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Presented to the LIBRARY of the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
by
Dr. Charles Godfrey
The Popular Library of Art
The Popular Library of Art
ALBRECHT DURER (37 Illustrations).
By LlNA ECKENSTEIN.
ROSSETTI (53 Illustrations). By FORD MADOX HUEFFER.
REMBRANDT (61 Illustrations). By AUGUSTE BREAL.
FRED. WALKER (32 Illustrations and
Photogravure). By CLEMENTINA BLACK.
MILLET (32 Illustrations).
By ROMAIN ROLLAND.
THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONISTS
(50 Illustrations). By CAMILLE MAUCLAIR.
LEONARDO DA VINCI (44 Illustrations). By Dr GEORG GRONAU.
GAINSBOROUGH (55 Illustrations). By ARTHUR B. CHAMBERLAIN.
BOTTICELLI (37 Illustrations).
By JULIA CARTWRIGHT (Mrs ADV).
RAPHAEL (50 Illustrations).
By JULIA CARTWRIGHT (Mrs ADY). VELAZQUEZ (51 Illustrations).
By AUGUSTE BREAL.
HOLBEIN (50 Illustrations). By FORD MADOX HUEFFER.
ENGLISH WATER COLOUR PAINTERS
(42 Illustrations). By A. J. FINBERG.
WATTEAU (35 Illustrations). By CAMILLE MAUCLAIR.
THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD
(38 Illustrations). By FORD MADOX HUEFFER. .
PERUGINO (50 Illustrations). By EDWARD HUTTON.
CRUIKSHANK.
By W. H. CHESSON.
HOGARTH.
By EPWARP GARNETT,
GEORGE CRU1KSHANK FRIGHTENING SOCIETY From "George Cruikshank's Omnibus," 1842.
GEORGE^ CRUIKSHANK
BY
W. H. CHESSON
ACTHOR OF "NAME THIS CHILD," ETC.
LONDON: DUCKWORTH & CO XKW YORK E. P. BUTTON & CO.
FEINTED BY
TCBNB0LL AND SPEARS.
EDINBURGH
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN OKDER OF DATE
' 13
1815. THE SCALE OF JUSTICE REVERSED . 5
1818. TITLE-PAGE OF "THE WITS' MAGAZINE" 209
1819. JOHNNY BULL AND HIS FORGED NOTES 29 1821 . COMIC COMPOSITES FOR THE SCRAP BOOK 141
1821. TOM GETTING THE BEST OF A CHARLEY
(from e ' Life in London " ) . . 49 1821. NEW READINGS (from " The Humor- ist") 205
1823. EXCHANGE NO ROBBERY (from " Points
of Humour " ) . . . . 167 1823. PETER SCHLEMIHL WATCHING THE
CLOCK (from " Peter Schlemihl " ) 127 1826. JUVENILE MONSTROSITIES ... 33 1826. THE GOOSE GIRL (from "German
Popular Stories " ) . . . 145 1826. HOPE (from ' ( Phrenological Illustra- tions") 173
vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
DATK SUBJECT PAGE
1827. TITLE-PAGE OF "ILLUSTRATIONS of
TIME " 225
1828. A BRAYING Ass (from " The Divert-
ing History of John Gilpin " .213 1828. FATAL EFFECTS OF TIGHT LACING (from
" Scraps and Sketches ") . . 37 1828. A GENTLEMAN'S REST BROKEN (from
" Scraps and Sketches " ) . . 163 1828. PUNCH THROWING AWAY THE BODY OF
THE SERVANT (from ' ' Punch and
Judy") 131
1830. THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD PREACHING
TO THE PRISONERS (from " Illustra- tions to Popular Works " ) . . 193
1831. CRUSOE'S FARMHOUSE AND CRUSOE IN
HIS ISLAND HOME (from ' ' The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe " ) . . 241
1831. ADAMS'S VISIT TO PARSON TRULLIBER
(from " Joseph Andrews " l ) . 189
1833. DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO RETURNING HOME (from "The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote " ) 201
1 Date of vol., 1832, viii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
DATE SUBJECT PAGE
1833. SOLOMON EAGLE (from " A Journal of
the Plague Year " ) . . . 97
1836. SEPTEMBER — MICHAELMAS DAY (from
" The Comic Almanack/' 1836) . 41
1836. X — XANTIPPE (from <f A Comic
Alphabet") . . . .181
1836. "En, SIRS!" (from "Landscape- Historical Illustrations of Scot- land and the Waverley Novels," "Waverley") .... 169
1836. " PRO-DI-GI-OUS ! " (from " Landscape- Historical Illustrations of Scotland and the Waverley Novels/' " Guy Mannering") .... 197
1836. TURPIN'S FLIGHT THROUGH EDMONTON
(from "Rookwood") ... 75 1837- THE STREETS, MORNING (from
" Sketches by Boz") . . .101
1837. THE LAST CAB -DRIVER (from
" Sketches by Boz") . . .105
1838. NORNA DESPATCHING THE PROVISIONS
(from " Landscape-Historical Il- lustrations of Scotland and the Waverley Novels/' "The
Pirate") 237
ix
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
DATE SUBJECT PACK
1839. THE TURK'S ONLY DAUGHTER AP- PROACHES LoRDBATEMAN(fromf 'The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman " ) 229 1839. JONATHAN WILD SEIZING JACK SHEP- PARD AT HIS MOTHER'S GRAVE (from "Jack Sheppard") ... 79
1839. JACK SHEPPARD DRINKING FROM ST
GILES'S BOWL (from "Jack Shep- pard") 80
1840. THE DEATH WARRANT (from "The
Tower of London " ) . . 83
1841. THE VETERANS (from "Songs, Naval
arid National, of Charles Dibden " ) 245
1842. FRIGHTENING SOCIETY (from " George
Cruikshauk's Omnibus " ) Frontispiece 1842. THE DUEL IN TOTHILL FIELDS (from
" Ainsworth's Magazine," " The
Miser's Daughter " ) . . 87
1842. OVERHEAD AND UNDER FOOT (from
' ' The Comic Almanack " ) . . 53
1842. LEGEND OF ST MEDARD (from "The
Ingoldsby Legends " ) . . . 117
1843. HERNE THE HUNTER APPEARING TO
HENRY VIII. (from "Ainsworth's Magazine/' " Windsor Castle " ) . 137
X
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
DATE SUBJECT PAGE
1844. THE MARQUIS DE GUISCARD ATTEMPT-
ING TO ASSASSINATE HARLEY (from
te Ainswortlr's Magazine/' " Saint Jameses") 91
1845. The LION OF THE PARTY (from " George
Cruikshank's Table-Book " ) . . 185 1845. DETAILS FROM HEADS OF THE TABLE (from " George Cruikshank's Table-Book") .... 177 1847. AMARANTH CARRIED BY THE BEE'S MONSTER STEED (from ' ' The Good Genius that Turned Everything into Gold " ) . . . .149
1847. "THE CAT DID IT!" (from "The
Greatest Plague in Life ") . . 221
1848. SHOEING THF, DEVIL (from "The True
Legend of St Dunstan ") . . 122
1848. THE DEVIL ABOUT TO SIGN (from " The
True Legend of St Dunstan " ) . 123
1849. MlSS ESKE CARRIED AWAY DURING
HER TRANCE (from "Clement
Lorimer") 109
1853. THE GLASS OF WHISKEY AFTER THE GOOSE (from "The Glass and the New Crystal Palace " ) . . . 62 xi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
DATE SUBJECT PAGE
1853. THE GOOSE AFTER THE WHISKEY
(from ' { The Glass and the New Crystal Palace") .... 63
1854. WHEN THE ELEPHANT STANDS UPON HIS
HEAD (from (S George Cruikshank's Magazine ") 217
1854. THE PUMPKIN, ETC., BEING CHANGED INTO A COACH, ETC., (from " George Cruikshank's Fairy Library," "Cinderella") .... 153
1864. THE OGRE IN THE FORM OF A LION (from " George Cruikshank's Fairy Library," " Puss in Boots " ) . 157
1875. MONK READING (from " Peeps at
Life") 249
N.D. ELIZA CRUIKSHANK (from a painting) 113
*a* The dates in the footlines and in this list are those of the first appearance of the works to which they refer. In certain cases the reproductions have been made from good impressions which are not the earliest of the plates in question.
xn
THE life of George Cruikshank extended from September 27, 1792, to February 1, 1878, and the known work of his hand dates from 1799 to 1875. In 1840 Thackeray wrote of him as of a hero of his boyhood, asking jocundly, " Did we not forego tarts in order to buy his Breaking-up or his Fashionable Monstrosities of the year eighteen hundred and something ? " In 1863, the year of Thackeray's death, Cruikshank was asked, by the committee who exhibited his Worship of Bacchus, to asso- ciate with that work some of his early draw- ings in order to prove that he was not his own grandfather.
For years before he reached the great but unsensational age at which he died, a sort of cult was vested in his longevity. Dated plates —that entitled "The Rose and the Lily" (1875) offers the last example — imply that his art figured to him finally as a kind of athleticism.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
It was as if, in using his burin or needles, he was doing a " turn " before sightseers, with a hired Time innocuously scything on the plat- form beside him to show him off.
Now that his mortality has been proven for a quarter of a century, we can coldly ask : why did he seem so old to himself and the world ? Others greater than he — Titian, Watts — have laboured with genius under a heavier crown of snow than he ; and the public has applauded their vigour without a doubt of their identity. The reason is that they have not been the journalists of their age. They have not, like Cruikshank, reflected in their works inventions and fashions, wars and scandals, jokes and politics, whence the world has emerged unrecognisably the same.
It is said that when Cruikshank was eighty- three, he executed a sword-dance before an old officer who had mentally buried him. It was an action characteristic of a nature that was scarcely more nai've and impulsive at one time than another, but it was the most confusing proof of the fact in debate which he could have offered. It was not of a
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
numeral that the doubter thought when the existence of Cruikshank was presented to his mind's eye. His thought we may elaborate as follows.
The artist who drew Napoleon week by week, with all the vulgar insolence which only a great man's contemporaries can display towards him, was the same who, half a cen- tury after the Emperor's death, produced a conception of the "Leader of the Parisian Blood Red Republic of 1870." The artist who, in the last year of the reign of George the Third, depicted Thistlewood's lair in Cato Street, drew also, as though with " a mother's tender care," almost every pane in that glass palace which the trees of Hyde Park inhabited in 1851.
Before the punctuality of his interest in everything new that rose to the surface to obliterate an expiring mode or event, we stand astonished. It is not so much as an artist that we here admire him. It is as an Argus of the street, an Argus not only with many eyes but with feet enough to plant him at once in a hundred corners. From this voluble Argus his mistress Clio recoils but cannot dismiss
3
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
him. Aghast she observes him presenting the Prince Regent in a hundred burlesquely im- proper parts ; and it is a discreet generation indeed which remembers Coriolanus address- ing the Plebeians and forgets The Fat in the Fire. Clio withdraws, but does not forbid us to stay. And stay I do, at all events, to examine the packed and ugly caricatures which are the visible laughter of Cruikshank the Argus of journalism. Their violent colours and vigorous lines fail not in invocation. Before the student of them rise the supple, blue-eyed leech called Mrs Clarke and her grossly-doating Commander-in-chief; Lady Jersey, Lady Douglas and the other villains of the drama entitled " Queen Caroline " ; the Marchioness of Hertford, the Countess of Yarmouth, or whoever brought down upon Coriolanus the " heigho ! " of a ribald Rowly ; and, lest one grow lenient to royal self-indulgence, it is accused by the recurring presence of a figure of tormented respectability. It is the Cruik- shankian John Bull, as different from Sir F. C. Gould's well-fed monitor of Conservative politicians as is Cruikshank's darkly criminal Punch from Richard Doyle's domesticated
4
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
patron of humour. This John Bull is hacked to make a Corsican and Yankee holiday, taxed at the bayonet's point, starved on bread at eighteenpence the quartern, and offered up as a sacrifice to a Bourbon " Bumble-head."
But the visions that detain the student of Cruikshank the journalist are not only of per- sonages and events. He saw and recorded the crowd and the clothes of the crowd. His art preserves the ladies of 1816, who resembled the bowls of tobacco pipes ; the men of 1822, who wore trousers like pears ; and the children of 1826, whom the hatter turned into " Mush- room Monstrosities."
Cruikshank the journalist constitutes a fame in himself whose trumpeters are Fairburn, Fores, Humphrey, Hone . . . , publishers who, in an age before photo-engraving, easily sold topical caricatures separately at a shilling or more. Gillray's name, in my estimation, outweighs Cruikshank's at the foot of such publications, while Rowlandson's weighs less. Together these three masters of caricature compose a constellation of third and fourth Georgian humour.
But we have by no means done with Cruik-
7
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
shank when we have admired him there. A greater Cruikshank remains to be admired. Of him there is no assignable master ; neither Hogarth nor Gillray. He is the illustrator whose fame makes more than six hundred books and pamphlets desirable ; he is truly an artist, a maker of beauty. Stimulated though this greater Cruikshank was in the flatter and more decent epoch which succeeded the age of Coriolanus or King Teapot, of Don Whisker andos or Sardanapalus, Regent and King of Britain and mandarin of Brighton, it was in the age of muddle and debauch, not in the age of Victorian propriety and reform, that Cruikshank entered fairyland for the first time and saw the little people face to face. Cobbett has ignored the fact, but there is grace in it even for the " Big Sovereign " whom he pilloried in five hundred and eleven para- graphs.
We shall find, alas ! as we proceed, that, as illustrator, Cruikshank often sank below his journalistic level. The journalist may always take refuge in the actual life of the fact before him ; his are real landscapes, real faces. But the illustrator has often only lifeless words to instruct
8
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
him ; when short of inspiration he is in the thral- dom of his manner. Cruikshank's thraldom to his manner was the more obvious, since the manner was often wooden, often joyously ugly. His fame perpetuates his failures. The insi- pidity which affronted Boz has no effect in stopping the demand for "the fireside plate." Still, his best as well as his worst is in his illustration of books. It is his best that excuses the criticism of his worst and enrols him among the great artists of the nineteenth century.
I propose in the pages that shall follow to set down the significance both of his best and of his worst, avoiding, as befits the date of my labour, any biographical matter which does not throw light on his art. And first let us follow his path in journalism.
