George Cruikshank’s habit of putting himself forward as the originator of any work with which he was connected was never more amusingly displayed than when, in March 1870, he made one of a deputation of the National Education League to Mr. Gladstone. “I must say,” he remarked on this event, in his introduction to the second edition of his ‘Slice of Bread and Butter,’ “that it afforded me much gratification to hear all the suggestions which I had placed before the public so many years ago, so eloquently and forcibly advocated upon this occasion.”
It was a harmless assumption in this instance, to be freely forgiven in the earnest old man who was still exerting himself to the utmost of his ability for what he conceived to be the right way, in the cause of popular education.
He had thrown his ideas into one of those whimsical forms, peculiar to him. He was fond of illustrated pamphleteering, and the reclamation of ragged children left out in the cruel streets hungry and half naked had always been a subject near to his heart. His last effort in their behalf he called “A Slice of Bread and Butter.” On the title page we find one of his bright little pictorial stories in wood. An outcast child lies upon the pavement surrounded by a crowd of men, who are in eager consultation as to the restorative which shall be administered. In the distance is the parish church, but overhead swings the sign of the Britannia, and the landlord, with a pipe in his mouth, is contemplating the scene from the bar parlour. The story is told with all the old completeness.
The crowd consists of “some worthy gentlemen, magistrates, and others,” who, on their way “to the Town Hall on county business,” have found this forlorn boy upon the pavement leaning against the wall. As he was neither begging nor stealing, and did not obstruct the pathway, he could not be taken into custody. When asked what was the matter, he replied, “I wants summut to eat.” Then follows the learned consultation around the starving boy:—
“Now the worthy magistrates and the other gentlemen—some of whom were clergymen, and ministers, and lawyers—were all kind-hearted and benevolent men as well as the doctor; and they all exclaimed, as with one voice, upon hearing what the doctor said, ‘Oh, dear me, how very shocking!—let him have some food instantly!’
‘Yes, yes!’ cried one: ‘here, officer! go into the Britannia, and get him something to eat instantly.’
‘I suppose,’ said he, turning to the doctor, “a bit of plain bread and butter wall be best for him in his present condition?’ ‘The very thing,’ he replied; and as the officer was about to run into the house to get a bit of bread and butter, another gentleman of the party cried out, ‘Stop! see that you bring brown bread.’ ‘Pooh! pooh!’ said another; ‘it does not matter what sort of bread it is, but it must be toasted.’ ‘White or brown, or plain or toasted, it matters not much,’ exclaimed a fourth, ‘provided there is plenty of butter on it.’ ‘I object most decidedly to the butter,’ observed a very sedate gentleman. ‘As to that,’ shouted out another, ‘I consider the butter as most essential: it is full of nourishment; and, besides, the poor boy might be choked by cramming dry bread down his throat without butter; but then we must be careful that it be salt butter.’ ‘No! no!’ cried another; ‘fresh butter, if you please, and as much as you please; but no salt.’ ‘You are all wrong, my friends!—quite wrong!’ vociferated another of the party; ‘depend upon it, that dry toast is the best thing he can have.’ ‘Oh! oh! oh!’ exclaimed all the other gentlemen; ‘who ever heard of such a thing as giving dry toast to a starving child?’ ‘Who ever, indeed!’ chimed in another; ‘it is quite ridiculous to toast the bread at all; the poor child might die before it was ready! No! no! plain bread and butter is best for him; but mind, if I have to pay my part towards it, the bread must be new—yes, new bread.’
‘New bread!’ exclaimed some of the party why, that’s worse than all; for if it does not stick in his throat, it will in his stomach, and perhaps kill him. New bread is indigestible and most unwholesome stuff.’ ‘Well, well; let it be plain stale bread and butter, but only the crumb of the loaf, and I will pay my part willingly,’ observed another. ‘Crumb without crust!’ said one of the former speakers; ‘why, the crust of the loaf contains ten times more nourishment than the crumb, and I, for one, will have nothing to do with it, nor pay a farthing towards it, unless he has a good lump of crust.’
