IN Chapter III. we have incidentally considered the suppressed grotesque border to the etching of “The Last Song” by George Cruikshank in the Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. In this chapter we shall treat of certain other sup­pres­sions to which the “inimitable” George’s work was subjected.

The first to which I shall direct your attention has a curious and romantic history attaching to it, instinct with the rough and brutal methods of our immediate ancestors. It is a highly-coloured etched broadside published in 1815, the very year of the tragic death of the gifted and ill-fated Gillray, whose mantle, as political caricaturist, was now fallen upon his brilliant young contemporary. {60} These were the days of hard hitting, of reckless charges, of imprisonment for libel, of dramatic political episodes, and the wonder is that George Cruikshank escaped the fates of the Burdetts, the Hones, and the Hobhouses of the period. The fact is that George was a very shrewd young man and had a very shrewd idea of how far it was safe to go. Indeed, in this partially suppressed cartoon we find him upon the very verge of recklessness and only drawing back from danger just in the nick of time.

I have spoken of the partial sup­pres­sion of this broadside, and in this partial cancellation it is differentiated from all others with which we have hitherto dealt. Brutal enough as is the satire as we see it, there is a brutality curiously hidden within, which, unsuspected by the uninitiated, proves to what astounding lengths satire of that period was sometimes ready to go.

Before dealing in detail with this “Financial Survey of Cumberland or the Beggar’s Petition” it will be as well to relate the cir­cum­stances which led up to its perpetration.

Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, born {61} 1771, was perhaps the best hated of all the royal personages of the period then in England, and this not­with­stand­ing the fact that he was a man of conspicuous bravery. He was, for a few years after Queen Victoria’s accession, next heir to the throne of England. Later he ascended the throne of Hanover under the regulations of the Salic law, and gained the affection of his people, proving himself a wise and beneficent ruler. Probably William IV. put his character into a nutshell when he said: “Ernest is not such a bad fellow, but if any one has a corn he is sure to tread on it.”

However that may be, there is no doubt that there is hardly a crime in the whole decalogue which was not at one time or another laid at his door, and not the least among these was the crime of murder.

To quote the succinct account of this affair given in the Dictionary of National Biography:—“On the night of 31st May 1810 the duke was found in his apartments in St. James’s Palace with a terrible wound in his head, which would have been mortal had not the assassin’s weapon struck against the duke’s sword. Shortly afterwards his {62} valet, Sellis,17 was found dead in his bed with his throat cut. On hearing the evidence of the surgeons and other witnesses, the coroner’s jury returned a verdict that Sellis had committed suicide after attempting to assassinate the duke. The absence of any reasonable motive... caused this event to be greatly discussed, and democratic journalists did not hesitate to hint that he really murdered Sellis.” One of these, Henry White, was sentenced in 1815 to fifteen months’ imprisonment and a fine of £200 for publishing the rumour. The story again cropped up in 1832, when the duke had made himself particularly obnoxious to the radical press, and was exploited by a pamphleteer named Phillips. The duke prosecuted him, and he was promptly found guilty and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.

Not­with­stand­ing this, there was little abatement in the persecution of the duke. Even Lord Brougham in the House of Lords sneeringly called {63} him to his face “the illustrious duke—illustrious only by courtesy.” I take up a few consecutive numbers of that venomous little contemporary paper, Figaro in London, and find week by week some very plain speaking. Here are a few examples:—

Again:—

Again, referring to a youth dressed à la Prince de Cumberland, who had been brought up at Bow Street charged with being an expert pickpocket, Figaro says: “A similarity to the Duke of Cumberland is a very serious matter, and in the opinion of Mr. Halls (the police magistrate) quite sufficient to entitle any one to a couple of months’ imprisonment, as a common thief or an incorrigible vagabond.”

Again:— {64}

Again:—“The new piece announced at Drury Lane under the title of The Dæmon Duke or The Mystic Branch has no reference whatever to his Royal Highness of Cumberland.”

But these might be multiplied almost to infinity. The examples quoted make it sufficiently plain why it was that the Whig Cabinet of the day felt it advisable to hurry on our late Queen’s marriage.

So much for a general review of the duke’s career. We will now return to the year 1815 and the pub­li­ca­tion of the broadside with which we are more particularly concerned.