II
THE limits of Cruikshank's genius and the spacious area between them are almost implied in the fact that he was a Londoner who seldom or never departed from the " tight little island." Born in Duke Street, St George's, Blooms- bury, if the statement in his epitaph in St Paul's Cathedral is to be accepted, he con- tinued a Londoner to the end : living in Dorset Street, near Fleet Street, in Amwell Street, and Myddelton Terrace, Pentonville, and finally in the house called successively 4-8 Mornington Place and 263 Hampstead Road. Yet this cockney depicted the Spain of Don Quixote and Gil Bias, the Ireland of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and the America of Uncle Tom. Such courageous versatility was the outcome of a training so practical that I hesitate to call it an artistic education.
His father, Isaac, was a Lowland Scot who lived and, unfortunately, drank by his art, 10
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
which in 1789, 1790 and 1792 was represented at the Royal Academy. His period was from 1756 or 1757 to 1810 or 1811. Like his friend James Gillray, he caricatured on the side of Pitt. I remember no better carica- ture of his than Pastimes of Primrose Hill ("Attic Miscellany," 1st Sept. 1791), depict- ing a perspiring tallow chandler trundling his children up that eminence. He was energetic in the delineation of the insipid jollity con- sidered appropriate to sailors, and he celebrated the O.P. riots at Covent Garden by drawing Angelica Catalani as a cat. Thomas Wright places him only after Gillray and Rowlandson as a caricaturist, but it is probable that the man's best is of an academic sort, such as the pretty drawings which he contributed to a 1794 edition of Thomson's "Seasons." Isaac Cruikshank's workroom was that of a busy hack, and George had not been long in the world before he played ghost there on his father's copperplates. One of his early tasks was the background of Daniel in the Lions' Den. None who looks at the drawing of a super- cilious benefactor, which is one of George's earliest efforts, can doubt that in him the II
GEORGE CRU1KSHANK
caricaturing instinct was basic. The eye is indulgent to several crudities, because the flinging is drawn though the hand of contempt is not, while the gluttonous enthusiasm of the beggar is a triumph of juvenile observation. Here are characters if not figures ; here from a little boy is work that deserves a laugh. Hence it is not surprising that George Cruik- shank has been erroneously credited with a share in Facing the Enemy, a dateless etching, delightfully droll in animal expression, etched by his father, after a sketch by H. Woodward, and published in 1797-8, according to Mr A. M. Broadley, and not in 1803 as formerly conjectured.
1803 is the year of Cruikshank's Opus I., according to G. W. Reid, his most voluminous bibliographer. This work, printed and sold by W. Belch of Newington Butts, consists of four marine pieces on a sheet, most comfortably unprecocious and as wooden as a Dutch doll. A humorist inspecting it might profess to see in a woman, whose nose and forehead produce one and the same straight line, a prophecy of the Cruikshankian nose which is so monoton- ously recurrent an ornament in the works of 12
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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
"the great George." Cruikshank himself averred that one of the first etchings he was ever employed to do and paid for was a sheet of Lottery Prints (published in 1 804) of which he made a copy in his eighty-first year. The etching contains sixteen drawings of shops. The barber's shop door is open to disclose an equestrian galloping past it, although, even as a man, he drew horses which G. A. Sala de- clared were wrong in all the traditional forty- four points. George Cruikshank himself, whom, as Mr G. S. Layard has shown, he repeatedly drew, appears in a compartment of this etching, in the act of conveying the plate of it to the shop of Belch, a name for which Langham is substituted in a reissue of this gamblers' temptation, and which dwindles into Langley & Belch in the copy made by Cruikshank in 1873, published by G. Bell, York St., Covent Garden. 1 806 is the date of the first book, or rather pamphlet, with which George Cruikshank is connected. It is entitled "The Impostor Unmasked," and pillories Sheridan for a farcical swindler and something worse. There is a folding plate to fortify the charges of Patricius the scandal-monger, and this is
15
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
ascribed to George by Reid, though Captain Douglas, George's latest bibliographer, only allows that "there seems to be some of George's work in it." Reid's authority, which had in all probability the living George's behind it, excuses a brief description of this plate. Sheridan is depicted in the act of addressing a crowd of Stafford electors, amongst whom are several creditors who pun bitterly on the parliamentary word Bill and damn the respects which he pays them. A house on the right of the hustings might have been sketched on a slate by any child weary of pothooks, but there is a touch of true humour in the quiet joy shown on the face of a supporter of Sheridan in the heckling to which he is subjected. Gillray had already published (March 10, 1805) his Uncorking Old Sherry, and so this Cruikshankian cari- cature may be accepted as George's first step in the Gillrayan path.
The path of Gillray, in and out of which runs the path of Thomas Rowlandson, is seldom or never dull ; sometimes unclean in a manner malodorous as manure, but with risings which offer illuminating views. His humour is 16
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
tyrannically laughable. The guffaw is, as it were, kicked out of the spectator of The Apotheosis of Hoche (1798) by the descend- ing boots, depicted as reluctantly yielding to the law of gravity, which the triumphant de- vastator of La Vendee has overcome. Gillray's sense of design was superb, and he would be an enthusiast who should assert that George Cruikshank in political caricature produced works at once so striking and architecturally admirable as The Giant Factotum [Pitt] Amusing Himself (1797). Gillray possessed what Cruikshank lacked altogether, the inclina- tion and power to draw voluptuousness with some justice to its charm. One has only to cite in confirmation of this statement The Morning after Marriage (August 5, 1788), and compare it with any of those caricatures in which Cruikshank exhibits the erotic pre- ferences of George the Third's children. What, however, Cruikshank, in the artistic meaning of vision, saw in Gillray, he adapted with the force of a boisterous participant in the patriot- ism and demagogy of his day. Gillray had Napoleon for his prey, and no political criticism is pithier than the caricature which represents
17
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
the Emperor as Tiddy-Doll, the great French Gingerbread-Baker, drawing out a new Batch of Kings (1806). On the other hand, nothing that Swift is believed to have omitted in his description of Brobdingnag could be coarser than The Corsican Pest (1803). It is almost literally humour of the latrine. Unhappily Cruikshank exulted like a young barbarian in the licence conferred by precedent, and it is hard to view with tolerance his pictorial records of "the first swell of the age." One of the wittiest is Boney Hatching a Bulletin, or Snug Winter Quarters (Dec. 1812); the Grand Army is there seen in the form of heads and bayonets protruding from a stratum of Russian snow ; the courier who is to convey the bulletin has boards under his boots to prevent his submersion. Elsewhere one's admiration for inventive vigour struggles against disgust at a mode which one only hesitates to call blackguardism because the liveliest contents of the paint-box were lavished upon it. Take, for instance, the caricature which bears the rhymed title, Boney tird of wars alarms, flies for safety to his darling's arms (1813). The devil bears Bonaparte on 18
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
his shoulders to the Empress Marie Louise, after the Russian campaign. "Take him to Bed, my Lady, and Thaw him," says the devil. " I am almost petrified in helping him to escape from his Army. I shall expect him to say his prayers to me every night ! " Another Cruik- shankian caricature, The Imperial Family going to the Devil (March 1814), represents the rejection of Napoleon by that connoisseur of reprobates, though Rowlandson in the same month and year depicted the fallen emperor as The Demi's Darling. Cruikshank's vulgar facetiousness, interesting by sheer vigour and self -enjoyment, pursues Napoleon even to St Helena in the heartless caricature which portrays him as an ennuye reduced for amuse- ment to rat-catching. It was not for nothing that Thomas Moore, alluding to the Prince Regent as Big Ben, made Tom Cribb say : —
" Having1 conquer'd the prime one, that mill'd us
all round,
You kick'd him, old Ben, as he gasp'd on the ground."
Gillray is said to have sometimes disguised his style in order to evade his agreement with
19
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Humphrey that he would work for no other publisher; and there is more than one of Cruikshank's Napoleonic caricatures which might be ascribed to Gillray's dram-pro- viding alter ego if their authorship were in question. Of such is Quadrupeds, or Little Boneys Last Kick, published in " The Scourge " (1813). Here the Russian bear holds a birch in his right paw, and Napoleon by an ankle with his left ; a naked devil points to the crown, tumbling from the head of the capsized emperor ; on the ground is an ironical bulletin. Old Blucher beating the Corsican Big Drum (1814) is an even closer match of the baser sort of Gillrayan caricature ; while the par- ticular stench of it rises from Boneys Elb(a)ow Chair, of the same date. The last caricature from Cruikshank upon Napoleon came feebly in 1 842 with the issue of " George Cruikshank's Omnibus/' wherein he figures as a skeleton in boots surmounting a pyramid of skulls. The caricaturist's harlequinade had lasted too long ; when it ceased, the soul of it utterly perished, and one views impatiently so formal and witless a galvanisation as was suggested by the return of Napoleon, dead, to the reconquest of France.
20
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Of Cruikshank's Napoleonic caricatures as a whole, it may be said that their function was solely to relieve by ridicule the pressure of a grandiose and formidable personality upon the nerves of his countrymen. He did not, like Gillray in The Handwriting on the Wall, confess the historic greatness of Napoleon by an allusion so sublime that it afforded Hone a precedent for unpunished impiety. When, for serio-comic verse, he attempted to delineate a monitory ap- parition, in the shape of Napoleon's " Red Man," the result was absurdity veiled by dulness.
But it is time to turn to the Cruikshankian view of persons and things in Great Britain in the lifetime of "Adonis the Great." It is said that while Gillray was productive, an old General of the German Legion remarked, alluding to caricature, " Ah ! I dell you vot — England is altogether von libel." With the spirit of this speech, one can cordially agree. The concupiscence of princes was serialised for the mirth of the crowd.
There were two great types of ascendant degeneracy to divert the eyes of Farmer George's subjects from their shops and Bibles. cc 21
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
One was his son George, the other Mary Anne Clarke.
The cabinet in which George kept capillary souvenirs of so many women was fastened against contemporary critics of his career. Undivulged, therefore, was the touching senti- ment of a philofeminism which, in excluding his legal wife, was construed but as vice. There was no Max Beerbohm in his day to appreciate his polish and talents and to pity his wife for playing her tragedy in tights. There was no one to pronounce him the slave of that most endearing of tyrants, the artistic temperament. The caricaturists saw simply a polygamist eager to convict of adultery the wife whom he disliked and avoided, and a spendthrift whose debt was inflicted upon the nation. So far as man can show up his fellow- men, this man was shown up, and in verse and picture became an instrument of public titilla- tion. So roguish a severity as the caricaturists displayed can seldom be accepted as didactic Gillray, indeed, in The Morning after Marriage followed him into the bridal chamber of Mrs Fitzherbert whom he married in 1785, and this caricature is the best advertisement of his 22
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
grace and beauty which perhaps exists. When attacked by Cruikshank, he was over forty, for the first caricature of him in which that artist's hand is noticeable was published in 1808. It is entitled John Bull Advising with His Superiors: the superiors being George and his brother Frederick, who sit under the portraits of their respective mistresses, ff Mrs Fitz " and Mrs Clarke. John Bull is clean- shaven, fat-nosed, hatted, and holds a gnarled stick. " Servant Measters," he begins, " I be come to ax a bit of thy advice " ; but he proceeds to freeze them with clumsy innuendo and adds, (C I does love good old Georg [sic], by Goles ! because he is not of that there sort," meaning their own. After this, the Regent was for Cruikshank a stimulant to the drollest audacities. The world was younger then and could laugh uproariously at the bursting of a dandy's stays and the mislaying of a roue's removable whiskers. Mrs Grundy had not persuaded it of the superior comicality of Mrs Newlywed's indestructible pie-crust and Mr Staylate's interview with the parental boot. So George, who, at any rate, was real life, blossomed abundantly to another George's
23
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
advantage. Thus The Coronation of the Empress of the Nairs (September 1812) — a simile suggested by a contemporary account of a curious Asiatic race — depicts him as crowning the Marchioness of Hertford in her bath ; A Kick from Yarmouth to Wales illustrates the assault of the provoked Earl of Yarmouth upon his wife's too fervent admirer ; and Princely Agility (January 1812) shows His Royal castigated Highness confined by a con- venient sprained ankle to bed, where his whiskers and wig are restored to him. The opening of Henry the Eighth's coffin in St George's Chapel, Windsor, April 1, 1813, suggests to Cruikshank Meditations Amongst the Tombs, in which the greatness of the deceased sovereign forcibly strikes the Regent. " Great indeed ! " he is made to say, " for he got rid of many wives, whilst I, poor soul, can't get rid of one. Cut off his beard, doctor, 'twill make me a prime pair of royal whiskers." The prince's partiality for the bottle is severely illustrated. In The Phenix [sic] of Elba Resuscitated by Treason (May 1, 1815), he receives the news of Napoleon's outbreak, seated on a cushion with a decanter behind him ; and even when he was
24
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
King, Cruikshank dared to draw him (1822) as drunk and curing an irritated cuticle by leaning his kilted person against one of the posts of Argyleshire.
If, however, Caroline of Brunswick had not, by adopting a Meredithian baby and other eccentricities, condemned herself to " Delicate Investigation " in 1806 and to a trial before the House of Peers in 1820, Cruikshank's delinea- tions of Adonis the Great would have seemed genial compared with Thackeray's contempt. That his sentiment for the lady was less chivalrous than Thackeray esteemed it, may be divined by his caricature of her as an ugly statue of Xantippe put up to auction " without the least reserve " (1821), which is less than two months older than his conception of her as a rushlight which Slander cannot blow out. But he perceived, as did the whole intelligent proletariat, the monstrous irony of George's belated notice of his wife. Hence in his wood- cuts to " The Queen's Matrimonial Ladder " and " Non Mi Ricordo ! " he is not comic but satirical, and satirical with strokes that turn THE DANDY OF SIXTY who bows with a grace into a figure abjectly defiant, meanly malevolent.