“Now during this contention, or
the poor boy seemed to be getting worse and worse, and at the same time all these worthy gentlemen becoming more and more excited; some calling out for ‘Fancy bread,’ some for ‘French rolls,’ others for ‘German black bread,’ and all refusing to pay any part towards the bread and butter, unless cut after their own fashion, when they were reminded by one of the party that there was not the least necessity to trouble themselves about paying for what the boy might have, as it could be charged to the county. To which they all replied, rather sharply, that, as to that, if they did not think it right to pay out of their own individual pockets, neither did they think it right that the public money should be used for purposes which they could not individually approve of. ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ cried the doctor, ‘pray let the child have something. Is it not dreadful to let this poor boy perish before our eyes, when there are the means of relief within reach? For mercy’s sake, let him have something to keep him alive!’ ‘Well,’ replied one of the magistrates (who was chairman of the Sessions),'as you see he cannot have the bread and butter, you must prescribe something else for him.
‘Dear, dear me!’ said the doctor, ‘I am really shocked at such inconsistency. Will you let him have a little brandy, then!’ ‘Oh yes I’ they all cried out together, ‘let him have some brandy—by all means give him some brandy!’”
The brandy made Ragged Jack drank; and presently, being still hungry, he is tempted to steal a roll from a baker’s shop, and dragged to the Town Hall, where the magistrates, who had left him upon the pavement taking brandy, give him a month’s imprisonment, and detention in a reformatory school.’ The chaplain was kind to him, and said, “Yes, now that Jack was a convicted thief, he had plenty of good wholesome bread and butter.” In the reformatory he was educated, and taught a trade, and sent to a distant town where his antecedents would not be against him. On his way he met his cousin, Tom Rag—“a boy as ragged and wretched as he used to be himself.” Tom wants to know how Jack has managed to get such nice clothes and a basket of tools, that he may go and do likewise.
“Cousin Jack, who had been taught, and indeed now knew, that thieving was a wicked thing to do, was sorely puzzled how to advise his friend in this matter; for, having a great regard for Tommy, he wished to save him from the miserable state in which he himself had once been—skulking and wandering about the streets all day, picking up hits and scraps of food, even out of the gutters like the dogs, and at night sleeping in the corner, perhaps, of an open sheep-pen in the cattle-market, or crouching from the drenching rain by the side of a doorway; and when he contrasted that state of his existence with the comfort he had felt, and the attention he had received whilst in the jail and the reformatory, he knew not how to advise his poor cousin, knowing that poor Tom was, as he himself had been, almost perishing for want of a little good wholesome bread and butter, clean clothes, and a comfortable bed to lie in, which he well knew poor Tom would have if he could be sent to jail, as he had been. When he thought of all this he was sorely puzzled what to recommend; but at last he said: ‘Tom, you must not steal; so you had better go a-begging, and perhaps you may be lucky enough to be sent to jail for that, and then you will have everything done for you, as I have had, and come out better than me; for nobody will be able to say that you have been a thief. Yes; go and beg, Tom!
But if this don’t answer, why, then, I suppose you must go a-THIEVING, as I did.’”
“It may be asked, Where were the parents of these poor boys all this time? Well, they could tell you at the Britannia public-house, only they don’t like to talk about such disagreeable matters there. But the fact is, Jack’s father used to use that house, and was once a decent sort of man, and was at one time a ‘moderate drinker’; but upon one occasion he got mad drunk, and in that state of drunken insanity went home and killed his wife, was sent to jail, and died there. Tom’s father was transported for committing some crime after he had ‘been drinking’ at the Britannia; and Tom’s mother took a little drop at first to comfort her, and then drank herself to death.” The foregoing will remind many readers of the scheme of Mr. Jenkins’s “Ginx’s Baby.”
But Cruikshank gives his views on popular education in his homely simple way:—
“One of the great social questions of the day is the necessity and importance of a general or national system of education for the humble classes, upon such a comprehensive plan as shall give every child born in the United Kingdom a certain amount of book knowledge, and also of moral and religious training, as they are, or ought to be, entitled to as juvenile members of a civilized community—such training as may prepare them to fill useful and honest positions in life, or, perhaps, be the first step to those high stations so often filled by honest, hardworking, mercantile men, or ingenious mechanics. Now, every thinking and right-minded person will agree that this object is a most desirable one, and that no innocent child should be so neglected as to be allowed to grow up in a state of savage ignorance; and at the first blush nothing seems more easily to be accomplished, in a wealthy and intelligent country like ours, than to arrange such a general system as is here alluded to, and to provide the ways and means. Well! all this would be simple and easily accomplished, but for one obstacle—namely, the differences in the religious opinions of a portion of the adult population. Yes, strange as it may appear,—nay, monstrous as it is,—nevertheless these religious differences have been, and are now, the only bar to the adoption of any wide and general system of secular education.”
