, each getting drunk after its fashion. The “Shop and the Shay,” two delightful bits of London life. Then there is the British Museum in 2043, with a gibbet, the pillory, a stage coachman, a Whig, a Tory, and a tax-gatherer’s book among the curiosities.
In 1844, Cruikshank began a series of large folded drawings, with a most humorous etching of the probable effects of over-female emigration. An importation of the fair sex from the savage islands has been effected, “in consequence of exporting all our own to Australia;” and the dark ladies are making eyes at a crowd of anxious men, who are advancing towards them, while in the distance would-be husbands are running to the scene. The faces of the imported squaws on shore, as well as those in the boats, being landed from the big ship, are the creations of a most searching humorous observer. Cruikshank’s cartoon of Guy Fawkes treated classically is wonderfully funny. The artist explained it himself in his own rough fantastic way.
“Having been advised,” he said, “by my friends to publish a sketch of my cartoon” (the great cartoon competition for the Houses of Parliament was going on in 1844) “intended for exhibition at Westminster Hall, I think the public, upon seeing it, will require some explanation of it. The subject has often been treated, and sometimes rather ill-treated, by preceding artists. Being forcibly struck by the grand classical style, I have aimed at it, and I trust I have succeeded in hitting it. At all events, if I have not quite come up to the mark, I have had a good bold fling at it. The first thing I thought it necessary to think of (though, by-the-bye, it is generally the last thing thought of in historical painting) was to get a faithful portrait of the principal character. For that purpose I determined to study nature, and strolled about London and the suburbs on the 5th of November, in search of a likeness of Fawkes, caring little under what Guys it might be presented to me. Unfortunately, some had long noses and some had short; so, putting this and that together, the long and the short of it is, that I determined on adopting a living prototype, who has been blowing up both Houses of Parliament for several years, and if not a Guy Fawkes in other respects, is at least famous for encouraging forking out on the part of others. Having got over the preliminary difficulty,
“I set to work upon my cartoon; and being resolved to make it a greater work than had ever before been known, I forgot the prescribed size, for my head was far above the consideration of mere fact, and I did not reflect, that where Parliament had given an inch, I was taking an ell as the very lowest estimate.
“Having strolled towards Westminster Hall to survey the scene of my future triumphs, it struck me that I had carried the grand classical to such a height as to preclude all chance of my cartoon being got in through the doorway; and I therefore, with the promptitude of a Richard the Third, determined to ‘off with his head’ by taking a slice off the top of the canvas. This necessary piece of execution rather spoiled the design, but it enabled me to throw a heaviness into the brows of my principal figure, which, if it marred the resemblance to Fawkes, gave him an additional look of the Guy at all events. It then occurred to me that I might diminish the dimensions by taking a couple of feet off the legs; and this happy idea enabled me to carry out the historical notion that Fawkes was the mere tool of others, in which case, to cramp him in the understanding must be considered a nice blending of the false in art with the true in nature. The Guy’s feet were accordingly foreshortened, till I left him as he appeared when trying to defend himself at his trial, with hardly a leg to stand upon. Besides, I knew I could fresco out his calves in fine style, when once I got permission to turn the fruit of my labours into wall fruit on the inside of the Houses of Parliament.
“It will now be naturally asked why my cartoon was not exhibited with others, some of which were equally monstrous, in the Hall of Westminster. The fact is, if the truth must out, the cartoon would not go in. Though I had cramped my genius already to suit the views of the Commissioners and the size of the door, I found I must have stooped much lower if I had resolved on finding admittance for my work. I wrote at once to the Woods and Forests, calling upon them to widen the door for genius, by taking down a portion of the wall: but it will hardly be believed, that though there were, at the time, plenty of workmen about the building, no answer was returned to my request. Alas! it is all very well to sing, as they do in Der Freischutz, ‘Through the Woods and through the Forests,’ but towards me the Woods and Forests proved themselves utterly impenetrable.
“It will be seen that the arch-conspirator—for so I must continue to call him, though he could not be got into the archway—has placed his hat upon the ground, a little point in which I have blended imagination with history, and both with convenience. The imagination suggests that such a villain ought not to wear his hat; history does not say that he did, which is as much as to hint that he didn’t; while convenience, coming to the aid of both, renders it necessary for his hat to lie upon the ground; for if I had tried to place it on his head, there would have been no room for it There was one gratifying circumstance connected with this cartoon, which, in spite of my being charged with vanity, I must repeat. As it was carried through the streets, it seemed to be generally understood and appreciated; every one, even children, exclaiming as it passed, ‘Oh! there’s a Guy!’