The duke had just announced his intention of marrying the Princess of Salm, who had been twice a widow. The Prince Regent had raised no objection, but the Queen, who had a rooted aversion to second marriages, made no secret of her disapproval. The country, too, was indignant, because another royal marriage spelt, in accordance with what was now the ordinary usage, a further burden upon the exchequer.

On July 3 the proposal was made in the Commons to increase the duke’s pension of £18,000 a year, which he held in addition to his salary of £3000 a year as Colonel of the 1st Hussars, by £6000. The House was equally divided on the vote, when a dramatic incident occurred. Lord Cochrane, heir to the Dundonald peerage, and a member of the House of Commons, had, in the previous year, been wrongfully found guilty of participation in a Stock Exchange fraud and had been imprisoned. On this very 3rd day of July he was released from prison, and immediately repaired to Westminster. The House was at that moment going to a division. His lordship entered just in time to record his casting vote against the increase of the duke’s pension, and thus by an ex­traor­di­nary coincidence the duke was the poorer and the country the richer by £6000 a year.

This is the moment seized by Cruikshank in the broadside here reproduced. Before the half-open door of “St. Stephen’s,” behind which is seen a crowd of members, Lord Cochrane fires, from a mortar decorated with a full-bottomed wig, a {66} cannon-ball labelled “casting vote.” This, striking the duke full in the rear, drives him towards a bank on which stand three grenadiers, the Princess of Salm (recognisable by the flag which she carries, labelled “Psalms”) and her little boy, who sings—

The duke, from whose hand falls his petition, and whose head is adorned with a cuckold’s horns, cries aloud, “Pity the sorrow of a poor young man”; whilst Cochrane thunders out, “No, no, we’ll have no petitions here. Do you thint (sic) we are not up to your hoaxing, cadging tricks? You vagrant, do you think we’ll believe all you say or swear? Do you think that your services or your merits will do you any good here? If you do, I can tell you from experience that you are cursedly mistaken. So set off and don’t show your ugly face here again. If you do, shiver my timbers if I don’t send you to Ellenborough Castle: aye, aye, my boy, I’ll clap you in the grated chamber, where there’s neither door, window, {67} onr (sic) fireplace. I’ll put you in the Stocks! I’ll put you in the Pillory! I’ll fine you. I’ll, I’ll play hell with you! D—— me, I think I have just come in time to give you a shot between wind and water.”

On the ground below the flying duke lie documents recording his pensions and salaries.

No wonder, you will say, that such a scandalous attack upon a personage so near the throne should be suppressed with a high hand. The marvel is that artist and publisher should have escaped the fate of Henry White and the pamphleteer Phillips. But you will be more surprised than ever when you learn that not only did artist and publisher go scot-free, but that the plate, so far from being suppressed, was published and scattered broadcast amongst the people without protest.

Why, then, it will be asked, does it take its place in a treatise on suppressed plates? I will tell you.

Do you not notice in the darker impression of the plate here reproduced—darker because the original has been painted—that such perspective as the picture has is destroyed by a great black blot {68} which reaches from the feet of the three soldiers right down to the path in the right-hand lower corner of the design? Well, that great black blot covers what would have inevitably landed George Cruikshank and Mr. W. N. Jones of 5 Newgate Street, publisher, in a larger building higher up the same street, if it had not been for a happy afterthought of Mr. W. N. Jones, which took shape in a liberal use of lamp-black.18

On the space so covered the reckless George, unmindful of the fate of Henry White, had etched the scantily clothed figure of the unhappy valet Sellis, with bleeding throat, crying aloud, “Is this a razor that I see before me? Thou canst not say I did it.”

After but one or two proofs had been pulled, George and his publisher would seem to have become appalled at their temerity, and the plate was only issued coloured and with the peccant {69} figure blotted out. For many years I hoped and hoped in vain to come across an uncoloured proof displaying the hidden figure. But it was not until 1905 that I was fortunate enough to light upon the probably unique proof here reproduced, which had passed out of the Bruton collection into that of the omnivorous collector, the late Edwin Truman.

For the sake of those who have preserved the valuable catalogue of the sale in 1897 of the Bruton collection of the works of George Cruikshank, it should be observed that Reid’s misnomer of the valet to which I have drawn attention above has been there repeated.