“It is of course impossible to please all parties; but few persons, I imagine, could surely object to a national system of education upon the following plan:—In the first place, an Act of Parliament should be passed, making it imperative that every child should receive some education, and where the parents are destitute or depraved, then that the State shall take the position of the parents, and educate and train up all the neglected and helpless children. In the second place:—In the schools, let reading, writing, and arithmetic be taught (with other branches of education, if possible, or required), and such moral training as will teach a child the difference between Right and Wrong—and here let the schoolmaster’s duty cease, and that of the ministers of religion begin. And in the third place:—Let it be the duty of the clergyman, and ministers of all denominations, to instruct all those children who belong to their particular church, chapel, or sect, in the religious belief of their parents; but when the parents do not attend any place of worship, or profess any particular creed—then, that the clergy of the Established Church be allowed to instruct all such children in the religion of the State. By such an arrangement as this, it appears to me that if all the poor helpless children of the land were schooled in the common elements of reading, writing, etc., for five days in the week, and the clergy and ministers of all denominations were to instruct these children one day in the six in the religion of the class to which they belong (independent of the Sunday), that then all parties might be satisfied, and a great objection done away with as to the great general system which I here propose for secular instruction and moral and religious training.”
He goes on to remark that a reformatory may be wanted in any country, under any circumstances, “but why should we have Ragged Schools in rich England?” He proceeds to argue that there would be no need for either Ragged Schools or Reformatories if the use of “strong drink” were abolished; and he calls upon “the grown-up people not to allow innocent children to starve and fall into evil ways, because they cannot agree upon the mode of cutting a Slice op Bread and Butter.” He adds: “But as prevention is better than cure, I call upon all those who delight in good works to aid the Temperance cause, which is, in truth, the only radical cure for the evils complained of.”
The tail-piece to this characteristic pamphlet—as charming as it is characteristic—is a brightly-executed drawing on wood of Britannia seated upon the British lion, couchant, with her arms about “her ragged and reformatory pets.”
Cruikshank’s zeal for the cause to which he had devoted himself led him to take delight in the illustration even of little Temperance pamphlets and fly-sheets.
Ruskin had said, in his “Time and Tide, by Weare and Tyne” (1867), “It is no more his business to etch diagrams of drunkenness than it is mine at this moment to be writing these letters against anarchy.” Yet just as Mr. Ruskin has gone on with his letters, so Cruikshank went on with his diagrams of drunkenness to the end.
In 1867, when Cruikshank brought out his “British Bee-Hive,” with a worker at a trade or profession in every cell, the estates of the realm at the top, and the army and navy at the bottom, and called it “a penny political picture for the people, with a few words upon Parliamentary Reform, by their old friend George Cruikshank,” he was opposed to the Reform Bill, and advised the working-men to be content with the glorious constitution as it stood, and keep away from Reform meetings, as “revolutionary proceedings.”
Perhaps the best of Cruikshank’s pamphlets, taking the text and the drawings together, is “The Glass and the New Crystal Palace,” published by John Cassell. It is thoroughly Cruikshankian, and in his most vivacious mood: some of the illustrations—as the Spirit Level—a drunkard at full length upon the pavement; the Social Villagers, with Death for the host, and the villagers represented by their tombstones; and the whisky after the goose, and the goose after the whisky, for instance.