“George Cruikshank.”
There was some bitterness in this jesting; for Cruikshank felt conscious of the latent power to execute a cartoon about which there should have been no buffoonery. Alas! his lines had been cast in humble places. He had lived to earn his bread from day to day in the grotesque market; and the solemn and poetic side of his genius had been left unworked, or had been only partially and fitfully developed as he became an illustrator of books.
In the Almanac which included the Guy Fawkes cartoon appeared Cruikshank’s Father Mathew, a nice man for a small party. Father Mathew appears in the shape of a pump or filter to a convivial domestic circle, and holds parley with them. The animated pump, with the extended handle for a warning arm, and the spout for a nose, is an old Cruikshankian figure. “Touch not—taste not,” says the preacher-pump: “if you must take anything, take the Pledge.”
Paterfamilias, with a severe frown and aggressive attitude, has turned upon the intruder. “Dost thou think,” he says, “because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” Pater’s friend is more insinuating, and has an excuse. “Why, you see, old gent,” he remarks, “the case is this—the ladies insist upon my singing a comic song, and I should like to know how I am to manage that over a glass of pump-water.” The grandfather pleads: “Won’t you allow an old gentleman a little warm elder wine this cold night?” And the buxom lady of the house is coaxing: “Pray take a chair, sir, and taste my home-made wine, or a glass of our home-brewed ale.” These suggested compromises expressed very faithfully the mood of the artist’s mind at the time. His sympathies inclined him towards the Apostle of Temperance; but he was not yet prepared to go over, body and soul, to the cause. The picture is accompanied by an “Ode to Father Mathew,” conceived in a spirit of hearty opposition, that only goes towards proving that Cruikshank was at the half-way house of elder and home-made wines and home-brewed beer, between the punch bowl and the pump. The ode is in the fine old style:—
The kindly humourist’s etching-needle was inspired by every good cause. These almanacs have all morals underlying the fun. Cruikshank liked to have an object in view. No class, no creature was too humble for his sympathy. Landseer never drew anything better than the plate of the Dog-Days—suggested by “the Dogs Bill” of 1843. Two hard-working, very radical dogs who are drawing a truckful of hardware, scowl at a pair of genteel dogs, extravagantly arrayed, and smoking cigars, who cross their path. First radical dog says he believes they don’t know the side “their tails hang on,” they are so proud—adding, “Why, a cousin of mine, as lives at Barking, tells me as how the celebrated dog Billy has grown so proud that he has declined to kill any more rats. And as to cigars! why bless you, there ain’t a Puppy about Town but wot has got a cigar stuck in his mouth.” In a corner a watch-dog and a dancing dog are talking over their grievances; while in the distance a lady tells her footman to take care her spaniel, Duchess, does not get her feet wet. The dogs are inimitable. Bloomers, crinoline, over-population (a Cruikshankian plate showing the housetops covered with the superabundant humanity), the “steamed-out” stage-coachman, the “fast man,” female parliaments, baby-jumpers, cheap excursion trains, taking the census, the effect of the Peace Society (a regiment hay-making), Jullien as the President of the French Republic, “with entire new politics and polkas,” a pack of knaves, being a meeting of the betting interest,—these are but a few notable pictures of the crowded gallery. Cruikshank revelled in the fun, and sought to extract wisdom from it He had an old-fashioned idea of woman and her rights, and was sharp with his needle over female suffrage, ladies in pantalettes, and women of mind.
Henry Mayhew wrote some verses on a woman of mind, during one of the years of his editorship (1847), beginning,—
Cruikshank’s picture of her is one of his stereotyped, ill-favoured, stuck-up, figureless ladies, of whom a friend said one day, when looking over some sketches, in Amwell Street, “Why, George, your females are all shaped like hour-glasses.”
For pure fun nothing could be better than the “Banquet of the Black Dolls,” in commemoration of the reduction of the Duty on Bags. The doll who occupies the chair has before her a Grand Potage de Dripping, and the menu includes Pâté de Horseshoes, Omelette de Old Iron, Bones Boil-é, Rag-out de Superior White Linen Rag, Fricassée de Broken Glass, and Poudin Kitchen Stuff.