25
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
devoid of levity. A cut in the former pamphlet shows him standing in a penitential sheet under the seventh, ninth and tenth commandments, meeting the gaze of an astonished urchin; on the outside of the latter pamphlet we see him in the throes of awkward interrogation, uttering the " Non Mi Ricordo " which Caroline's ill-wishers were tired of hearing in the mouth of Bergami. Mary Anne Clarke, our second type of ascendant degeneracy, was, if Buck's drawing of her is truthful, a woman of seductive pretti- ness, but she could not teach Cruikshank her charm in atonement for her venality. He drew her petticoat " supported by military boots " and surmounted by a cocked hat and the mitre of the ducal bishop of Osnaburg (February 23, 1809); "under this," it is stated, "may be found a soothing for every pain." When Whigs and the Prince of Wales sent the Duke of York back in 1811 to the high post which he had disgraced, Mrs Clarke dwindled in Cruikshank's caricature to a dog improperly exhibiting its contempt for Colonel Wardle's left eye. It is curious that the Clarke scandal did not apparently inspire any caricature which deserves to live as pictorial criticism. Revealing, 26
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
as it did, not only rottenness in the State,, but in the Church, since Dr OMeara sought Mrs Clarke's interest for the privilege of preaching "before royalty/' one may well be surprised at the failure of caricature to ennoble itself in the cause of honour and religion. Yet Cruik- shank produced in 1811 a powerful etching — Interior View of the House of God — which shows, apropos a lustful fanatic named Carpenter, his power to have seized the missed opportunity. In this plate is the contemporary portrait of himself which P. D'Aiguille afterwards copied. If we ask, for our soul's sake, to sicken of the Regent's amours and of the demure "Magdalen" of York, whose scarlet somehow softens to maroon because she is literary and quotes Sallust, it is necessary to leave the caricatures which laugh with her — especially Rowlandson's — and look at Cruikshank's tor- mented John Bull. The most pathetic is perhaps John Bull's Three Stages (1815). In the last stage (Peace with all the World) his child, once pressed to eat after repletion, says, " Give me some more bone." The hand that drew the earlier plates of The Bottle is unmistakable in this etching.
27
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
It was seemingly in 1819 that Cruikshank first realised his great powers as a critic in caricature. To that period belongs what a pamphleteer called "Satan's Bank Note " : —
" Notes which a 'prentice boy could make At fifteen for a shilling."
The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street earned thereby the sobriquet of Hangland's Bank, and her victims included two women on a day when Cruikshank looked at the gibbet of the Old Bailey. They were hanged for passing forged one pound notes. Cruikshank thereupon drew his famous Bank Restriction Note, signed by Jack Ketch, and with a vignette of Britannia de- vouring her children above an L of rope. Hone issued this note (of which there are three varieties) from his shop on Ludgate Hill, a stone's throw from the gibbet ; the public flocked to see and buy it, and the moral was not lost upon the Bank of England, who there- after sent forth no more one pound notes. The pathos as distinct from the tragedy of the condition thus relieved is well recalled by the caricature invented by Yedis and drawn by Cruikshank entitled Johnny Bull and his Forged Notes (January 7, 1819). 28
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
We now turn to the lighter side of his topical journalism. One of his subjects was gas-lighting. The Good Effects of Carbonic Gas (1807) depicts one cat swooning and another cut off from the list of living prime donne by the maleficence of Winzer's illuminant. In 1883 Cruikshank reported a ghost as saying to a fellow-shade, " Ah ! brother, we never has no fun now ; this ' March of Intellect ' and the Gaslights have done us up."
Jenner had him for both partisan (1808) and opponent (1812). In the former role he makes a Jennerite say, "Surely the disorder of the Cow is preferable to that of the Ass," and the realism is nauseous that accompanies the re- mark. As opponent he wittily follows Gillray, who in 1802 imagined an inoculated man as calving from his arms. Prominent in Cruik- shank's caricature (a bitter one) is a sarco- phagus upon which lies a cow whom Time is decapitating. " To the Memory of Vaccina who died April the First," is the touching inscription.
I have already mentioned Cruikshank as a chronicler of fashion. Gillray was his master in this form of art, though the statement does
31
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
not rest on the two examples here given. The thoughtful reader will not fail to admire the incongruity between the children in the draw- ing of 1826 and the great verities of Nature — cliff and sea — betweeen which they strut. The latter drawing is as grotesquely logical as a syllogism by Lewis Carroll. Comparable with it in persuasiveness is Cruikshank's short-skirted lady (December 1833) who is alarmed at her own shadow, which naturally exaggerates the distance between her ankles and her skirt. Thence one turns for contrast to the caricature of crinolines in " The Comic Almanack " for 1850. It is called A Splendid Spread, and re- presents gentlemen handing refreshments to ladies across wildernesses of "dress-extenders" by means of long baker's peels. Such drawing educates ; it has the value of criticism.
This praise is tributary to Cruikshank's second journalistic period. By journalistic I mean topical, attendant on the passing hour. His first journalistic period begins formally with his first properly signed caricature, an etching praised by Mr F. G. Stephens, entitled Cobbett at Court, or St James's in a bustle, and published by W. Deans, October 1 6, 1 807. This
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
period includes Cruikshank's contributions to " The Satirist/' " The Scourge/' " Town Talk " and " The Meteor." It merges into the second period in 1819, the year that saw the first three volumes of "The Humourist." The principal journalistic works of this second journalistic period are Coriolanus addressing the Plebeians (1820), "Scraps and Sketches" (1828-1832), " The Comic Almanack " (1835-1853), " George Cruikshank's Omnibus" (1842), and "George Cruikshank's Table Book" (1845).
Coriolanus is less a caricature than a tableau vivant. It was invented by J. S., whom Mr Layard says was Cruikshank's gifted servant Joseph Sleap. The " Plebeians " are Thistle- wood the conspirator, Cobbett armed with Tom Paine's thigh bones, Wooler as a black dwarf, Hone, George Cruikshank, etc. George IV. in his Shakespearean role abuses them soundly. As regards the monarch, the work is un-Cruik- shankian ; its laborious and minute technique is a foreshadowing of a happier carefulness.
The journalism of "Scraps and Sketches is immortal in The Age of Intellect (1828), which even Mrs Meynell, writing as Alice Thompson, found "most laughable." Here a
35
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
babe whose toy-basket is filled with the works of Milton, Bentley, Gibbon, etc., learnedly explains the process of sucking eggs to a gaping grandmother, who suspends her perusal of "Who Killed Cock Robin?" while she declares that " they are making improvements in everything ! " To my mind the best topical plate in " Scraps and Sketches" is London going out of Town, or the March of Bricks and Mortar (1829). No one who has seen a suburb grow inexorably in field and orchard, obliterating gracious forms and sealing up the live earth, can miss the pathos of this masterpiece. Yet it is not a thing for tears', but that half smile which Andersen continually elicits by his evocation of humanity from tree and bird and toy. For Cruikshank gives lamenting and terrified humanity to hayricks pursued by filthy smoke. He gives devilish energy to a figure, artfully composed of builder's im- plements, which saws away at a dying branch ; and he imparts an abominable insolence to a similarly composed figure which holds up the notice board of Mr Goth.
Nearer perhaps to Cruikshank's heart than this triumph of fancy was The Fiend's Frying
c./
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Pan (1832), published in the last number of "Scraps and Sketches/' which represents the devil, immensely exultant, holding over a fire a frying-pan which contains the whole noisy lascivious crowd and spectacle of Bartholomew Fair. The fair was proclaimed for the last time in 1855, and Cruikshank was pleased to figure himself as an inspirer of the force that struck at its corrupt charm after the fair of 1839 and condemned it to a lingering death. The Fiend's Frying Pan is now chiefly remarkable as an early example of Cruikshank' s love of crowding a great deal of real life into a vehicle that belittles it. This frying-pan sends the thought forward to the etching entitled Passing Events, or the Tail of the Comet of 1853, where Albert Smith's lecture on Mont Blanc, a prize cattle show, emigration to Australia, and "Uncle Tom's Cabin," are all jumbled together in the hair of a comet which possesses a chubby and beaming face.
The pictorial journalism of the " Comic Almanacks" is often delicious ; no ephemerides, in my knowledge, equal them in sustained humorous effect. Guys in Council (1848) haunts one with its grave idiocy. Even His
39
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Holiness Pius X. could scarce refrain from smiling at the blank stare of the rigid papal guy in the chair, at the low guy who, ere leaving the conclave, challenges him with a glance of malignant cunning. On the other hand, it would be hypercritical to seek a prettier rendering of an almost too pretty custom than Old May Day (1836), with its dancers ringing the Maypole by the village church. Cruikshank's extraordinary power of conveying dense crowds into the space of a few square inches — say six by three — is shown in Lord Mayor s Day (1836) and The Queen s Own (1838), illustrating Victoria's Proclamation Day. In the 184-4 Almanack he humorously fore- shadows flying machines in the form of mansions; but the 1851 Almanack shows his liberality scarcely abreast of his imagination, as Modern Ballooning is represented by an ass on horseback ascending as balloonist above a crowd of the long-eared tribe.
One cannot, however, glance through Cruikshank's Victorian caricatures without perceiving that the passing of the Regent slackened his Gillrayan fire. True, in the " Table Book " we have a John Bull whose agony 40
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
reminds us of the suffering figure in Preparing John Bull for General Congress (1813): the midgets of infelicitous railway speculation who strip this bewildered squire of hat and rings, of boots and pocket-book, while a demented bell fortifies their din, are of an energy supremely Cruikshankian : no other hand drew them than the hand which enriched the immortality of the elves in Grimm. Nor will one easily tire of a vote-soliciting crocodile in the "Omnibus"; and yet the fact remains that the great motives of Cruikshank's political caricature pulsated no more. He was ludicrously incompetent for the task of satirising the forward movement of women : the Almanacks show that, if their evidence be required. The subjects of Queen Victoria found in Keene and Du Maurier pictorial critics who, by the implication of their veracity, their success, demonstrate his imperfect understanding of a generation to whom George the Fourth was history and legend. To the ironists of that generation there was something in the Albert Memorial more provocative than the
" — huge teapots all drill' d round with holes, Relieved by extinguishers, sticking- on poles"
43
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
which distinguished the Folly at Brighton. It is too much to say that the art of the Victorian epoch establishes this fact; yet of what caricaturist can it be said as of Cruikshank that his naif enthusiasm for all that an Age rather than a Queen signified by the Albert Memorial forced him into the role of its patron rather than its satirist ? In A Pop Gun (I860) there is a pathetically feeble engraving, after a drawing by Cruikshank of Prince Albert and the late Queen, which almost brings tears to the eyes, its insipidity is so loyally un- conscious. And what does all his marvellous needlework in the Great Exhibition novel entitled "1851 : or The Adventures of Mr and Mrs Cursty Sandboys," accomplish for satire in comparison with what it accomplishes as a puff and a fanfare ? Here, as in the Comet of his ill-fated Magazine (1854), is a skill beside which his Georgian caricatures are but a brat's defacement of his Board School wall. And yet what is the answer to our question ? Nothing. It is an answer that rings down the curtain on the diorama called " Cruikshank the journalist."
44
Ill
CRUIKSHANK'S didactic work was the offspring of his journalism. No man can journalise with spirit and remain uncritical. Criticism is, in truth, the soul of caricature, which by stressing the emphasis of Nature on face and expression makes even simpletons judges of grandees. Photography itself is on the side of illusion ; but caricature has X-rays for the deformed fact. That a habit of criticism should evolve a passion for preaching is only natural, though it is the modern critic with his hedonistic bias who has armed the word didactic with a sting. Even such a critic must admit that Cruik- shank's preaching was from living texts and that the preacher seemed well versed in " St Giles's Greek." But before speaking specifi- cally of his didactic drawing we will consider what led up to it. A balladier of circa 1811 threatens mankind as follows : —
45
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
" Since I have had some comic scenes, Egad ! I'll sing them all, sir, With my how, wow, what a row !
fal lal de riddy, riddy, sparkey, larkey, funny, dunny, quizzy, dizzy, O."
This animal outburst breathes the spirit of all the " bang up " books of the last Georgian period, and might almost have served as a motto for Pierce Egan's "Life in London" (1821), and David Carey's "Life in Paris" (1822). Blanchard Jerrold's bibliography of Cruikshank begins with " A Dictionary of the Slang and Cant Languages" (180.9), to which the artist contributes The Beggars' Carnival — a folding frontispiece. In assisting his brother Robert — who styled himself "original suggester and artist of the 2 vols." containing "Life in London" and its sequel — to illustrate the rambles and sprees of "Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom," George seems to have seen carnival on a more liberal scale. " Life in London " ranges from the West- minster [Dog] Pit to Rotten Row, and from the [Cyprian] Saloon of Covent Garden to the Press Yard of Newgate. One of the spirited plates (Tom and Jerry taking Blue Rtiin) power-
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
fully presents some pitiable pothouse types, and is a text, though it is not a sermon. Another illustration, reproduced here, compares equally with Dick and His Companions Smashing the Glim in Carey's work. While illustrating " Life in Paris," George, working alone, pur- sued the example set by Robert when they collaborated. Carey credits him with "ac- curacy of local delineation " — praise which he has often and variously deserved — yet it must be confessed that Dick Wildfire like Corinthian Tom is at once commonplace and out-of-date. In face he is like George in early manhood as Corinthian Tom was like Robert : that is his chief recommendation. The book may be silently offered to any one who asserts that George's taste in literature was too nice for Pierce Egan. One of his plates turns a cata- comb into a scene of vulgar mirth.
These novels of excess were stepping-stones to a sounder realism which we find in " Morn- ings at Bow Street" (1824) and "More Mornings at Bow Street" (1827). Here the illustrator's task was to illustrate selected police cases, and through the medium of wood engraving a most delectable entertain-
47
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
ment was the result. A choleric gentleman's row with a waiter presents itself as a fractured plate in the rim of which two tiny figures dis- play respectively the extremes of napkined deprecation and of kicking impudence. Tom Crib[b]'s pursuit of a coppersmith suggests a wild elephant storming after a frenzy of flying limbs. The genius that was to realise FalstafF is disclosed in the drawing of a drummer boy discovered in a clothes basket. Did he come to Bow Street ? we ask, and did those Cupids fighting in the circuit of a wedding-ring come too ? The answer is Yes, but because of one who probably was not there, whose name we know.
At one illustration let us cry halt. It re- presents a foaming pot of beer assaulting a woman who said to the magistrate, "Your honour, it was the beer." In itself it is a masterpiece of delicate literalism. That power of enlivening the inanimate, which humanises the pump, representing Father Mathew at a small party in " The Comic Almanack " of 1844, exasperates this pot and bids it strike home. But what we are to observe particularly is this early presentation to Cruikshank's mind of
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
alcohol as a personality at war with human beings. As far back as 1811, in The Dinner of the Four-in-Hand Club at Salihill, an uproarious piece in the style of Rowlandson's The Brilliants (1801), he put the genius of the bottle into form and anecdote, but here we have the serious aspect of drink obvious even in humour. Beer is striking a woman. In 1832 he pro- duced in The Ale House and the Home a con- trast so stated in the title that we need say no more than that the gloomy wife and her baby, sitting by candlelight in the bare room where the man's supper lies to reproach his drink- spoiled appetite, are a sadder sight than the frying-pan of St Bartholomew's Fair in the number of "Scraps and Sketches" where they appear.