Think what would have become of the neglected or forgotten humourist, if, when the mere laughing public had turned away from him to Leech and Doyle, and Tenniel and Du Maurier, he had not been fired with the ardour of an apostle in the cause he had taken up. His Almanac had failed for lack of readers; and David Bogue had thrown up Cruikshank’s magazine, after the second number—convinced that the artist had outlived his public. His ambition to become a painter was mercifully renewed, with the renewal of his health and mind, through temperance. Full of vigour he used to say, “A man should paint from his shoulder, sir.” He became almost wholly a serious man in his work, and appealed to the public in a new capacity. He resolved, stimulated by the success of “The Bottle,” to paint a great picture that should remain behind him, a monument of his genius, and an immortal temperance lesson. He was ready, and eager, to give a helping hand in all directions to the last. In 1870, I asked him to join my Committee, when I was a candidate for the Maryle-bone division of the London School Board. I give his prompt answer as an example of his clear head and hearty readiness in his old age to serve a friend:—
“October 27th, 1870.
“Dear Blanchard Jerrold,—Your request would have been complied with on the instant, but it so happens that a gentleman called upon me a few days back with a message from friend Hepworth Dixon, asking me to allow my name to be placed on his Committee for this ‘Educational Council,’ to which, of course, I assented.
“Now if one man can have his name placed on two Committees, then by all means place my name on your Committee, but if not, then let me know if there is any other way in which I can assist in this matter the man who is a relative of, and who bears the name of two dear friends who were always held in the highest esteem by,
“Yours truly,
“Geo. Cruikshank.”
The most notable of George Cruikshank’s book-work, after the failure of bis magazine, was his “Life of Sir John Falstaff,” * illustrating a biography of the knight, written in Robert Brough’s happiest manner. Cruikshank’s twenty Falstaff etchings are admirable examples of his peculiar excellences as an etcher, and of his matured artistic faculty of composition and observation.
In these plates are some of the brightest bits of his picturesqueness of outline, his happy, sprightly treatment of light and shade, and of his higher faculties as an artist, of which fate permitted him to give the world only scattered fragmentary evidences. Thackeray said of him, that he could draw an ancient gloomy market-place as well as Mr. Front or Mr. Nash. What could be more picturesque, or daintier in the play of light, or happier in the variety of the architecture, than the backgrounds of the scenes where Sir John is arrested at the suit of Mrs. Quickly, or when the knight not only persuades Mrs. Quickly to withdraw her action, but also to lend him more money? Mr. F. Wedmore has called attention, and with ample reason, to the exquisite pathos of the death of Falstaff, “in which the face of one who has died ‘a babbling of green fields,’ lies very calm, with the sign of gentle fancies but lately flown.”
These plates were reissued in a “Library Shakspeare” published in parts between 1871 and 1874, together with illustrations by Sir John Gilbert (who, by the way, in his youth delighted in copying Cruikshank’s etchings and drawings on wood); but it is to be hoped that they may some day be rewedded to Brough’s biography, and reappear as the artist’s last important creation.
The twenty years which elapsed between the first issue of “Falstaff” and the artist’s death, albeit no idle years, have left not much completely worthy of the best that had gone before. Cruikshank furnished etchings to the “Life and Enterprises of Robert William Elliston, Comedian” (1857), “Midnight Scenes and Social Photographs—revelations of the Wynds and Dens of Glasgow” (1858), Mr. Alfred Cole’s “Lorimer Littlegood” (1858), “Stenelaus and Amylda, a Christmas Temperance Tale” (1858), a frontispiece to Lowell’s “Biglow Papers” (1859), Dudley Costello’s “Holiday with Hobgoblins” (1861), “The Bee and the Wasp; a Fable in Verse” (1861), “A Discovery concerning Ghosts” (1863), Robert Hunt’s “Popular Romances of the West of England” (1865), the “Savage Club Papers” (1867), “The Oak,” a magazine, edited by his friend the Rev. Charles Rogers (1868), “Coila’s Whispers,” by the Knight of Morar (1869), “The Brownies,” and other tales, by Juliana Horatia Ewing (1870), “The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil,” by Edward G. Flight (1871), “Lob-lie-by-the-Fire,” and other tales, by Juliana Horatia Ewing (1874). Then there are two works, the illustrations to which proclaim the coming end. “Peeps at Life,” and “Studies in my Cell,” by the London Hermit, published in 1875, are signed “George Cruikshank, aged 83, 1875;” and in Mrs. Octavian Blewitt’s “The Rose and the Lily,” is a frontispiece—George Cruikshank’s last design—signed, “Designed and etched by George Cruikshank, age 88, 1875.” This plate is here reproduced.