The arrival of Tom Thumb, and his reception by the élite of society, as the bills said, and the brilliant court he held under a shower of John Bull’s gold in Piccadilly, suggested two scenes to hard-working and most moderately-paid Cruikshank. The first is called “Born a Genius.” In a garret a poor artist sits in despair and poverty—his empty plate upon the table, his tattered boots upon the floor. The second is called “Born a Dwarf.”
The little man reclines upon a sofa, with a jewel-case and full money-bags beside him. He toys with a trinket, having finished his foie-gras and champagne.
He had seen inexcusable personalities in the paper, he remarked; and when Lemon said to him, “We shall have you yet,” George shouted in reply, striking one of his theatrical attitudes, “Never!”
He had repented of his early days of unscrupulous caricature. It must be remembered, always to Cruikshank’s lasting honour, that, his wild youth past, he refused scores of tempting offers of work that did not quite commend itself to his conscience. He used to say he would illustrate nothing which he did not feel.
Later, when Punch goodnaturedly rallied him on his temperance eccentricities, he declared that he had a great mind to go down to Fleet Street “and knock the old rascal’s wooden head about.”
Between 1837 and 1847, in addition to his work with Dickens and Ainsworth, and in his Omnibus and “Comic Almanac,” Cruikshank threw off some of his most popular minor drawings and etchings. Within this decade he etched many of his plates for the “Waverley Novels,” he illustrated “Peter Parley’s Tales about Christmas,” “Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote” (1837), “More Hints on Etiquette” (1838), “Lympsfield and its Environs” (1838), “The Life of Mansie Waunch (1838) for Blackwood, “Land-Sharks and Sea-Gulls” (1838), “Rejected Addresses” (1838), “Out and About,” a boy’s adventures, by Hain Friswell (1840), John O’Neill’s poem of “The Drunkard” (1842), Dibdin’s Songs (1841-2), “Picnic Papers” (1841), edited by Dickens; Douglas Jerrold’s “Cakes and Ale” (1842), “Modern Chivalry, or a new Orlando Furioso” (1843); Martin’s “Vagaries,” a sequel to “A Tale of a Tub” (1843); “The Bachelor’s own Book, or the Life of Mr. Lambkin, gent” (1844); Harry Lorrequer’s “Arthur O’Leary” (1844); Maxwell’s “Irish Rebellion” (1845), “The Old Sailor’s Jolly Boat” (1845), “The Comic Blackstone” (1846), Mrs. Gore’s “Snow-Storm” and “New Year’s Day” (1845), “Our Own Times” (1845), the Brothers Mayhew’s “Greatest Plague of Life” (1847), “The Emigrant,’ by Sir Francis Head, Captain Chamier’s “Ben Brace” (1847), “Nights at Mess,” and Laman Blanchard’s “Sketches from Life.” He also began his capital illustrations to “The Ingoldsby Legends,” in Bentley’s Miscellany. To this period, also, his wellknown “John Gilpin” and “Lord Bateman” (1839) belong.
According to Mr. Walter Hamilton, the history of the “Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman” is, that George Cruikshank “sang the old English ballad, in the manner of a street-ballad singer, at a dinner of the Antiquarian Society, at which Dickens and Thackeray were present.
The latter is reported to have remarked, “I should like to print that ballad, with illustrations.” But Cruikshank warned him off, saying that this was exactly what he himself had resolved to do. The original ballad was much longer than that which Cruikshank illustrated, and to which Charles Dickens furnished humorous notes; and was not comic in any respect. Mr. Sala’s version is the more vraisetnblant:—
“The authorship of the ballad itself, which has furnished the basis for no less than three theatrical burlesques—one by a forgotten dramatist at the Strand, another by Robert Brough at the Adelphi, and a third by Henry J. Byron at the Globe—is involved in mystery. George Cruikshank’s assertion, and one to which he doggedly adhered, was that he heard the song sung one night by an itinerant minstrel outside a public-house near Battle Bridge; and that he subsequently chanted and ‘performed’ (George was as good as any play, or as a story-teller in a Moorish coffee-house, at ‘performing’) the ditty to Charles Dickens, who was so delighted with it that he persuaded George to publish it, adorned with copper-plates. But internal evidence would seem to be against the entire authenticity of the artist’s version. That he had heard some doggerel sung outside a tavern, and relating to Lord Bateman, is likely enough. ‘Vilikins and his was immortalised by Robson in Jem Baggs. George Cruikshank’s error, it strikes us, was more one of omission than of commission. He may have lyrically narrated the adventures of the ‘Noble Lord of High Degree’ to Dickens; but he assuredly warbled and ‘performed’ them too in the presence of Thackeray, who in all probability ‘revised and settled’ the words, and made them fit for publication. Nobody but Thackeray could have written those lines about ‘The young bride’s mother, who never before was heard to speak so free,’ and in the ‘Proud Young Porter’ all Titmarshian students must recognise the embryo type of James de la Pluche.”