To "Sunday in London" (1833) — a capital social satire — Cruikshank contributed fourteen cuts, one of which, The Pay-Table, preserves the memory of those mischievous contracts between publican and foreman, whereby the latter received a percentage of the spendings of his men on drink and the men were pro- vided with drink on the credit of the foreman. It is an admirable study in fuddled perplexity
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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
confronted with Bung in a business instead of a Bacchic mood, abetted by a shark of the victim's calling. Two other cuts — mere rabble- ment and eyesore — leave on the mind a feeling of disgust almost without interest and without shame. The spectator has no sense that these people turned out at church time, raging, leer- ing, tottering, have deteriorated from any average or standard of human seemliness. If it were not for a dog gazing in amazement at one prone drunkard, if it were not for the dog and his question, one would ask, Cui bono ?
This is not missionary work — Cruikshank was only "flirting with temperance" as late as 1846 — and we need have 110 compunction in seeking relief from such ugliness in the ex- quisite burlesque of pathos contained in Over- head and Under-foot (1842). Forget who can the agonised impatience bolted and Chubb- locked in the breast of that lonely bachelor, but expressed in his folded arms and upturned face.
1 842, which saw that, also saw John O'Neill's poem "The Drunkard," and especially The Raving Maniac and the Driv'ling Fool, one of four etchings by Cruikshank which illustrate
52
OVER-HEAD AND UNDER-FOOT. From "The Comic
Almanack," 1842. ce
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
it. An anonymous writer, in an article for an 1876 reprint of the etchings, says that these two figures " are the most forcible ever drawn by the artist's pencil." This opinion is unjust to the force of Cruikshank's comic figures, and to that terrible pair, Fagin in the condemned cell and Underbill bawling at the stake, but the force of the etching thus praised is extraordinary. With parted blubber lips and knees relaxed, his nerveless left hand dangling at the wrist like a dead white leaf, his right hand grasping the gin-glass, the fool, un- conscious of tragedy, faces the maniac who streams upon the air sleeves that much exceed the length of his homicidal arms. By reason of the delicacy of the etching which conveys these haunting figures, they excite pleasure before horror, and always in horror a little pleasure too.
We now come to the famous series entitled The Bottle (1847) and its sequel The Drunkard's Children (184-8). Both these works were printed from glyphographic blocks and have as little charm as a stentorian oration in a small chapel. The story they tell, told also in verse by Dr Charles Mackay, is the ruin of a working
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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
man and his family through drink. The appeal of The Bottle is simple enough to appal the aborigines of Africa, to say nothing of the East End: the bottle is a "Ju-ju/' an evil fetish; the impulse of the beholder is to smash the bottle rather than to spill and waste its con- tents. Yet when the eye succeeds in detach- ing itself from this pompously evident bottle, it perceives that the artist has cared also for details less immediate, but of a finer eloquence. The liberally filled mantelshelf of plate 1 is at least not a mere labour of memory, though no one exceeds George Cruikshank in the pictorial multiplication of domestic details. This mantelshelf is a symbol ; symbols, too, are the open cupboard, so well furnished that a less industrious artist would have shut it, and the ill-drawn but well-nourished felinity by the fire. In plate 2 the cupboard holds naught but two jugs; the lean cat prowls over the bare table ; an ornament on the mantelshelf lies on its side. Had an artist and not a missionary composed plate 3, we might have been spared the indecency of a bottle in Lucy's lap when the furniture is distrained to pay the bottle's debt. Yet with what horrid strength
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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
does the maniac in plate 7 clutch the mantel- piece, whose bare ledge is lit by a dip stuck in a bottle, while all the neighbours stare at something whose face we cannot see ! The artist has shouted till he was hoarse, but his story is in our marrows.
The Drunkard's Children contains one master- piece : plate 1, the boy's death on the convict- ship. The convict who closes his eyes has the sagacity of a sentient corpse ; the shadow he casts on the screen which two convicts draw around the bed is, in effect, a creature to startle us, and the visible half of -the chap- lain's top-hat lying on a bench in a corner of the drawing is an irony which seems to belong to a later age than Cruikshank's.
The Bottle, employed as an argument by Mr William Cash, converted Cruikshank to teetotalism. The result has been to present the artist to modern hedonists in the light of a ludicrous bore. Certain it is that in his version of Cinderella (1854) he causes the dwarf to inform the King that " the history of the use of strong drinks is marked on every page by excess which follows, as a matter of course, from the very nature of their composition,"
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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
the italics being Cruikshank's, though they might well be mine. Teetotalism needs talk- ing and writing, and Cruikshank was happy to oblige. He possessed a fluent pen, and delivered lay sermons with enthusiasm and originality.
About four years after his abandonment of alcohol, Cruikshank began to figure as a pamphleteer. In 1851 appeared his "Stop Thief" — containing hints for the prevention of housebreaking, hallmarked by teetotalism : it has a drawing of a burglar retiring because his companion discloses a board containing the words, "No Admittance Except On Business." In 1852 came the "Betting Book," against both drink and betting ; this has a drawing of two wonderfully knowing fox-faced bipeds contemplating a row of geese absorbed in the perusal of the betting lists. Followed " The Glass and the New Crystal Palace" (1853), in which, after confessing that he "clung to that contemptible, stupid and dirty habit " of smoking three years after he had "left off wine and beer," he adds, " at last I laid down my meerschaum pipe and said, ' Lie you there ! and I will never take you up again.' " The
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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
drawings of anserine flight and intoxication here reproduced compel us to admit that the cerebral compartment containing Cruikshank's sense of humour was watertight. In 1854 came " George Cruikshank's Magazine." It lived long enough for him to inveigh against tobacco through the medium of a rather lifeless etching entitled Tobacco Leaves No. I ; and he died before he could publish in it certain drawings, included, I believe, in a series given to the world in 1895 by Sir B. W. Richardson, which ridicule the "hideous, abominable, and most dangerous custom " of sucking the handles of sticks and umbrellas. To the didactic excesses of his " Fairy Library " I need not further refer, but in 1856 came a quasi-temperance pamphlet, "The Bands in the Parks," where the devil plays the violin with his tail ; in 1857, " A Slice of Bread and Butter" (re-issued with prefatory "Remarks " in 1870), a good-humoured satire on conflicting views of charity towards waifs ; in 1 860, "A Pop- Gun ... in Defence of the British Volunteers of 1803"; in 1863, "A Discovery concerning Ghosts," in which he claimed to be the only one who ever thought "of the gross absurdity ... of
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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
there being such things as ghosts of wearing ap- parel, iron armour, walking sticks, and shovels " ; and here we have a mild and pleasant hint of the inspissated egoism which dictated " The Artist and the Author" (1872), the work in which Cruikshank asserted himself to be the ori- ginator of "Oliver Twist," "The Miser's Daughter" and "The Tower of London." This unfortunate but characteristic pamphlet is the last of the series that seems to have been called into existence by the insanabile scribendi cacoethes induced by his fame as a teetotaler. I said characteristic, because a jealous dislike of seeing his individuality merged into, overshadowed by, or confounded with any other is apparent not only in 1872, but in 1834, when he carefully named in " My Sketch Book " his brother Robert's works, and pictured himself as lifting off the ground, by tongs applied to the nose, their publisher Kidd, for whom he is anxious to state he only illustrated "The Gentleman in Black" (1831). Moreover in I860 he misused his " Pop-Gun " to picture another publisher, who advertised his nephew Percy as Cruikshank tout court, as a sandwich-man similarly assaulted by 60
(6) THE GOOSE AFTER THE WHISKEY. From " The Glass and the New Crystal Palace," 1853
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
him ; yet by some freak of humour or affec- tion the "very excellent, industrious, worthy good fellow " Percy, over whom I throw the embroidery of his uncle's praise, bestowed the name of George upon his son, as if for the confusion of bibliographers, and the evocation of a spirit armed with the ghosts of tongs. In- deed the gods themselves seem to have sported with George Cruikshank's name, for Dr Nagler, having read that "the real Simon Pure was George Cruikshank," wrote thus in his " Neues allgemeines Kiinstler-Lexicon" (1842): "Pure Simon, der eigentliche Name des beriihmten Carikaturzeichners Georg [sic] Cruikshank."
Simon Pure shall save us from digression by leading us to a didactic work by Cruik- shank of which Mrs Centlivre's "quaking preacher" would have heartily approved. This work is the oil-painting entitled The Worship of Bacchus (1862). It is an old man's athletic miracle, being a picture thirteen feet four by seven feet eight, of which there exists an etching by the same hand of less, though formidable size, which was published June 20, 1864. The oil-painting was pre- sented to the nation by Cruikshank's friends
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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
and conveyed to its destination April 8, 1869- Cruikshank drew a fancy sketch of his mam- moth on that great day of its life. Little did he imagine what the cognoscenti of the twentieth century would think of it.
I saw it in 1902 ; visited it much as one visits an incarcerated friend, following a learned official with jingling keys to a dun- geon under the show-rooms of the National Gallery. It was alone, was convict 495, alone and dingy. Many phrases have been found for this picture. John Stewart said that it contains " all the elemental types of pictorial grouping, generalised 011 the two axioms of balance and variety." Another critic said that " it is not even a picture, but a multitude of pictures and bits of pictures crowded to- gether in one huge mass of confusion and puzzle." Cruikshank himself said, speaking August 28, 1 862, " I have not the vanity to call it a picture. ... I painted it with a view that a lecturer might use it as so many diagrams."
However he felt, Cruikshank spoke correctly.
Painted in low relief, the oil-painting presents
his intention less satisfactorily than his
etching of the same subject. Whatever its
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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
demerit, the work is extremely Cruikshankian. Robert and George Cruikshank, in the " Corin- thian Capital " of "Life in London/' patched up a similarly artificial fabric. George, in a work that should not be mentioned in the same breath — The Triumph of Cupid (1845)— evokes innumerable amatory incidents by means of the tobacco which he renounced so con- tumeliously. We have in The Worship of Bacchus, the result of a method equally naif and ingenious. The root idea is materialised in conjunction with a myriad of associative ideas, and the picture is worse than a con- fusion ; it is a ghastly and ostentatious pattern at which one can neither laugh nor cry. It is the work of a big accomplished child, whose ambition to be grown up has destroyed his charm.
At the summit of the picture Bacchus and Silenus wave wine-glasses while respectively standing and sitting on hogsheads. In the middle of the design is a stone ornamented with death's-heads, 011 which a drunkard waves a glass and bottle in front of the god and demi- god. The stone has an inscription tributary to the drunkard's victims. On the left side
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
of the throne of Bacchus are a distillery, reformatory, etc. ; on the right is a House of Correction, Magdalen Hospital, etc. In short, the picture is a pictorial chrestomathy of drink. That it has converted people, that it has even won the tribute of a man's tears, is not surprising, for it is, or was, full of truth- ful suggestion seizable by the mind's eye. But it is not beautiful. Thackeray might call it "most wonderful and labyrinthine"; it is ugly and ill painted, for Cruikshank was no Hogarth with the brush.
So it lay, and perhaps yet lies in its dungeon, and overhead Silenus still triumphs divinely drunk on Rubens's canvas ; and Bacchus, ardent for Ariadne, leaps from his chariot in that masterpiece of Titian, which Sir Edward Poynter believes is " possibly the finest picture in the world." Poussin's Bacchanalian fes- tivities are still for the mirth of a world whence Bacchus has fled ; but the god en- throned on hogsheads is not mistaken for Bacchus now : Bacchus was stronger than Cruikshank. The whole deathless pagan world of beauty and laughter is by him made rosier and more silvery. Cruikshank never drew 68
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
him ; the god he drew was Bung in mas querade.
I was at Sotheby's on May 22, 1903, when the Royal Aquarium copy of the etching of The Worship of Bacchus was sold. It evoked a sneer of <e wall paper " ; and if etchings could think, it would have envied the seclusion in which I found its brother in oils.
But at least it was not given to the nation. The fact that the National Gallery should possess Cruikshank's colossal failure instead of his Fairy Ring, instead of any etching from " Grimm " or " Points of Humour," is an accusation against common sense and a triumph of irony.
Let it be remembered, however, that Cruik- shank's exposure of ebriety from 1829 to 1875, the date which John Pearce in "House and Home " assigns to his last temperance piece, deserved at times the notice of fame. Matthew Arnold, denying the power of (( breathless glades, cheer'd by shy Dian's horn" to calm the spectator of The Bottle, showed more than his ignorance of Diana and her peace. He showed that Cruikshank the preacher was a magician too.
c/ 69
IV
THE best part of Cruikshank's service to Fact has yet to be considered. We have seen how he journalised and exhorted ; we have still to see the talent he poured into journalism and exhortation refined by his historical sense and expressing itself in shapes of treasurable beauty.
The historical sense in art may be liberally defined as an aesthetic impulse to fix the vanish- ing and recover the vanished fact. It may be absent at the birth of a cartoon filled with political portraits and it may have urged the reproduction of a quiet landscape with nothing more human in it than a few trees or a line of surf. It operates without pressure of topi- cality and it is stronger than the tyranny of humour.
The reader, searching for the earliest ex- amples of Cruikshank's historical imagination to be found in the books which he illustrated, would first of all alight on "The Annals of 70
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Gallantry/' by Dr A. Moore (1814-15), and "An Historical Account of the Campaign in the Netherlands in 1815," by William Mudford (1817). Suspecting the grotesque, he would nevertheless also examine the thirty plates to the Hudibrastic " Life of Napoleon" (1815) by Dr Syntax.
As to the " Annals," one may unreluctantly condemn the whole series of plates after a glance at the feeble scratches which disfigure the amours of Lady Grosvenor and the Duke of Cumberland, and the elopement of Lady W with Lord Paget. In Mudford's un- generous history, Cruikshank's frontispiece, engraved by Rouse (as are his other contribu- tions), has the stiff integrity of portraiture to be expected from a repressed caricaturist ; Napoleon in flight on his white horse in another plate does not even support the comparison of his horsemanship to a sack of flour's ; the ribbon-like plate of Waterloo, full of micro- scopic figures, has the chastened spirit natural to a work done (e under the inspection of officers who were present at that memorable conflict."