Not before 1869 did George Cruikshank publish his last political plate.
In 1867 he put forth “The British Bee-Hive,” which was a rearrangement of a design made in 1840. The artist drew a section of the hive, displaying fifty-four cells, in which the various grades of society—from the Queen to the costermonger—are shown, all supported by the army, the navy, and the volunteers, and surmounted by the crown, the royal standard, and the union jack. This was a protest against further Parliamentary Reform; for, as it has been observed, Cruikshank was something of a Radical and something of a Tory—but more of a Tory. He afterwards issued this plate on a double sheet, inscribed “A Penny Political Picture for the People, with a few words upon Parliamentary Reform, by their old friend, George Cruikshank.”
In the following year the old satirist drew a “Design for a Ritualist High Church Tower and Steeple,” which he dedicated to Dr. Pusey and the Vicar of Bray. It was etched on glass by Hancock’s process. The tower of the church was a fool’s cap and bells, with the Pope for weathercock. The porch was a bull’s head, with a procession of Ritualist fools entering by the nostrils. The last, dated July 1869, is a satire upon Miss Rye’s proposition to export “gutter children” to America. “The little dears,” as the artist always called children, are being scooped by a clergyman into a mud-cart, from the volunteers, and sur-royal standard.
The satire was against those who had christened the little waifs and strays of our streets “gutter children.” The name jarred upon Cruikshank’s sensitive heart.
Mr. Wedmore, referring to the closing years of the great pictorial moralist, remarks, “He continued to labour; some of his work being even now but little known. * Early unpublished plates for the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ remain, amongst others, in the hands of Mr. Truman. Quite in recent years” (it was in 1868) “he must have executed a private plate for Mr. Frederick Locker, which shows that there were moments at least in which the store of his fancy was not impoverished. No more ingenious design could have been furnished to a collector than this of ‘Fairy Connoisseurs examining Mrs. Locker’s treasures of Durer, Rembrandt, etc.’ For Mr. Ruskin, too, in 1866, there had been designed the ‘Piper of Hamelin,’ leading the children mountain wards with the spell of his wonderful music. And in 1870 a a frontispiece representing the fertile Mr. Barham, surrounded by the creatures of his brain. And yet more recent plates, the property of Mr. Bell, the publisher—one of the ‘Family Window,’ and one in ‘Lob-lie-by-the-Fire’—show that Cruikshank did not wholly outlive his talent. What he outlived was the social conditions he had best comprehended. Dying as it were only yesterday, he belongs so much to the past, because, though his period of production did not seem long over, his time of receptiveness was gone by. As a satirist, he belonged in spirit to another generation; we could not ask him to grapple, at fourscore years, with the foibles of ours.”
This is a true account of him, to all who knew Cruikshank well in his latter days.
Earnest, healthy, vigorous, and ambitious to the last; he could not resign himself to live on the glory of the past He must be ever up and doing—especially in the work that lay nearest his valiant heart. He scattered his temperance work far and wide. “The Fruits of Intemperance,” published by John Cassell, about 1855, is a minor design akin to that of the Triumph of Bacchus. The tree is covered with medallion-shaped fruit, and on each medallion is a picture showing the effects of intoxicating liquors. The roots of the tree are a bundle of serpents, and the surrounding ground is covered with tombstones, inscribed “early fruit.” But Cruikshank never lost an opportunity of preaching his moral. He made a drawing of “a drunken man knocking down a drunken woman, in Oxford Street” on a Sunday afternoon; and another of “a drunken ruffian knocking down a woman who carries a child,” in Farringdon Street. He illustrated the “Autobiography of a Thirsty Soul” in the Weekly Record; and for the same paper he drew a publican’s quart measure, with a death’s head in lieu of ale froth, two drunkards babbling of the strengthening properties of beer by a “Noted Stout House.” In the Band of Hope Review he illustrated a series, a parody on “The House that Jack Built,” called “the Gin Shop.” He threw off fly-leaves for Mr. Tweedie, as “A Man a Thing,” “The House in Shadow,” “The Loaf Lecture,” “There is Poison in the Pot,” “The Red Dragon,” and “The Smokeless Chimney,”—the last of which he designed as a contribution to the Cotton Famine Fund, during the American Civil War. But it didn’t pay. He was consoled, when publishers fell away from him and his means of living became precarious by the steady friendship of many admirers. He received a pension of £95 from the Crown, and one of £50 from the Royal Academy. In 1875, an endeavour was made by Mr. Charles Rogers to raise a second testimonial; but this effort finally took the shape of a committee (of which his good friend Dr. B. W. Richardson was chairman) to purchase the Cruikshank collection of etchings and drawings for the nation and drawings for the nation—the price put on it being £3,000—£500 more than the artist himself had fixed.