“Lord Bateman” was Cruikshank’s delight. The exquisite foolery expressed in his plates of this eccentric nobleman he would act, at any moment, in any place, to the end of his life. Mr. Percival Leigh remembers a characteristic scene at the Cheshire Cheese tavern, in Fleet Street, about 1842 or 1843. “This,” * he says, “was in G. C.‘s pre-teetotal period. After dinner came drink and smoke, of course; and G. C. was induced to sing ‘Billy Taylor,’ which he did with grotesque expression and action, varied to suit the words. He likewise sang ‘Lord Bateman,’ in his shirt-sleeves, with his coat flung cloak-wise over his left arm, whilst he paced up and down, disporting himself with a walking-stick, after the manner of the noble lord, as represented in his illustration to the ballad.”
Six-and-twenty years afterwards we find the bright-hearted old man still with spirits enough for his favourite part.
“One day,” says Mr. Frederick Locker, “he asked us to tea, and to hear him sing ‘Lord Bateman’ in character, which he did to our infinite delight. He posed in the costume of that, deeply interesting but somewhat mysterious nobleman. I am often reminded of the circumstance; for I have a copy of ‘Lord Bateman’ (1851), and on the false title is written—
This in his seventy-sixth year!
Within the busy decade, 1837—1847, Cruikshank executed many separate etchings for Bentley’s Miscellany and Ainsworth’s Magazine. His work is to be found scattered far and wide. One month he appears as the illustrator of a humorous song or scena by J. Blewitt—“The Matrimonial Ladder” (the ladder was a favourite form with him for conveying the various aspects of a subject)—or Keeley in the new comic song of “Wery Ridiculous”; the next he is the whimsical illustrator of Beaufoy’s Advertisement of his Cure for the Toothache—wood drawings engraved by Orrin Smith. Nor had he quite put aside his habit of expressing himself pictorially on political events. In 1843 he published, from Mr. David Bogue’s shop in Fleet Street, a separate design entitled “The Queen and the Union. No Repeal! No O’Connell!” It was a woodcut enclosing text in type, the text being Cruikshank’s own declamation against the Irish Agitator. Britannia and Erin are represented in the drawing seated, with joined hands, on the shores of the Channel; while the “blustering, foul-mouthed bully, with one foot on Britannia’s shoulder, and the other on Erin’s harp, has raised an axe to sunder the friends.” Frontispieces and covers he designed by the score,—now to “A Tale of a Comical Stick,” and now to The Yorkshireman, a religious and literary journal; and now again a headpiece to one of Mrs. S. C. Hall’s “Sketches of Irish Character,” or a frontispiece to a book on “Prisons and Prisoners.” To every item of this extraordinary quantity and variety of pictorial labour Cruikshank gave his utmost energy. He was a most faithful worker, who never stinted himself, even when the humblest or least important subject was in hand. Let me note, however, some exceptions.
In 1843 he had quarrelled with Mr. Bentley, and purposely put bad work in them. This was his revenge—and to the end of his life he never perceived the fault he committed in this act. “One day,” says Mr. Locker,* u at my house, he explained how these (the bad etchings) had been etched. It appears that he had quarrelled with Mr. Richard Bentley (he was a singularly kind-hearted man, but, I fancy, had a somewhat remarkable faculty for quarrelling with almost every one with whom he was connected in business), and was obliged to fulfil his contract to supply an etching for each monthly number of Bentley’s Miscellany, and he did them as badly as he possibly could, and etched his name under them so illegibly as to be quite indecipherable: ‘And,’ said he, ‘I used to take out my watch, and put it beside me on the table, and give myself just—’ (mentioning the number of minutes) ‘for each plate.’”