So much, then, for the partially suppressed broadside of 1815, which incidentally may be looked upon as the forerunner of the blottesque censorship of Russian newspapers. We will now pass on to another broadside which was not only suppressed in full, but of which the copies that had already been sold were assiduously bought up.

The cir­cum­stances surrounding this plate are by no means so dramatic as those with which we have last dealt. At the same time, by means of it we obtain one of those sharp contrasts in political {70} moods and tenses which pleasurably tickle the imagination. We learn how little is absolute in life, how much is relative. We realise how the reactionary of to-day may have been the reformer of yesterday. In a word, we see in this most conservative member of the Russell administration of 1846–1852 and of the Coalition of 1853, in this complacent recipient of the peerage of Broughton de Gyfford and the Grand Cross of the Bath, in this happy husband of a Marquis’s daughter,—we see, I say, in this Tory nobleman of the ’fifties the irreconcilable John Cam Hobhouse of the early years of the century, committed to Newgate for breach of privilege, the author of the subversive Letters to an Englishman, and the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Parliament of the Westminster mobocracy.

In Cruikshank’s broadside here reproduced the future President of the Board of Control is represented twirling his thumbs in enforced retirement and with full leisure to repent of his indiscretions. Above the mantelpiece rep­re­sen­ta­tions of St. Stephen’s and Newgate are placed in sharp contrast. Below the last a former occupant of the {72} cell has scratched a rude gibbet. The grate is empty. On the table stand an empty pewter pot and pipe. On the wall is seen a long quotation from his anonymous pamphlet A Trifling Mistake, for which he has been committed to prison. This, with a barbed addition, gives the title to the broadside itself. The quotation runs:—

“What prevents ye people from walking down to ye house and pulling out ye members by ye ears, locking up their doors and flinging ye key into ye Thames? Is it any majesty which lodges in the members of that assembly? Do we love them? Not at all: we have an instinctive horror and disgust at the very abstract idea of ye boroughmonger. Do we respect them? Not in the least. Do we regard them as endowed with any superior qualities? On the contrary, there is scarcely a poorer creature than your mere member of Parliament; though, in his corporate capacity, ye earth furnishes not so absolute a bully. Their true practical protectors, then—the real efficient anti-reformers,—are to be found at ye Horse Guards and ye Knightsbridge Barracks. As long as the House of Commons majorities are backed by the regimental muster roll, so long may those who have got the tax power keep it and hang those who resist”!!! !!! !!!

Vide Trifling Mistake.

Below this hangs a bill headed “Little Hob in the Well.” {73}

The re­pro­duc­tion of the etching here given is from a very interesting touched proof in the British Museum. Upon it the artist’s work in pencil can be plainly traced. To the right of the picture of Newgate another roughly drawn gibbet can be dis­tin­guished. On the bill the words have been added, “A New Song in Defence of the People, corrected,” etc. The profile of the prisoner has been carefully reduced, and a punning sub-title to the whole added, “How Cam you to be in that Hobble?”

The date on the margin is January 1, 1819 (obviously a mistake for 1820), and its pub­li­ca­tion, no doubt, went some way towards Hobhouse’s election as member for Westminster, which took place immediately after his release on the 20th day of the month in the year 1820.

After his elevation to the peerage Hobhouse took no active part in public affairs. He died as lately as 1869, leaving no issue. Probably the plate was suppressed on the ground that it contained the long quotation given above from the lawless pamphlet for which he was imprisoned.

As I have said in an earlier chapter, it is not my {74} intention to make this treatise in any way a devil’s directory for those in search of salacious curiosities. I shall therefore not dwell upon the suppressed woodcut, which is rather coarse than loose, of “The Dead Rider” in the Italian Tales of 1823. I merely mention it for the sake of those who may be collating the book, and would find themselves misled by Reid’s note on the subject. He speaks of the “Elopement” woodcut being “wanting in two or three copies consulted of the first edition,” as though this were a matter for surprise. He fails to draw the very obvious conclusion that “The Elopement” was substituted for “The Dead Rider,” so that the number of illus­tra­tions might continue to tally with the announcement on the title-page, “Sixteen illustrative drawings by George Cruikshank.” He has apparently been confused by the fact, which I notice confuses a good many secondhand booksellers, that every copy has a woodcut entitled “The Dead Rider,” but that it is only the first issue that has two woodcuts with the same title.