After much trouble and many disappointments, the collections passed into the possession of the Westminster Aquarium Company; Cruikshank receiving in December, £2500—the price put upon it being what artist himself had fixed; then receiving in 1876, £2,500, and a survivorship life-annuity for himself and wife of about £35.
The closing years of George Cruikshank’s life were harassed by a controversy about a design he made and a statue he modelled of King Robert the Bruce, to be erected by subscription at Bannockburn. The consequence was a very lamentable quarrel, during which Cruikshank claimed that he had been engaged by the committee to make the design, * and that the statue modelled by Mr. Currie was originated by him—the contrary being, according to the committee, the fact. Cruikshank, in co-operation with Mr. Adams-Acton, produced a model; that is, Cruikshank made a design, and then himself stood in the attitude of it as Mr. Adams-Acton’s model—the result being a statue, and one which found favour with members of the committee. But money disputes put an end to negotiations with Cruikshank. He had drawn £85 for expenses; his plan involved in any case an outlay which the funds would not cover; and finally, after many difficulties, the statue was committed to the care of Mr. Currie.
But Cruikshank’s share in the transaction, as set forth by himself, and as addressed to the Scottish people in his eighty-fourth year, is too remarkable an example of his vigour in old age to be omitted.
“An Address and Explanation to the Scottish People, by George Cruikshank, with respect to the proposed Statue in Honour of King Robert the Bruce.
“In the month of May 1870, several Scottish noblemen and gentlemen formed themselves into a committee with the object of raising a fund by subscription, for the purpose of having a statue of King Robert the Bruce placed on “the field of Bannockburn,” in honour of that hero, and in memory of the great victory achieved by him and his army in that field on the 24th of June, 1314.
“Some friends of mine, who were on this committee, invited me to be a member thereof—which honour I was obliged to decline, as I could not spare the time to attend the meetings; but, as ‘The Bruce’ was one of my great heroes, I promised to give them all the assistance I could, and suggested the attitude for the figure, which they all approved of, and at their first meeting they decided that I should be requested to make the design for the statue.
“I must here explain that, although I am an artist and designer, I am not what is termed a sculptor; but it so happened that a friend of mine, a brother artist, who is a sculptor, chanced to see my design, and was so pleased with it, that he volunteered to make a model of it, which he did, acting upon my suggestions, and from me as I stood in the attitude and equipped in the armour.
“I also designed a pedestal; and when the model was completed, a cast in plaster of Paris was taken, and exhibited in my studio to the committee, and the noblemen, gentlemen, and friends who attended. All highly approved of the design and the model, and the gentlemen gave most flattering reports, for which I most sincerely thank them. After this I had the very great honour of submitting the model for the inspection of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle.
“Several casts in plaster were taken from the model for exhibition in London and Scotland, for the inspection of any one who might feel disposed to subscribe; and the committee gave a commission to the sculptor, Mr. John Adams-Acton, to execute a bronze statue of ‘The Bruce,’ ten or twelve feet in height, to be placed on a rocky grey granite pedestal twenty-two feet high; and all seemed to be going on well, and the work was about to be commenced, when suddenly the subscriptions all stopped at once! and this, no doubt, was in consequence of the breaking out of the late war between France and Germany, which terrible contest so entirely absorbed the public mind, that ‘The Bruce’ was quite forgotten.
“This was, of course, a great disappointment to all connected with the press, who had visited my studio, concerned in the movement, and the matter since that time has been almost at a standstill; but I am happy to say that a military officer has joined our ranks, and who now takes the lead, and seems determined, if possible, to conquer and overcome all difficulties. This is Major-General Sir James E. Alexander, C.B., of Westerton, Bridge of Allan, and who is chairman of the ‘Bruce Local Committee of Stirling.’