It was after another and a final parting from Mr. Ainsworth, on the sale of his magazine, that Cruikshank, “left in the lurch,” to use his own phrase, started his “Table-Book,” with Gilbert à Beckett as editor, and Bradbury and Evans as printers and publishers. The artist has put on record the manner in which he and the eminent Whitefriars firm came together:—
“I will not go into the details of how I assisted this author (Ainsworth) with head and hand work in these novels, but I did my best to design and suggest; and my time was so much occupied in performing this duty, and also with some other matters, that I was not able to bring out my Omnibus as an annual, as I had intended to have done; but I now determined to bring it out again in monthly numbers; and as Bradbury and Evans (the fathers of the present firm) had printed that work for me, I went to their office to see what stock there was of the Omnibus on hand, and to make arrangements for the republishing of it; and when I mentioned this to my friend Bradbury, he said, ‘Ah, it is a pity that work was ever stopped; we should have been glad to have bought it of you, and will buy it now, if you would like to sell it.’ I replied that I did not wish to dispose of it, but if they would like to join me, I should be glad to have them as partners. ‘Agreed,’ said both Mr. Bradbury and Mr. Evans; and as these friends of mine were men of business, as well as gentlemen and men of honour, in this case there was a written agreement clearly and legally drawn out, and duly signed by both parties. But their engagements at that time were so many, that a considerable time elapsed before arrangements could be made for the republishing of the Omnibus; so they then suggested, as it was such a long time since my Omnibus had been on the road, that it would, perhaps, be better to start another vehicle of the same build, but under another name. To this I agreed; and thus originated ‘The Table Book,’ which was edited by my friends the late Gilbert à Becket and Mark Lemon.”
The “Table Book” includes two of Cruikshank’s most powerful and perfect etchings—viz., “The Triumph of Cupid” and “The Folly of Crime.” The fertility of imagination manifest in “The Triumph of Cupid” is amazing. The execution is that of an original master. No man who ever held an etching-needle has surpassed the truth and beauty and boldness of the touches by which hundreds of figures live, a happy tumultuous throng, in this octavo plate. The central figure is the artist, in slippers and embroidered dress-ing-gown, before his fire, smoking a handsome meerschaum pipe, gazing abstractedly into the fire; and upon the cloud of smoke from his lips, his dreams of the triumphs of Cupid rise till they fill the room.
Cupid perches himself upon his foot, and toasts a heart at the fire; jumps upon the back of Old Time who bears the clock upon the mantelpiece; is enthroned in a triumphal car, with kings and princes, bishops and generals, lawyers and stock-jobbers, drummer-boys and jack-tars and sweeps, clown and harlequin, and even slippered pantaloon, and Chelsea pensioners upon wooden stumps, for his court. The car is drawn by subdued lions and leopards.
The blind beggar is waylaid by the little god, and brought to the ground. He has floored a dustman on his rounds. He makes the Great Mogul sue for mercy. He drags a little black page from under the armchair, and puts gyves upon his wrists. All is clearly and beautifully grouped, and frankly and boldly, and at the same time delicately, drawn. It is as precise and luminous as Durer. It is perfect etching, by one who knew the limits as well as all the capabilities of his exquisite art.
“The Folly of Crime” has been not extravagantly described by a writer in the London Quarterly Review (1873) as a very great work indeed. He says it is perhaps the artist’s highest effort: I should rather say it “is clearly and beautifully, and at the same time precise and luminous by one who knew the value of his exquisite art. He says it suggests an undeveloped power of the highest order—albeit the management of the direct and reflected lights is most admirable, and the skill throughout is consummate. “Without lingering over the framework of lesser groups, though these are sufficiently impressive,” says the reviewer, “let us go straight to the central picture. A murdered man lies stark in the shadow. The murderer springs forward to catch at, a bowl of pearls, snake-like and seemingly incandescent, that are borne swayingly before him on the head of a grinning fiend. The ground smiles at his feet. He falls, and, as he falls, the light from the pit leaps up, catching his bloody hand, and the fatal knife, and the long ears of his fool’s-cap, and gleaming in his despairing eyes; while all the air is filled with chattering and mowing demons, whose eyes and teeth also glitter white and cruel. And the horror of the man’s face is terrible.” The little morals framed around the central picture complete the awful story. The murderer lies—always wearing the fool’s-cap—in his bed, with a heavy weight upon his chest, snakes hissing in his ears, and the scales of justice held steady before his eyes. He is upon the treadmill. He crouches in a corner of the condemned cell. A convict, he carries a weighty burden upon his shoulders, marked “for life.”