The illustrations to Dr Syntax's Hudibrastic
71
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
poem on Napoleon have some originality to recommend them as a starting-point for the student of Cruikshank as a delineator of historical subjects. They are etchings, broad as the typed surface of an octavo page is long, and include the Red Man derided on page 21. But the artist already shows that he has fancy as well as satire at his command. Witness the illusion created by the sleeping Napoleon lifting the coat on his bed in humping the counterpane with perpendicular toes, an effect which was remembered in Cruikshank's Ideality (Phrenological Illustrations, 1826). There is humour, too, in the etching which represents one of Napoleon's grenadiers mounted on a stool in order to look as terrible as his com- panions. Though a rancorous prejudice makes Napoleon stand on a cross in one plate and his apothecary smile at poisoning the sick at Jaffa in another, there is sympathy in a third which depicts him nursing the Ring of Rome, and the eccentricities of Cruikshank's journalistic style are happily absent.
We may now pause at the four famous volumes of" The Humourist " (1819-20). They contain, inter alia, a portrait of Alfieri — a fine 72
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
figure of silent disdain — in the act of sweeping to the floor the tea service of a badly drawn Princess, who was tactless enough to wish he had broken the whole set instead of one cup. The table leg is a satyr's surmounted by the Mephistophelian head considered appropriate to the companions of Pan ; above the main design are the implements of a writer ; below it are two porcelain mandarins yoked to a three- headed and triply derisive bust. Another historical subject in "The Humourist" is Daniel Lambert, to whom a bear once doffed his hat. Ursine politeness and the petrified majesty of fat Lambert fill the foreground of the etching ; behind is a rout of people frightfully interested in another bear. In the former of these etchings the hint is better than the performance ; the latter hints nothing and performs a little admirably.
1823-4- is a period to which we owe some historical etchings of consummate skill. They illustrated " Points of Humour/' a work in two parts which was expressly designed to afford scope for Cruikshank's power of rendering ludicrous situations. The artist was on his mettle, and his twenty etchings for this collec-
73
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
tion of anecdotes are among the immortal children of Momus. Among his simpler designs is the scene in the apartment of Frederick the Great when his heir presumptive demanded if the monarch would return his shuttlecock. The required studies of childish impudence and royal amusement are perfect. More elaborate, but equally successful, is the drawing of the voracious boor, the ill-natured general whom he offered to eat, and the King of Sweden wrho enjoyed the spectacle of their emotions. The boor with the hog on a plate under his arm, his terrible teeth a-glitter for hog and general, is more alarming than the ogre in Cruikshank's Hop-o -my-Thumb ; he tacitly affirms his crea- tor's power to confer delicious terrors on the nursery. Flying Konigsmark's fear of pointing hand and barrack-like paunch mingles exquisitely with the hatred of his backward glance, and Charles Gustavus smiles with un- pardonable aplomb. The etching is a comic masterpiece. After this there is no advance in Cruikshank's comic treatment of history, for his quite simple rendering, more than ten years later, Miscellany" (1838), of a freak of absent-mindedness on the part of Sir Isaac
74
TURPIN'S FLIGHT THROUGH EDMONTON. From "Rookwood," 1836.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Newton in "Bentley's, is of merely sufficient merit.
The Ainsworth-Cruikshank connection be- gan, artistically, with the etchings which illus- trate the fourth edition of" Rookwood " (1836). If for Turpin we read Nevison, the novel may pass as quasi-historical. The etching here re- produced is in what may be called Cruikshank's " Humourist " style. It has vivacity and brightness. The reader who figured himself passing into romance through the pretty portico of trees depicted on Ainsworth's title-page, will feel, as he looks at this representation of comic prodigy, that he has arrived.
One thief succeeded another, and in 1839 Jack Sheppard was pilfering his way through "Bentley's Miscellany." If he had done nothing else, Cruikshank would have made a deathless reputation for technical skill by the etchings in "Jack Sheppard." Sala, who copied the shop-scene entitled The name on the beam., observes of this etching, at once so pre- cise and imaginative, that it is " in its every de- tail essentially Hogarthian." It is a just saying. One can easily imagine Dr Trusler poring over it and recording his small discoveries with
77
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
something of the relish he found in his Hogarthian exploration. Appropriately enough, Hogarth's portrait appears in the clever etch- ing which depicts Jack in chains sitting to two artists, the other being Sir James Thornhill. Thackeray has done justice to the high qualities of the etchings entitled The Storm and The Murder on the Thames. There are effects in Cruikshank's river scenes poetic enough and near enough to that verity which Impressionists serve better than Ruskinians, to have detained Whistler for a minute that might have regene- rated the fame of Cruikshank.
"Jack Sheppard," with its requisition of antiquarian exactness so plausibly met, may well have suggested to Cruikshank a more epic theme than the exploits of a master-thief, revolving about a nobler gaol than Newgate. In a letter which may or may not have been posted (it is to be read at the back of No. 9910 H in the Cruikshank collection at South Kensington), he writes : " The fact is, I am endeavouring to emancipate myself from the thraldom of the Booksellers, whose slave I have been nearly all my life ; to effect this object I have published, in conjunction with
78
JONATHAN WILD SEIZING JACK SHEPPARD AT HIS
MOTHER'S GRAVE IN W1LLESDEN CHURCHYARD.
From "Jack Sheppard," 1839.
I
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
the author, a work called 'The Tower of London.' "
Of the acrimonious discussion that Cruik- shank started by claiming to have originated Ainsworth's romance, I shall say little. That Cruikshaiik was the senior partner there is no doubt. It was he who took Ainsworth to the Tower, and he asserted that he " hardly ever read a line" of the text, which must be con- sidered to illustrate his designs. It may be said, however, that Ainsworth's text has been repeatedly devoured without the aid of Cruik- shank's designs. He was a public idol. Smiled on once by Sir Walter Scott, he contrived to become the first horror-monger, rid history, of an age whose favourite realism was the safe realism of torture and decent crime. In the September before his death, which occurred January 3, 1882, he was informed by the Mayor of Manchester that the last twelve months' record of the public free libraries of that town showed that " twenty volumes of his works" were " being perused in Manchester by readers of the free libraries every day all the year through."
That I may not write a decrescendo about 8l
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
the designs for " The Tower of London/' I begin with their faults. Cruikshank's Simon Renard is too darkling a Spaniard even for a staged Spain, and even Lady Jane Grey's waist should have been made rather larger than her throat. "Mere skeletons in farthingales/' quoth "The Athenaeum " of Cruikshank's Queen Mary, Jane and Elizabeth. To what extent defective figure-drawing diminishes the proper force of Cruikshank's designs the reader may judge by the reproduction of The Death Warrant, which is presented as a frank example of his melodramatic invention. The masked assassin peers at the Spanish Ambassador through the window of the chamber of the Tower where the little princes were murdered, and where the pen that has just doomed Lady Jane Dudley hovers in Queen Mary's hand. Her hound is an incarnate presentiment and the gods of old Drury could have asked no more. There are, however, far finer plates in the book. In Underbill, the Hot Gospeller, burning at the stake, his finger nails riveted to his bare shoulders while he bawls his last agony, Cruikshank shows the longevity of the Marian crime — the crime of creating fears and 82
THE DEATH WARRANT. From " The Tower of London," 1 840.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
loathings, for here we have absolutely a reflective shudder, a naked confidence from an abominable place which we thought was cleansed by merciful years. No other figure in the gallery of Cruikshank's "Tower" is so vital as this dying man, but he drew a hand- some Wyat, an executioner as repulsive as a ghoul, and groups — for instance Elizabeth and her escort on the steps of Traitor's Gate — which a stage manager of melodrama might like to imitate.
Partly contemporaneous with "The Tower of London " was Ainsworth's " Guy Fawkes " (1840-1) with Cruikshankian etchings, which are as little serviceable to the dignity of a brave fanatic as the effigies exhibited by boys on the fifth of November. Cruikshank had drawn a typical effigy of Guy for ' ' The Every-Day Book " of 1826 ; twelve years later came his ludicrous Guys in Council, but being required in 184-0 to produce a serious Guy he only succeeded in being operatic. In one of his etchings the rigidity of Guy's cloak suggests that the garment is a " bath-cabinet " in occupation ; in another a celestial visitor resembles a Dutch doll. Such failures are not
<* 85
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
to be explained by a desire to annoy the publisher of "Guy Fawkes," Richard Bentley, whom Cruikshank bitterly attacked in 1842. Cruikshank could and did produce etchings in a hurry for stories which he had not read, by way of expressing his dislike for a contract which survived his approval of it; but he could also be befooled by his own solemnity.
Cruikshank's relations with Ainsworth continued in " Ainsworth's Magazine," of which the first number bears the date February 1842. Among the stories in this magazine which Cruikshank illustrated must now be mentioned "The Miser's Daughter" (1842), "Windsor Castle" (1842-3) and "St James's: or the Court of Queen Anne" (1844). The first of these stories is only incidentally historical, but it afforded Cruikshank an opportunity for quickening his hand with the spirit of place. He has told us that his drawing of West- minster Abbey Cloisters and Lambeth Church, etc., are "correct copies from nature" [sic], and it almost seems as we look at his etchings and watercolours for "The Miser's Daughter" that he copied not only stones but living scenes. His ball in the Rotunda at Ranelagh has the 86
THE DUEL IN TOTHILL FIELDS ("The Miser's Daughter "). From " Ainsworth's Magazine," 1842.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
charm of lavish light and dainty gaiety ; the humour and grace of his Masquerade in Ranelagh Gardens are too obvious for discovery, and his rendering of the pursuit of a Jacobite Club on the roofs of houses within view of Westminster Abbey is a striking nocturne.
In Cruikshank's designs for" Windsor Castle," Mr Julian Moore finds "the minimum of charm and freshness in the drawing, and maximum of achievement in technique." I am in disagreement with this verdict, but it is not unintelligent. Cruikshank's "machine- ruling " is tyrannous to his Ainsworthian work, and an artist serving the historic muse when she is very much in earnest can only pray to be academic when he is not inspired. But Cruikshank did admirable work for " Windsor Castle," and could hardly help wishing to outshine Tony Johannot, who was also em- ployed in illustrating that romance. Since " the great George " is not present to assail me in a vehement script, I may say that I discern an influence of Johannot upon Cruikshank's design (spirited but not in- sufferably vigorous) entitled The Quarrel between Will Sommers and Patch, for there was some-
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
thing called artistic restraint to be learned from the French illustrator of Cervantes, and this quality is in the etching I have mentioned, and not negatively there but as a positive gift of touch. Of Cruikshank's Henry the Eighth, it need only be said that he is bluff King Hal ; his Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour are mere females : his Herne is as impressive as a person can be who jeopardises the dignity of demonhood by wearing horns.
"St James's," the last important novel by Ainsworth which Cruikshank illustrated, gave the artist opportunities for drawing St James's Palace, London, and portraits of the Duke of Marlborough and other celebrities. He ac- cepted these opportunities, but his most striking designs remind one of his illustrations for Smollett. He rejoices in the contrast between masculine lath and feminine tub, and in one plate afflicts us with a grinning face which exceeds in ugliness any of C. Delort's portraits of "I'Homme qui rit." The vigorous design here given touches the imagination on account of the absent presence of the dame in the picture hanging on the wall.
In " Ainsworth' s Magazine" for January 90
THE MARQUIS DE GUISCARD ATTEMPTING TO
ASSASSINATE HARLEY. The man on the table draw- ing his sword is the Duke of Newcastle (u Saint James's "). From " Ains worth's Magazine," 1844.
GEORGE CRU1KSHANK
1846 the last fruit of Cruikshank's connection with Ains worth appeared, after a year's sterility, as a careful etching illustrating that novelist's "Sir Lionel Flamstead, a Sketch " : in the preceding year Cruikshank produced for W. H. Maxwell the series of historic etchings which, in the opinion of Mr Frederic G. Stephens, "marks the highest point of Cruikshank's invention." These etch- ings illustrate a history of the insurrections in Ireland in 1798 and 1803. In the selection of Cruikshank, Maxwell or his publishers may have remembered the skill with which he had illustrated I. Whitty's " Tales of Irish Life " (1824), though it is one thing to render the frantic humour of a fight arising from O'Finn calling Redmond a rascal, or the muddled emotions of a wake, and quite another to ex- hibit the conflict between two nightmares of patriotism. Howbeit Cruikshank realised the horror and poetry of war. His twenty-one Maxwellian etchings are instructively com- parable with Callot's precious series " Les Miseres et les Mal-heurs de la Guerre (1633). Callot is at once more horrible and self- restrained. One peers into his work ; one
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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
listens to Cruikshank's. The artist of the seventeenth century drew with minute delicacy the forms and gestures of men. He studied them as a naturalist, indifferent to the in- dividuality of the unit after fixing the in- dividuality of the class to which it belongs. Callot's men are users of the wheel and the estrapade ; they roast the husband while they ravish the wife. They are not grotesques : they are men. Maurice Leloir drew men of their age and country no more elegantly for the bravest novel of Dumas. Cruikshank, on the other hand, drew well and hideously not only Irish men, but Irish individuals. His rebel, obscenely jocose, impaling a child, might, though a detail in a crowded etching, have been drawn for Scotland Yard; so too might a woman squatting and smoking while a wretch writhes on four pikes which take his weight and give it him back in torture. England is to glow, Ireland is to blush as she looks at Cruikshank's people of '98. As clear on the memory as his Irish ruffianism is his portrait of the little drummer dying with his leg through his drum to protect its voice from dishonour. One has heard of Lieutenant
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Hepenstall — him who was called " The Walk- ing Gallows " — as well as of the drummer of Gorey, but Cruikshank was satisfied with partizanship, and Ireland forgets him.
Our liberal interpretation of history allows us now to consider a few of the works of Cruikshank which preserve for us scenes and types of his age with or without the accompani- ment of a fictitious text.