“I have now to mention another disappointment to myself and the committee, which was, that the Odd Fellows of Stirling had erected a large flagstaff (by permission of the owner of the land) on the very spot where we had intended to have applied for permission to place the statue; that being the site where the Scottish standard was fixed on the day of the battle. This bit of ground being occupied, it was then thought that the best place to have the statue would be on the esplanade of Stirling Castle. Sir James Alexander thereupon applied to the Secretary of State for War for a space on the esplanade for this purpose, which request has most kindly been complied with.
“I must now explain to those who have not seen the original model that Bruce is there represented as if he were looking down with pity on the slain, and as if he were saying, ‘The fight is o’er, the day is won: I sheathe my sword.’ But now that the site is quite different to what was originally intended, it is necessary that the position of the figure should be altered; and, as will be seen by the accompanying rough sketch, the head is now elevated, and Bruce is supposed to be looking across the esplanade towards the field of Bannockburn, which is a mile and a half from Stirling Castle, and, as in the first model, Bruce has sheathed his sword.
“With respect to the pedestal, I may just explain that on the front part are the words ‘King Robert the Bruce’ in large letters, and following this, in smaller letters, is ‘Bannockburn, June 24, 1314.’ Under this line are two branches—one of laurel and the other of willow, emblems of victory and sorrow for the slain. Then is stated, ‘Erected by public subscription in the reign of Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Between the words Victoria and Queen is a circular wreath formed of the Rose, the Thistle, and the Shamrock, in which circle are two hands joined, a male and female, as an emblem of the union by marriage of the two royal families of England and Scotland, and on one side of these royal families were the descendants of ‘the Bruce.’
“Nearly fifty years back I painted a picture of an incident in the life of Bruce, exhibited in the British Institution, Pall Mall, London, and was then careful to have the correct costume; but when making the design for the statue, ‘to make assurance doubly sure,’ I got my friend Mr. Bond, keeper of the Ancient Manuscripts at the British Museum, to let me look over the MSS. of the time of Bruce, and then found that I had got the correct costume. I think this is important; for should the statue be erected, all those who might look at it would see just such a powerful man as Bruce was, in the exact sort of armour and coat of mail that he wore on the field of Bannockburn.
“The Bruce in his early progress met with many difficulties, all of which, however, he overcame by his perseverance, and the ‘Bruce Committee’ and myself are following his noble example in this respect; and I trust that all the descendants of those ‘Scots whom Bruce had often led’ will rally round the Major-General and his committee corps, and assist them to place the statue of him who was the great commander of the Scottish army at the battle of Bannockburn in this safe and commanding position on the esplanade of Stirling.
“With regard to myself, as my ancestors were all natives of Scotland—some Lowlanders and some Highlanders—I should indeed be pleased to have my name associated with any national work of art that might be placed in the land of my forefathers, and I should consider it one of the greatest honours that could be conferred upon me if it could be written on the pedestal that this monument in honour of King Robert the Bruce was designed by the artist,
“George Cruikshank.
“Hampstead Road, London, August 1874.
“P. S.—I am authorized to state that subscriptions may be remitted to W. Christie, Esq., secretary to the Bruce Committee, Port Street, Stirling; or to the treasurer, John A. Murrie, Esq., the manager of the branch of the National Bank of Scotland at Stirling; and at London. And I am given to understand that about fourteen or fifteen hundred pounds are required, in addition to what is already in hand, in order to carry out the work in the first style of art.”
At the ceremony of unveiling Mr. Currie’s statue in front of Stirling Castle (November 24, 1877), Major-General Sir James Alexander, of Westerton, in handing over the work to the Provost and Corporation of Stirling, said, that as they could not get a bronze statue “under the direction of an eminent artist, Mr. George Cruikshank, of London,” they had resolved to have one of durable stone.
This closing transaction of his life poor Cruikshank felt most bitterly; and he charged his old friend Dr. Rogers, Sir James Alexander, and all concerned in it, with having behaved in “a most dishonourable and disgraceful manner.” These were hot, ill-considered words, uttered in the pain of a very trying disappointment: words to be forgotten over the artist’s grave.