The many light, playful, and fanciful sketches that are included in the one thin volume to which in “The Table Book” ran, are trifles light as air, when compared with those two great efforts of Cruikshank’s genius, at its ripest and brightest. They mark the highest point of his ascent. In the sequel we shall find him executing much noteworthy, honourable Work,with the zeal of a great moral preacher; but he will not surpass these two noble etchings.
George Cruikshank worked, as he reader knows, with great care and deliberation. He thought out his subject well before beginning to realize his conception. He made, to begin with, a careful design upon paper, trying doubtful points on the margin of the paper. The design was heightened by vigorous touches of colour. Then a careful tracing was made, and laid, pencil side down, upon the steel plate. This was carried to the printer, who having placed it between damp paper, and passed it through the press, returned it, the blacklead outline distinctly appearing upon the etching ground. And then the work was straightforward to the artist’s firm hand. The firmness and fineness of his touch are as conspicuous in his wood drawings as in his etchings.
“It was the custom of the artist,” according to his nephew, Percy Cruikshank, “before parting with his plates, to have India-paper proofs of the etchings, and this being ‘before letters’—that is, before the title was engraved on the plate—made them the more valuable. He also insisted on the engraver’s supplying him with a proof of his drawings on wood when completed. This, in time, formed a scarce and choice collection, of which he knew the value full well. The centralizing all that was Cruikshankian within himself was the end which crowned the work. The late Prince Consort being desirous of possessing a collection of George’s proofs, offered a considerable sum for them; but the artist, although pressed for money, not considering it sufficient, respectfully declined the proposal.”
To return to the “Table Book.” The miscellaneous etchings and drawings in this book are mostly arrows aimed at folly as it was flying at that time. The railway mania, clairvoyance, emigration, the fashions, furnished Cruikshank with inexhaustible humorous or grave material. His etching of Mr. John Ball in a Quandary, or the Anticipated Effects of the Railway Calls, is one of those wondrously filled drawings, in the composition of which he stands alone. John Bull is in his armchair, with a great railway bell clanging over his head. Hosts of pestilent demons cover him, and are stripping him. Some are hoisting his hat, some are bearing away his wig, others have perched ladders against his capacious paunch, and are dragging his money and his watch from his waistcoat pockets. The greedy imps are tugging his gloves from his hands, unfastening his neckcloth, and pulling his boots off. Liliputian lawyers, at hand, are demolishing a barrel of oysters, and leaving a plentiful supply of shells for their clients. Imps, driving a little locomotive, have attached it to Bull’s cash-box, and are making off with it; and in the distance the pictures are marked for sale. Then we have a few bits of Cruikshankian humour called “‘Heads of the Table,”—the final head being a capital study of an old gentleman who is entre deux vins, saying, “Well, we’ll just take another glass—and then—we’ll join the—the ladies.” Opposite this page is a drawing of a family, and also of their shoes.
I will now endeavour to afford the reader an idea of the man who created the extraordinary variety of artistic work of high excellence briefly described in the foregoing chapters. George Cruikshank was eminently a convivial man. He was born in a boisterous and coarse convivial time; when Lords and Commons boxed at Jackson’s; went to see monkeys set to fight terriers at Cribb’s; fought “Charleys” and turnpike-men; and drank hard and played high at Crockford’s. Their humble imitators were the associates of Robert and George Cruikshank. George’s associates were tavern frequenters for the most part: in those days taverns were used by many of the men who now frequent clubs. The portrait of him drawn by Maclise was Cruikshank in his earlier and humbler time, when he was in the hands of the caricature vendors. The writer in Fraser says: “Here we have the sketcher sketched; and, as is fit, he is sketched sketching. Here is George Cruikshank (see Frontispiece)—the George Cruikshank—seated upon the head of a barrel, catching inspiration from the scenes presented to him in a pot-house, and consigning the ideas of the moment to immortality on the crown of his hat....