And, whilst touching on the subject of Cruikshank’s early indiscretions, it will, I think, be only {75} fair to repeat a story of pretty and spontaneous atonement which I have told elsewhere, and which deals with another suppressed broadside.

No. 887 in Reid’s catalogue is “Accidents in High Life, or Royal Hobbys broke down, Dedicated to the Society for the Suppression of Vice.” Its companion picture is “Royal Hobbys of the Hertfordshire Cock Horse,” which was suppressed as being too suggestive even for so latitudinarian an age as that of the Regency. In the former the artist portrays the discomfiture of the Prince and the Marchioness of Hertford through the pole of the hobby-horse, upon which they have been riding, breaking and throwing both of them to the ground. The lady is cursing her folly in trusting herself to “such an old stick,” while her admirer is exclaiming that he shall try the Richmond Road in the future, the Hertford one being so unsatisfactory. The Duke of York is suffering from a similar disaster, and congratulating himself upon the softness of the cushion by which his fall has been broken, in allusion to his income of £10,000 for having charge of his father.

Now Mr. Bruton, who, like the late Mr. Truman, {76} had the advantage of George Cruikshank’s friendship in later years, was able to obtain authentication or repudiation of doubtful unsigned work from the artist himself, and, amongst others, this plate was submitted to him for judgment. The man’s honesty forced him to acknowledge himself to be the author of this piece of full-blooded vulgarity, but his regret has altered the usual laconic record of “Not by me, G. Ck.,” or “By my brother, I. R. C.,” pencilled on the plate, to “Sorry to say this is by me, G. C.” The old man was, when he came to look back upon a long life of good and evil mixed, somewhat more human than that terribly pious hero of Pope’s—

He looked back with genuine remorse upon youthful ex­trav­a­gances, and, though doubt­less inclined by nature to be some­thing of a poseur, and though he at­ti­tu­di­nised some­what too much over his virtuous fads at last, was not going to bolster up his reputation by an easy forgetfulness of early indiscretions. {77}

Only a few words need be said of the other Cruikshank sup­pres­sions here reproduced. The first is the well-known plate “Phil­o­pro­gen­i­tive­ness,” which was published in the earliest separate edition of that noble Essay on the Genius of George Cruikshank, written by Thackeray for, and reprinted {78} from, The Westminster Review in 1840. And surely it was a prurient and unnatural squeamishness which condemned this illus­tra­tion to exclusion in the subsequent editions. It is from the Phrenological Illustrations, published in 1826, one of the most famous of Cruikshank’s pub­li­ca­tions. I shall follow Thackeray’s excellent example of refraining from any description, and just leave the design to speak for itself, for it is a ridiculous task “to translate his designs into words, and go to the printer’s box for a description of all that fun and humour which the artist can produce by a few skilful turns of his needle.”

The second is the cancelled wood engraving entitled “Drop it,” which appears on page 18 of the first edition of Talpa; or the Chronicle of a Clay Farm, an Agricultural Fragment, by C. M. H(oskyns), published in 1853. For some unknown reason it disappears from subsequent editions, and is only of importance to those who pride themselves on being the possessors of Cruikshank editiones principes.

There is another Cruikshank sup­pres­sion which might, were we hard up for material, be dragged {79} into a treatise on suppressed illus­tra­tions. I refer to a wood engraving of the redoubtable George himself taking his publisher, Brooks, by the nose with a pair of tongs, which resulted in the sup­pres­sion of the pamphlet entitled A Pop-gun fired off by George Cruikshank, etc., in which it appeared. But if we were to open these pages to the con­sid­er­ation of suppressed books and pamphlets, I should soon find my publishers remonstrating, and the volume too big to handle. Further, it affords me the gratifying opportunity of referring the reader to a small book of mine, published in 1897, by Mr. W. P. Spencer, of 27 New Oxford Street, and entitled George {80} Cruikshank’s Portraits of Himself which I, as the author, of course consider has not attained the circulation it deserves. There will be found a full account of the suppressed pamphlet, together with a re­pro­duc­tion of the offending design.

Let me close this chapter with “A Cruikshank Outrage,” which I originally contributed to The Gentleman’s Magazine. It is, I think, sufficiently apropos, and will, I hope, appeal to all good Cruikshankians.