Mr. Frederick Wedmore gives us a peep at him as he went about of late, his heart still upon his sleeve as when he was young, in the days of the Regency: “Many of us who did not know him at home have at least met him about; for not only was he a familiar figure of the dreary quarter which he inhabited—where the dingy squalor of St. Paneras touches on the shabby respectability of Camden Town—but he travelled much in London, and may well have been beheld handing his card to a stranger with whom he had talked casually in a Metropolitan Railway carriage, or announcing his personality to a privileged few who were invited to see in him the convincing proof of the advantages of a union of genius with water-drinking. He was an entirely honest man; and who is there that would not forgive the little pleasurable vanities that he chose to allow himself at the fag end of a life not over-prosperous—a career no one had carefully made smooth, a career filled full of inventive work as rich as Hogarth’s and as genial as Dickens’s?”
“Occasionally,” Mr. Frederick Locker writes,* “he used to come to us and tell us his troubles, and what was occupying him; but, like many other interesting people, he did not talk about what would have been most worth hearing. The last time I saw him he spoke of having known Tom Hood (the elder) ** very well, but he did not tell as anything about him worth remembering.
Poor man, it was a bitterly cold morning last December, and he arrived before breakfast, and stayed to breakfast. Mr. Austin Dobson was there; and he told us the story of how he invented Old Fagin in the condemned cell.” Mr. Dobson says of him at this breakfast: “On the morning in question (I think it must have been the 14th of December last, 1877), Mr. Cruikshank came in; and I, who had not seen him more than once or twice in my life, was only too eager to ask him all sorts of questions about himself. Except that he was a little bent, he had no appearance of age—certainly not of the advanced age he had reached. He was very-bright and alert, and appeared to have an excellent memory for the circumstances of his career.”
He celebrated his silver wedding on the 8th of March, 1875, when his house was crowded with his friends and admirers, who took tea with him. Mr. S. O. Hall, his old friend, addressed a few words to the company, which so affected Mrs. Cruikshank, that she fell weeping upon her husband’s neck. Mr. Walter Hamilton, who was present, remarks: “To receive the congratulations of so many friends was a task which would have fatigued and excited many a younger man than Mr. Cruikshank; but he preserved his self-possession through it well, having a ready jest and a smile for each and all; whilst Mrs. Cruikshank, who was fairly hedged in on every side with bouquets, looked far too young to be one of the principals in such a ceremony. A guard of honour from his old corps attended to congratulate their late colonel. It was late in the afternoon before Mr. Cruikshank withdrew for a few moments from the crowded rooms, and as he went he whispered, laughingly, to the author, ‘You are down on our list of visitors for the Golden Wedding.’”
“On the morning of the 1st of February,” writes his young friend, Grace Stebbing, ** “there was still living a bright, brave-spirited old man, who had worked on untiringly almost to the end, even to within three weeks of his death, when I, one of those privileged to claim his friendship even from my infancy upwards, met him hurrying along the streets with cheerful, eager aspect, to keep ‘a business appointment.’”
George Cruikshank fell ill in the first month of 1878, and was attended by his sympathetic and distinguished friend, Dr. B. W. Richardson.
He died at his house in the Hampstead Road, on the 1st of February. He was buried temporarily—the Crypt of St. Paul’s being under repair—at Kensal Green. The only member of the Royal Academy who attended his funeral was Charles Landseer, R.A., who was almost as old as Cruikshank. But Messrs. Tenniel and Du Maurier were there, with poor W. Brunton, a clever caricaturist, who was to fall in his youth. Cruikshank’s friend, George Augustus Sala, and Lord Houghton, were among his pall-bearers; and in the group about the coffin were Edmund Yates, S. G. Ball, General M’Murdo, and John Sheehan, the “Irish Whisky-drinker.”
On the 29th of the following November, a hearse, followed by a mourning-coach containing Mrs. George Cruikshank, conveyed the mortal part of the illustrious artist to St. Paul’s, and four sergeants of the volunteer corps which he had commanded brought up the procession. The coffin was silently lowered to its final resting-place immediately after the afternoon service.