For his delineations of the sailor of Nelson's day we owe much to a capital but neglected novelist M. H. Barker, -author of "Greenwich Hospital" (1826), "Topsail-Sheet Blocks" (1838), "The Old Sailor's Jolly Boat" (184-4), etc. Before the appearance of the earliest of these books Cruikshank had etched Lieut. John Sheringham's designs entitled "The Sailor's Progress" (1818), and those by Capt. Marryat entitled " The Progress of a Midship- man " (1820). The illustrations to the quarto called " Greenwich Hospital," are deservedly the most famous of Cruikshank's sea-pictures. With lavish detail they exhibit Jack tearing along by coach across pigs and fowls at finable knots per hour ; carousing in the Long Room with billowy sirens under a chandelier of
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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
candles ; crossing the line in a frenzy of ceremonious facetiousness ; yelling in an inn- parlour — though armless or "half a tree"- his delight in victory and Nelson; . . . and tied up for a whipping like a naughty boy. Barker was so pleased with one of the illustra- tions for" Greenwich Hospital" that he wrote on a proof (No. 1003-4 in the Cruikshank collec- tion at South Kensington), " Dear Friend, if you never do another design, the leg of that table will immortalise you. It is a bona fide Peg." There is a mood in which Clio prefers that crippled table-leg to Cruikshank's idea of Solomon Eagle "denouncing of Judgment" upon London.
We have now sounded the word which invites inquiry as to the nature of Cruikshank's artistic service to London. London is not the Tower or St James's Palace. Cruikshank, however, is not injured by this scorching truism. If we go back to 1827 and 1829 we encounter in "The Gentleman's Pocket Magazine" twenty- four London Characters) of which fifteen are from the hand of George Cruikshank, who doubtless remembered Row- landson's "Characteristic Sketches of the
SOLOMON EAGLE. From the drawing by G. Cruik- shank, as engraved by Davenport for " A Journal ot the Plague Year," 1833.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Lower Orders " (1820). George is responsible for very neat portraits of a beadle, waterman, dustman, watchman . . ., and the Cruik- shankian enthusiast cries " Eureka ! " for he spies Mr Bumble among them. With " Sunday in London" (1833) came the first example of Cruikshank's comic treatment of London, which a book-collector, as distinct from a print-collector, can prize. The woodcuts in this volume reveal a state of society in which people had less sense of proportion than they have now, and were excessively vain or exces- sively humble, according to the state of their paunch and the view of them held by the policeman or the beadle. The power of the beadle had not yet been broken by a metrical inquiry concerning the origin of his hat. Frenchmen were still "mounseers," and soldiers marched to Divine Service through St James's Park to the tune of "Drops of Brandy." The flavour of the obsolete is rich in "Sunday in London" ; we who look at it feel strangely toned-down.
Place in London as well as character is presented vividly in Cruikshank's contributions to " Sketches by Boz " (1836-7). Witness the
99
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
examples here given. In The Streets, Morning, I, a Londoner, feel the poetry of streets cleansed by quiet, the chastity of Comfort enjoyed, as it were, by the tolerance of Hard- ship. The little sweep is an extinct animal, and yet we are in the neighbourhood of Seven Dials. Monmouth Street, as exhibited by Cruikshank in the same work, is an appreciation of the Hebrew dealer in old clothes as well as a caricature. We feel the street to be an open-air parlour and nursery combined ; it remains imperturbably domestic though we walk in it. Another etching, depicting a beadle hammering the door of a house supposed to be on fire, elicited from Mr Frederick Wedmore the confession that he knew no artist "so alive as Cruikshank to the pretty sedateness of Georgian architecture," though the remark will be more appreciated after a look at the pretty etching entitled French Musicians or Les Savoyards (1819), reprinted in " Cruikshankiana " (1 835).
Cruikshank's London ideas were further
realised in "Oliver Twist" (1838), a novel to
which he contributed etchings so documentaiy
as well as imaginative that he attempted to
loo
THE STREETS, MORNING. From « Sketches by Boz," Second Series, 1837.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
deprive Dickens of the glory of authorship, by claiming the origination of the story. The fact was, he had grown to be a collector : he was collecting fame, and in the passion of his hobby he felt that he might claim to have originated the novel which owed local colour and a formative idea to his suggestions. The subject really belongs to the pathology of egoism. Cruikshank gained nothing by seek- ing laurels in the field of literature except the impression on paper of a weakness one prefers to call juvenile rather than puerile.
Yet he had much to give Boz, if that gentleman was minded to write of rogues, Cruikshank knew all about Buzmen and Adam- tilers ; the days when he drank bene bowse had not been wasted, if low life be worth depicting. We may accept as portraits his Fagin and Sikes and Artful Dodger, without digesting the statement that Fagin condemned is himself in perplexity, and Fagin uncon- demned the image of Sir Charles Napier. Undoubtedly, the workhouses in England of the third decade of the nineteenth century are in popular fancy all ruled by the nameless master in cook's uniform, of whom Oliver 103
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
asked more, but it is not Boz's master, it is Cruikshank's. All beadles are one Mr Bumble — the Bumble of Boz and Cruikshank, though without the shadow of the sack with which the novelist eclipsed him. The etched scene where Fagin, frying sausages, receives Oliver in a den of thieves, has a squalid comfortable- ness— a leering charity — which praises Hell. The etched scene of Sikes's desperation on the roof of a house in Jacob's Island, Bermondsey, is in essence Misery itself, vermicular as well as violent. The etched scene where Fagin sits with blazing eyes in the condemned cell at Newgate under a window which shows him up like the Day of Judgment has been called fe a picture by Fagin," for rhetoric exhausts itself in confessing its horror. In "Jack Sheppard," Cruikshank drew Newgate with particularity, he drew Bedlam with a maniac in it; for "A Journal of the PJague Year," he drew The Great Pit in Aldgate, but Fagin in his extremity belittles other horrors in Cruikshank's gallery of art. London is ashamed to see and acknowledge him ; he makes her long for rain, and soap in the rain ; he makes her remember her river.
104
THE LAST CABDRIVER. From " Sketches by Boz,' Second Series, 1837.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
The reader will therefore look sympathetic- ally at the powerful etching here reproduced from Angus B. Reach's "Clement Lorimer" (1849). It is a kidnapping scene; there is a drugged girl in the boat; the pier against which an oar has snapped supports an arch of London Bridge
It might be doubted if Cruikshank personally cared for any locality except London if it were not for evidence in the South Kensington Museum and the dispersed collection of the metropolitan Royal Aquarium. Number 9502^ in the South Kensington collection of his work is a design for a house which he intended to build for himself at the seaside. The Royal Aquarium collection contained several water- colours by him of littoral subjects. Hastings may remember what she was like before the building of her esplanade by means of two water-colours by him,, dated respectively 1820 and 1828, which Mr Walter Spencer bought for five guineas. A Distant View of Shakespeare's Cliff] Dover, secured by Mr Frank Karslake, tempted that art-dealer, who was its possessor when I last saw it, to withhold it from his customers. It is soft, slight and pretty. With a fanciful 107
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Beachy Head (a water-colour " sketch from [sic] part of Shakespeare's Cliff, Dover, 1830") it sold for seven guineas, the " Beachy Head " being an outline of the cliff resembling a head looking left with dropped eyelid as seen (perhaps exclusively) by Cruikshank, who re- presents himself as standing in front of it ; and I mention this "Beachy Head" because the same idea informs a rather subtle drollery in " My Sketch Book" (1833), where a couple are depicted in their fright at seeing a human face outlined by the edge of the top of Shakespeare's Cliff. All the sales mentioned in this paragraph were made at the auction at Sotheby's, 22 and 23 May 1903.
We have had already to touch on the way in which Cruikshank was the historian of himself. Thanks to his literary aggressiveness, mixed with love, so quaint and like talk in expres- sion, that his pages resemble cylinders for a phonograph, we look at his autobiographical drawings with genuine interest. In Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson's publication of 1895 — " Drawings by George Cruikshank, prepared by him to illustrate an intended autobiography " — we are introduced pictorially
108
MASS Like c.a-ti.lr ol a\vii/ du/rtruo kor Tr3.nct. . From "Clement Lorimer," 1849.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
to "George, Nurse, Brother and Mother at Hampstead " ; and the same volume shows our artist unpleasantly situated on a roof sub titulo The Button-hole of a Naughty boy caught by a nail. In the South Kensington collection George shows us very crudely a Fire in the South East end oj London to which I ran when a boy with the Engine from Bloomsbury. In 1 877 George sketched himself as he was about 1799> when he looked at his father while Isaac Cruikshank was drawing, and we realise the affection in this reminiscence upon seeing George's grotesques of low life done when he was " a very little boy " on the same page where the academic Isaac has drawn a conventional heroic nude and a little girl suitable for a nursery magazine (S.K. coll. No. 9814). Under a pencil sketch (S.K. coll. No. 9817) we read " George Cruikshank when a boy used to put his mother's Fur Tippet over his head like the above and make frightful faces for fun." In published work Cruikshank repeatedly presents his own portrait, my favourite examples of his self-portraiture being the painter in Nobody desires the Painter to make him as ugly and ridiculous as possible (" Scraps and 111
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Sketches/' 1831), and that of himself going in as a steward with Dickens and others to a Public Dinner ("Sketches by Boz," 1836). An excellent example of a comic presentation of himself is the frontispiece to this volume. Enviable and admirable health of mind is shown by Cruikshank's love of his own face, upon which flourished, under a high forehead and "blue-grey eyes, full of a cheerful sparkling light," " an ambiguous pair of ornaments," par- taking "vaguely," writes Mr Walter Hamilton, "of the characteristics" of whiskers, moustaches and beard.
I conclude this chapter with a reproduction of a painting by George Cruikshank in the South Kensington Museum. The lady is yellow-haired and has a good complexion. It appears to be a portrait of Mrs George Cruikshank (nee Widdison), his second wife, whose preiiomen was Eliza. She could draw, for there is a vapid but well-finished female head by her in the South Kensington collection of her husband's work (No. 10,038-4). She is not, of course, to be confounded with Cruikshank's sister Eliza, who designed the caricature of the Four Prues. 112
ELIZA CRUIKSHANK. From a painting by George Cruik- shank in the South Kensington Museum, No. 9769, endorsed "Mrs George Cruikshank E.G. 1884." The date is supposed to refer to the year of presentation to the museum.
WE have now to consider Cruikshank as a supernaturalist. Perhaps there is no role in which he is more sincerely esteemed. His simple egoism and self-conceit protected him from an apprehension of the nothingness of matter in the eye of a being who is uncontrolled by the world-idea. He could not conceive that a mind can impose the idea of a form upon an inferior mind, or a mind in sympathy with it : hence his egregious " discovery concerning ghosts." His world of supernature was a play- ground of fancy where powers are denoted by the same symbols which inform us that this animal can run, and that animal can fly, and the other animal can think. It is a world of which the major part is peopled with forms so lively, gracious and fanciful that Mr Frederick Wedmore's violent preference of Keene to Cruikshank seems, in view of it, a kind of aggressive rationalism. This world, however,
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contains the Devil, and on this colliery monster we will bestow a few glances.
Cruikshank's best idea of the Devil is comedy of tail. In one of the "Twelve Sketches illustrative of Sir Walter Scott's Demonology and Witchcraft " (1830) he shows the archfiend seated on the back of a smiling elf who poses as a quadruped to provide a stool. The fiend is "dighting" an arrow by the light of the flaming hair of an elf who wears an extinguisher on his tail, and a cat enthusiastically plays with the forked appendage of the illustrious artisan. The dignity of labour is here inimitably mani- fest. Lovably ludicrous, too, is the Devil whom Cruikshank presents in The Deil cam fiddling thro' the Town (" Illustrations of Popular Works," 1830). " Auld Mahoun's " forked tail has caught the exciseman by the cravat. In "Scraps and Sketches" (1832). Cruikshank has another Devil who plays on a gridiron as if it were a guitar, to soothe a man who has been lassoed by his tail. " And if my tail should make you sad I'll strike my light guitar." In "A Discovery concerning Ghosts " (1863) Cruikshank depicts the Devil as lifting a table with his tail and one hoof. One of the 116
LEGEND OF ST MEDARD. The Saint has slit the bag in which the fiend is carrying children. From " The Ingoldsby Legends," 1842.
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Devils offered to my readers — he whom St Medard thwarted — is an example of good work in a bad setting ; the machine-ruled sky and " scandalously slurred distance " must be viewed as symptoms of Cruikshank' s dislike for Bentley, the publisher of " The Ingoldsby Legends." The cuts from " The True Legend of St Dunstan and the Devil" (1848) replace the perverted Pan — Pan as perverted for the abolition of his prestige — with a plaintive ruffian whose horns and hoofs disgrace a very obvious humanity.
Exit Devil: enter Satan. About 1827 Cruikshank drew him on wood, in the act of calling on his followers as related by Milton in "Paradise Lost," Book I., 11. 314-332. Cruikshank described the drawing referred to, which was engraved by an unconfident hand, as "the best drawing that I ever did in my life." A solitary print of the engraving made of it sold at Sotheby's for £3, 6s. On a towering rock, Satan calls up an army which looks like living ribbon wound up out of the bottomless pit to the ceiling of the air. His personality is felt by the effect of his command, not by his individual appearance..
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Michelangelo might have favourably considered this book-illustration as a bare sketch of a muster of the damned ; for as one looks at it he is tempted to give it to half a dozen painters and "put it in hand."
The naive evangelicism of " The Pilgrim's Progress " was productive of more of Cruik- shank's serious monsters. 1827 is the date of seven woodcuts by him for this work (Reid 3555-61) which do not impress Mr Spielmann ; they are, however, very neatly executed, and the drawing of Christian arriving at the Gate is quite unwarrantably pleasant in its suggestion of conflict and weariness ending in the bosom of hospitality. In 1838 Cruikshank contributed Vanity Fair — an elaborate etching — to a " Pilgrim's Progress " containing plates by H. Melville. Vanity Fair is a skilful catalogue marred by the misnaming of Britain Row. He produced another Vanity Fair, circa 1854, a vehement and uninteresting design which, with companion drawings by him of the same date, appears in Mr Henry Frowde's edition of " The Pilgrim's Progress " (1903). These drawings (only recently engraved) annoyed Mr G. S. Layard, and me they amuse and touch. They
120
SHOEING THE DEVIL. From Edward G. Flight's "The True Legend of St Dunstan and the Devil," 1848.
THE DEVIL SIGNING. From Edward G. Flight's « The True Legend of St Dunstan and the Devil," 1848.
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show that Cruikshank could draw the face of a man whose metier is goodness, . . . and that Apollyon — a veritable creature of tinker- craft in Bunyan's text — was utterly beyond Cruikshank's power to shape according to the crooked splendour of his name. One must not forget that a pious convention of absurdity is a trap for the critic and the humorist alike. I feel that Cruikshank almost loved Bunyan. Witness the large coloured print inscribed in his last decade, " Geo. Cruikshank 1871," where Christian — a Galahad of knightliness — passes through the snake-afflicted valley of the Shadow of Death.
Exit the Pilgrim, and re-enter the Devil. Cruikshank made remarkable successes in two series of illustrations wherein this magnate assumes the form of a man of our world. The books in which they appear are "Peter Schlemihl" by Adelbert von Chamisso (1823) and "The Gentleman in Black" by J. Y. Akerman (1831). To Chamisso the Devil is " a silent, meagre, pale, tall elderly man" wear- ing an " old-fashioned grey taffetan coat " with a " close-fitting breast-pocket " to it, and he is willing to buy Peter's shadow. Meagre 125
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and close-fitting is Cruikshank's idea of him ; he is only substantial enough to give posture and movement to his clothes. That is a beautiful etching where he is folding Peter's shadow as a tailor folds a suit and Peter is unaware of the terrible oddity of a foot on the ground having for shadow a foot in the air — a foot no longer subordinate to Peter who will tread the earth in despair when he is a shadowless man ; and that is a marrow- thrilling etching where Peter's tempter stands casting two shadows and flourishing a document promis- ing the delivery of Peter's soul to the bearer after its separation from Peter's body. There is a haunting cold brightness about the Schlemihl etchings. If you see them without a sensation of their difference from the work of any body except him who made them, your acquaintance includes a prodigy, a Cruikshank plus x. To J. Y. Akerman the Devil was "a. stout, short, middle-aged gentleman of a somewhat satur- nine complexion" who "was clad in black" and ff had a loose Geneva cloak . . . of the same colour." Like Schlemihl's customer he pays with a bottomless purse and in the cuts, en- graved by J. Thompson and C. Landells, we see 126
PETER SCHLEMIHL WATCHING THE CLOCK From "Peter Schlemihl," 1823. Copies of the book dated 1824 are also accepted as of the first edition.
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him a grave humorous and sinister person, who after his urbanity has been shaken by the cleverness of the law, is exhibited with- out warrant of narrative, as Old Horny on a gibbet. I presume the above-mentioned J Thompson, by the way, to be the John Thompson whom Cruikshank describes at the foot of a letter from this engraver dated "Feb. 7, [18]40," as "the Great, the wonderful Artistic Engraver on wood — and who used to engrave my drawings as no other man ever did."
After the Devil comes Punch, who in the puppet play destroys him. Punch is only by irony a nursery character. He represents the comic genius of murder. A Hooligan may feel like a Pharisee after looking at him. His coarse materialism would affront a pierreuse. Cruikshank drew Punch as early as 1814 in a plate, satirising a fete given by the Duke of Portland on the occasion of the baptism of an infant marquis. The plate is entitled " Belvoir Frolic's " [sic] and appears in No. 4 of "The Meteor." A very long-nosed Punch extols the beverage bearing his name, and his infant son falls into a punch-bowl while I29
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
being baptised by a drunkard. It was not, however, till 1828 that a reasonable joker could call Cruikshank's great hit a punch. That date is on the title-page of ef Punch and Judy " edited by J. Payne Collier, for whose publisher (S. Prowett) Cruikshank drew the scenes of the immortal puppet-play as pro- duced by Piccini, who defied any other puppet- showman in England to perform his feat of making the figure with the immoderate neck remove its hat with one hand. Thanks to Piccini, then, Cruikshank's Punch is the real Punch — a goggling miscreant, whose hump is a rigid and misplaced tail and whose military hat, above a crustacean's face, completes a rather melancholy effect of mania. The con- ductor of "George Cruikshank's Omnibus" confessed to feeling " that it was easy to represent " Punch's tf eyes, his nose, his mouth, but that the one essential was after all wanting — the squeak." Cruikshank was barely just to his pencil. As one looks at his Punch one feels that such a being is either a squeaker or a mute. As for the Devil, whose role is so humiliating in the Punch tromedy (as a neologist might call it), he is of an aspect 130
PUNCH THROWING AWAY THE BODY OF THE SERVANT. From "Punch and Judy," 1 828 (early proof). The portrait of George Cruik- shank below his initials does not appear in the book.
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pitiably mean — like a corpse attired in river mud.
After this, it is impossible not to realise the enormity of the compliment paid by the hand of Cruikshank (serving the imagination of G. H.) to Napoleon in that publication of August 1815, rashly stated by Mr Bruton to be the finest Napoleonic caricature, which depicts the imperial exile of St Helena as the Devil addressing a solar Prince Regent. Here the Devil gets the credit of a handsome face and Napoleon the debit of cloven feet.
Cruikshank's representation of the Devil as Old Nick has the absurd merit of recalling his idea of the servant of a good Peri ! Com- pare The Handsome Clear-starcher (" Bentley's Miscellany/' 1838) with The Peri [, the Djin] and the Taylor ("Minor Morals, Part III.," 1 839). Both these ornaments of my sex have white eyes windowing a black face, and the former, with heraldic sulphur fumes above his figure of Elizabethan dandy, is, if we do not date him, a horrible gibe at the feminine Satan of " sorrows."
Is there, the reader may now ask, not unmindful of the Miltonic drawing already
c* 133
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described^ no Satan among Cruikshank's Netherlander, to show that he saw the sublime of evil as clearly as he saw Fagin? Alas for catalogues raisonnes ! for if it were not for G. W. Reid we could not point the querist to Cruikshank's Lucifer in his illustra- tions on wood to George Clinton's " Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron " (1825). Of "a shape like to the angels, yet of a sterner and a sadder aspect of spiritual essence," not less beauteous than the cherubim, Cruikshank, with or withont an accomplice in another engraver, makes a black and white Moor, jointed like a Dutch doll, with wings which an Icarus would distrust.
Perhaps the most impressive conception of the author of unhappiness which Cruikshank executed was that which he owed to the imagination of Mrs Octavian Blewitt. In his last published etching, The Rose and the Lily (1875), he depicts, by her instruction, a lake out of which appears, like an islet, the weed- covered top of a vast head, the eyes of which are the only visible features. The lake is the abode of "The Demon of Evil" and his eyes of bale are upturned to regard a fairy
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queen and her suite who hover over a rose and a lily.
Cruikshank's favourite among semi-infernal or hemi-demi-semi celestial characters would seem to have been Herne, the demon of Windsor Forest, whom legend derives from a suicide. Our illustration of Herne appearing to Henry VIII. (1843) is sombre and grandiose. The artist recurred to Herne again in one of his beautiful etchings for " The life of Sir John Falstaff" by R. B. Brough (1858). Falstaff as Herne, with antlers on his head, lies prone beneath the great riven oak which is called Herne's oak, because human Herne is supposed to have hanged himself from a bough of it. Fairies, depicted by their lover, have taken into their invisible web of glamour the grossness of Falstaff, and to me the etching which contains in harmony so tragic a tree, so gluttonous a man, and the only angels that shame can love without terror is not an illus- tration of Shakespeare but a vision of every- body's heaven. For if it is an illustration of Shakespeare, then are these no fairies but Mistress Quickly, Anne Page and other actresses, in a punitive and moralising mood !
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The last appearance of Cruikshank's Herne is in a drawing, done when the artist was eighty- three, for "Peeps at Life" (1875), in which the demon rides through Windsor Forest with a monk behind him.
It is now time to say a few words about the Cruikshankian ghost. About the year I860, Cruikshank offered £100 to anyone who should show him a ghost " said to have been seen frequently in the neighbourhood of some Roman Catholic institution near Leicester." No one claimed the money, and Cruikshank remained a religious materialist, charmingly boyish in his amusement over the ghosts of tears and dirt. His natural idea of a ghost was comic in the way of a wise old world that taxes pain and wrath for humour. His designs for Part II. of "Points of Humour" (1824.) include a vision of spirits discharged from their bodies by the ministrations of a pompous doctor, who holds his stick against his mouth because Cruikshank condemned the use of " the crutch as a toothpick. The ugliness of these spirits is not excelled by Cruikshank's Giles Scroggins, in vol. i. of "The Universal Songster" (1825), — a spook whose waving
136
HERNE THE HUNTER APPEARING TO HENRY VIII. (" Windsor Castle "). From " Ainsworth's Magazine," vol. iii., 184
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hands like bewitched gloves, exultant toes and nightcap tipsy as a blown flame, are duly noted by Molly Brown. Folklore had a refining influence on Cruikshank when, for Scott's " Demonology and Witchcraft," he etched, in 1 830, Mrs Leckie, a white-aproned ghost who, by a miracle of Scotchness, is perfectly decorous as she kicks with a high heeled shoe the doctor of physic who " shewed some desire to be rid of her society." Cruikshank' s chef d'oeuvre of ghost-humour is an etching for Captain Glascock's "Land Sharks and Sea Gulls" (1838). This triumph of pictorial anecdote confronts us with Ann Dobbs, who has materialised her head and hands for the purpose of exhibiting, with a proper show of accusation, to a whimpering sailor, whose pigtail has risen in homage to her, (e the feller piece of the broken bit" of her tomb- stone, which he had stolen for a holy- stone to clean decks with. After this, the reader may be surprised to learn that a ghost, produced by Cruikshank for "The Scourge " of August 1815, was serious enough to be precautiously blacked out before the plate entitled A Financial Survey of Cumberland, Or the Beggar s
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Petition, was put into general circulation. It is the gho^t of Sellis, the Duke of Cumberland's valet, who is made to accuse his earthly master of murder, by these words " Is this a razor I see before me ? Thou canst not say I did it." Of that other serious ghost, St Winifred in "Guy Fawkes" (1840), enough has been said. Her dullness is absolutely unmystical, and it is a relief to turn from her to look at The Holy Infant, that prayed as soon as he was born ("Catholic Miracles," 1825), an exquisitely droll sketch, about as large as a penny, of "intense" chubbiness in a hand basin.
Though sympathy with men and women did not make Cruikshank courteous to ghosts, he was led by the credulity and experience of his childhood to be affectionate to fairies and almost patriotic in his feeling about the magical countries in which they dwell. In a note to " Puss in Boots " he informs us that his nurse told him when he was "a very little boy " that the fairies "had houses in the white places "- i.e. fungi — in the corners of cellars. In cellars he accordingly looked for them, "and certainly did . . . fancy " that he saw " very, very tiny little people running in and out of these little 140
'f
From " Comic Composites for the Scrap-Book," 1821.
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white houses" — i.e. fungi— and attributed any power he possessed of drawing or describing a fairy to his nurse's communications and his visions in cellars.
Like a sword-swallower I saw in Bel- fast, I will ask you to "put your hands together/' for the anecdote just related is corroborated by the charm of his fairy draw- ings.
What happened when Cruikshank went into cellars is symbolical of poetry. He saw what was not there by that creative touch of mind which transforms an object by increasing its similitude to something else. In Comic Com- posites for the Scrap Book (1821), we have intelligent human creatures suggested by arrangements of household implements. As I look at the mundatory erection here repro- duced, I anachronistically hum Stephen Glover's " March composed for Prince Albert's Hussars." It is, however, less brilliant than the aldermanic bellows and the doctor (with a mortar for body, cottonwool for hair and labels for feet), to whom he states his symptoms in " Scraps and Sketches " (1831), for they amuse the satirist even at this date when gluttony
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is merely not moderation and bored sapience is merely not sympathetic wisdom.
Cruikshank then had one great qualification for illustrating fairy tales : he could animate the inanimate. Let us now follow his career as a fairy artist, beginning with his first great success.
In 1822 appeared a post-dated volume of "German Popular Stories . . . collected by M. M. Grimm." A companion volume was published in 1826, and both books were adorned by the hand of George Cruikshank. Except- ing two much-admired German leprechauns or fairy cobblers in one of Cruikshank's twenty- two etchings, they do not present a fairy worth smiling at, and these cobblers, boundlessly delighted by a present of clothes, are, of course, very far from being of the angelic elite of Fairyland, as drawn by Sir Joseph Noel Paton for Mrs S. C. Hall. But Fairyland is in the imagination of democracy, and he is a good patriot of that countiy who amuses us with its " freaks," for they are dear to the hoi polloi which appreciate novelty more than per- fection. Cruikshank in his Grimm mood is for the " living drollery " which cured Sebastian's 144
THE GOOSE GIRL. From "German Popular Stories," vol. ii., i
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scepticism concerning the phoenix and the unicorn. He rejoicingly presents a nose as long as a garden hose — a nose worthy of the beard which travels from page 6 to page 7 of his " Table-Book" (1845). He refreshes us with the humorous pleasure of the giant inspecting Thumbling on the palm of his hand ; and he convulses us with the vocal display of the ass, dog and cat which plunge through the glass of a window into the robbers' room. Ruskin said of these etchings that they " were unrivalled in masterfulness of touch since Rembrandt ; (in some qualities of delineation unrivalled even by him) " ; to that eulogy I can only add that they are inspiriting because they are candid and vivid, and show that realism can be on the side of magic.
Passing without pause some tiny cuts, upon which children would pounce for love of gnomes, in "The Pocket Magazine" (1827, 1828), we arrive again at Cruikshank's sketches for Scott's " Demonology and Witchcraft " (1830), and inspect elves and fairies, barely prettier than mosquitoes, annoying mortals. Worry is incarnate in a horizontal man who is supported in and drawn through the air by elves, directed
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by two drivers, one on each of his boots. Beautiful is the contempt for herrings of an elf standing on a plate which a comrade is about to smash with a hammer in the presence of a cheaply-hospitable (and sluttish) housewife whom a dozen elves have pulled downstairs by her feet.
Fables which invent sorrow to prevent it can only be classed as fairy-tales by a sacrifice of the mot juste, which I make in order to call attention to an exquisite quartet of etchings by George Cruikshank, illustrating Richard Frankum's verses entitled " The Bee and the Wasp" (1832). No hand but his who drew the shadow-buyer in Peter Schlemihl could have drawn the hair-lines of the criminal insect who mocks the drowning bee in the third of these etchings. So pleased and delicate a malignancy is expressed in him that he figures to me as a personification of evil, and I am disagreeably conscious of smiling to think that, because he speaks and is seen, he is a gentleman compared with a trypanosome or a bacillus coli.
A bee — but a superbee — figured in the next fairy book illustrated by Cruikshank. In 148
AMARANTH "THE EVER YOUNG " IS CARRIED
TO COt^ALLION BY THE BEE'S MONSTER
STEED. From "The Good Genius that Turned
Everything into Gold," by the Bros. Mayhew, 1847.
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his designs for " The Good Genius that Turned Everything into Gold" (1847) he showed for the first time an ambition to idealise magic. The idea that power exists in beings of familiar shape and wieldy dimensions to build palaces and fleets without mistakes, without plans and adjustments, without the publication of embryos behind hoardings — to build them without economy and sacrificial fatigue — this is the breathless poem of the crowd. The Brothers Mayhew gave this idea to Cruikshank, and one at least of his etchings for their story — the palace emerging from rock and arborescence— shows that he almost objectified it. Thus (unconsciously) did he atone for that neglect of opportunity which allowed him to deck the magical and tender, the deep and lustrous fiction of E. T. W. Hoffmann, the in- spired playmate of ideas that rock with laughter and subdue with awe, with nothing better than a frigidly humorous picture of a duel with spy-glasses.
In 184-8 an incomplete and refined transla- tion of " II Pentamerone " appeared with pretty and sprightly designs by Cruikshank. These designs show a more direct sympathy with
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juvenile taste than his famous etchings for "German Popular Stories." With shut eyes one can still see his ogre swearing at the razor- crop, and his strong man marching off with all the wealth of the King of Fair- Flower, while the champion blower with one good blast makes bipeds of horses and kites of men. Nennella stepping grandly out of the enchanted fish to embrace her brother is dear to an indulgent scepticism. There were beauti- ful fields and a fine mansion inside that fish and his toothful mouth is but a portico of Fairyland. Tails not having been invented merely to mitigate the sorrows of Satan, Cruikshank had some more of these appendages to draw when with "Kit Barn's Adventures" (184-9) he entered the fairyland of Mrs Cowden Clarke. The very rhetorical mariner of that story is remembered for the sake of the tails of rner- children twining about his legs in the frontis- piece to it, and human children allow their Louis Wain to wane for a minute as, with Kit Bam, they look at Cruikshank's tortoiseshell cat, ruffed and aproned, laying the table while Captain Capsicum, horned and gouty, urbanely watches her,
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Naturally Cruikshank desired to associate himself permanently with fairy stories better known in England than the name of any folklorist or Perrault D'Armancourt himself. Rusher had published,, circa 181 4, "Cinderella " and " Dick Whittington " with cuts " designed by Cruikshank/' whose prenomen was or was not George ; and to George Cruikshank is ascribed by Mr Edwin Pearson some early cuts for " Mother Hubbard and her Dog." Each of these illustrations could be covered with a quartet of our postage stamps and only those for " Mother Hubbard/' which are droll and tender, possess more than an antiquarian interest. In 1846, in twelve designs built round the title " Fairy Songs and Ballads for the young ... By O. B. Dussek . . . /' George Cruikshank illustrated " Dick Whitting- ton." "Jack and the Beanstalk/' etc., and was lively and pretty in a wee way. These were trifles, however, and Cruikshank was ambitious. In 1853-4 and 1864 he flattered his ambition by the issue of " George Cruik- shank's Fairy Library." Unfortunately Ruskin was displeased with the earlier issues of this "library," for in 1857 he forbade his disciples
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to copy Cruikshank's designs for " Cinderella/' " Jack and the Beanstalk " and " Tom Thumb " [sic] as being "much over-laboured and con- fused in line." But on July 30, 1853, Mrs Cowden Clarke begged Cruikshank to allow her to thank him in the name of herself " and/' writes she, "the other grown-up children of our family, together with the numerous little nephews and nieces who form the ungrown- up children among us, for the delightful treat you have bestowed in the shape of the 1st No. of the ' Fairy Library.' " This was the maligned "Hop-o'-my-Thumb," thepictures of which pos- sess the charm of the artist's " Pentamerone." None of Cruikshank's ogres are as horrible as J. G. Pinwell's man-eating giantin"The Arabian Nights," and so the ogre in his " Hop-o'-my Thumb " is merely a glutton with a knife, but what a passion of entreaty is expressed in the kneeling children at his feet ! The seven leagued boots are worth all Lilleyand Skinner's as, formally introduced, they bow before the smiling king. The architectural effect of the design which, as it were, makes a historian of a tree is admirable. The beanstalk in No. 2 is a true ladder of romance ; and, seeing it, I
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think that Cruikshank escaped from the re- pugnant vulgarity of G. H. on that May or June day of 1815 when he drew The Pedigree of Corporal Violet (alias Napoleon) as a per- pendicular of flowers and fungi and dreamed of the fairy seed he would sow for children. In "Jack and the Beanstalk" there is not only a fairy plant but a real English fairy gauzy-winged, tiny, with a wand as fine as a needle. Yet Ruskin was displeased, and we may define the fault which caused his dis- pleasure as a finicky unveracity about shade and textures.
In 1866, however, Cruikshank executed two plates for Ruskin ; one of them illustrated " The Blue Light " from Grimm, the other showed the children of Hamelin following the Pied Piper into the mountain ; and in the same year he almost paralleled the success of his fairy cobblers in Grimm by an etching of Pixies engaged in making boots, which he did for Frederick Locker, afterwards Locker- Lampson. In 1 868 Cruikshank made the large and beautiful etching entitled " Fairy Connois- seurs inspecting Mr Frederick Locker's Collec- tion of Drawings." Anyone who has read " My
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Confidences" (1896) will acknowledge that it was a happy thought to invite the Little People into Mr Locker-Lampson's library, for this bibliophile, so humorous and elegant, so ready with the exact Latin quotation needed to civilise perfectly the shape of an indecorum, was in essence a child whose toys were con- secrated to the fairies by his purity in loving them.
We will take leave of Cruikshank as a fairy artist by a look at a sketch for his picture The Fairy Ring. He painted the picture, which is his best oil-painting, in 1855 for the late Henry Miller of Preston, for .£800. The sketch referred to sold at Sotheby's in 1903 for £25, 10s. This sketch— a painting— I saw at the Royal Aquarium, as in a bleak railway station without the romance of travel. The Fairy King stands on a mushroom about which rotate two rings of merrymakers between which run torch bearers. They are mad, these merrymakers, and madness is delight. Hard by, a towering foxglove leans into space, bearing two j oy ous sprites. Gigantic is the lunar crescent that shines on the scene ; it is a gate through which an intrepid fairy l6o
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rides a bat above the revels. In this im- pressionistic sketch, Cruikshank shows himself participant in the mysterious exultation of the open night where man, intruding, feels neither seen nor known. The Fairy Ring belongs to the poetry of humour. It perorates for a supernaturalist whose fashionable ignorance, touched with less durable vulgarity, blinded him to such visions as, in our time, the poet "A. E." has depicted. Looking at Cruik- shank's supernatural world of littleness and prettiness, of mirth, extravagance, and oddity, we feel in debt to his limitations.
VI
THE humour of George Cruikshank deserves separate consideration, because it is essentially the man himself. Despite a technical excel- lence so peculiar that, according to the author of Number 1 of "Bursill's Biographies," the engraver Thompson "kept a set of special tools, silver-mounted and with ivory handles, sacred for " Cruikshank's designs, his sense of beauty was not eyes to him. Women he usually saw as lard or bone, and this strange perversity of vision and art differentiates him from the moderns by more than time. For instance, the women presented by Mr S. D. Ehrhart and O'Neill Latham (a lady-artist), to mention only two modem humorists, materialise an idea of beauty in humour which was as foreign to Cruikshank as apple-blossom to a pomme de terre.
Humour with Cruikshank was elemental. A joke was sacred from implication ; it was 162
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self-sufficient, vocal in line and curve, per- cussive. He was a contemporary of Douglas Jerrold, who was humorous when he called a town Hole-cum-Corner. He was a con- temporary of Thomas Hood, who was humorous when he announced that
" from her grave in Mary-bone They've come and bon'd your Mary."
He was in that " world of wit " where they kept a nutmeg-grater on the table in order to say, when a great man was mentioned, " there's a grater." He was in a world where profes- sional humour was perversely destructive of faith in imagination.
But what is humour? Late though the question be, it should be answered. Hum- our, then, is the ability to receive a shock of pleasant surprise from sounds and appear- ances without attributing importance to them. As the proof of humour is physiological, its appeal to the intellect is as peremptory as that of terror. It is a benignant despot which relieves us from the sense of destiny and of duty. Its range is illimitable. It is vic- toriously beneath contempt and above worship. cm 165
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Cruikshank was a humorist who could laugh coarsely, broadly, selfishly, merrily, well. Coarseness was natural to him, or he would not have selected for a (suppressed) illustration in " Italian Tales " (1824) a subject which mingles tragedy with the laughter of Cloacina. One can only say that humour, like a sparrow, alights without regard to conventions. The majority can laugh with Rabelais, though they have not the idealism which created Theleme. Jokes that annoy the nose are no longer tolerable in art, but in Cruikshank's time so wholesome a writer as Captain Marryat thought Gillray worth imitating in his transla- tion of disease into terms of humour. Hence The Headache and The Cholic (1819), signed with an anchor (Captain Marry at' s signature) and etched by Cruikshank, follow The Gout by Gillray (1799)- The reader may well ask if the sight of a hideous creature sprawling on a man's foot is humour according to my defini- tion. I can only presume that in what Mr Grego calls the "port-wine days," Gillray's plate was like sudden sympathy producing some- thing so absolutely suitable for swearing at, that patients smiled in easy-chairs at grief,
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EXCHANGE NO ROBBERY. From "Points of Humour," 1823. The unfaithful wife has concealed her lover in the clock. The husband, who has unexpectedly returned, devours bacon at i A.M., while she is in an agony of apprehension,
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Broad humour has an eye on sex. The uncle who, on being asked at dinner for an opinion on a lady's costume, observes that he must go under the table to form it, is a type of the broad humorist in modern life. Cruik- shank had none of that tenderness for women's clothes which in modern representation removes altogether the pudical idea from costume and substitutes the idea of witchery by foam of lace and coil of skirts. His guffaws and those of Captain Marryat and J. P***y, whose invention exercised his needle, at the Achilles in Hyde Park, in 1822, are vexatious enough to make one wish to restore all fig-leaves to the fig- forest. It is not possible for a man with an indefinite and inexpressible feeling for woman to laugh like that. Hearing his laughter we know that Cruikshank's humour about woman must always be obvious.
It is, and yet it is not measured by the height of her hat as he depicted it in 1828, when he contributed to that long series of jokes which culminate in Jan Linse's girl at the theatre who will not take her hat off because, " mamma, if I put it in my lap I can't see myself." In the annals of absurdity is 171
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there anything more worthy to be true at the expense of the British Navy than Cruikshank's picture of the chambermaid confronted with the leg which she has mistaken for a warming- pan ? Another woman, whom Cruikshank compels us to remember by force of humorous idea, is to be found in Points of Humour (1823). She is the doxy in " The Jolly Beggars," sitting on the soldier's lap. We see her while she holds up
" her greedy gab Just like ae aumous dish/'
The soldier has lost an arm and a leg, but his face is the face of infatuation and her lips are the lips of lust. The toes of her bare feet express pleasure longing for ecstasy. I write seriously : they are very eloquent toes. There is a fire near the amorous pair, and the dog basking by it, uninterested in them, is a token of peace unpried upon. Her left hand grasps a pot of whiskey. She is in heaven. Indeed there is too much heaven in the picture for me to laugh at it. Behind the incongruity which clamours for laughter is the magic of drink reshaping in idea a half-butchered man and reviving the fires of sex. 172
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After this we glide politely from women as they blossom in the drollery of Cruikshank. Jenny showers "pills, bolus, julep and apozem too " on the physicians who would have exenterated her (vide "The New Bath Guide/' 1830). The "patent washing machines" re- member their sex at the approach of Waverley (vide " Landscape- Historical Illustrations/' 1836), and remind us that in 1810 T. Tegg published a less refined Scotch Washing over the signature of Cruikshank. Nanse sheds the light of a candle upon the corpse of the cat compressed by a heavy sitter (vide "The Life of Mansie Wauch/' 1839). The squaw "in glass and tobacco-pipes dress'd " evokes lyrical refusal from the Jack who has sworn to be constant to Poll (vide " Songs, Naval, and National, of the late Charles Dibdin," 1841). Lady Jane Ingoldsby smilingly — with lifted hand for note of interjection — allows her attention to be directed to the half of her drowned husband which was not "eaten up by the eels" (vide "Bentley's Miscellany," 1843). William's widow contemplates with fury the sailor upon whose nose has alighted her dummy babe (vide "The Old Sailor's Jolly Boat," 175
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184-4); and General Betsy gobbles her novel in a chaotic kitchen, oblivious of the horror of her mistress (vide "The Greatest Plague in Life/' 1847).
In all this pageant of absurdity is wanting the special touch which surprises the spectator. The emotions of the women are rendered as with a consciousness that they are a merchan- dise of art and "in stock."
The caricaturist of mankind, to immortalise his work, must haunt us with physiognomy. Thus Honore Daumier in Le Bain Chaud haunts us with the burlesque heroism in the face of a man about to sit down in water which pretends to scald him. Sir John Tenniel haunts us with the complacent slyness of Dizzy bringing in the hot water for February 1879 to that distrustful lie-abed John Bull. Charles Dana Gibson haunts us with the charmed vanity of an aged millionairess sitting up, bald and bony, in a regal bed, with her coffee-cup arrested in hand by the fulsome puff of her person and adornments read to her by her pretty maid. George Du Maurier haunts us with the freezing question in the face of the knight
176
Details from the Plate entitled Heads of the TabUi in " George Cruikshank's Table- Book," 1845.
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who has permitted himself to crack an empty eggshell on the " Fust o' Hapril."
How does Cruikshank stand as a creator of humorous physiognomy? The answer is not from a trumpet. He invented crowds of people who seem merely the fruits of formulae, and in comedy the simple application of the science of John Caspar Lavater is weak in effect, since laughter is tributary to surprise.
Compare Daumier's man in hot water with Cruikshank's Trotting (a similar subject in "The Humourist," vol. iii., 1820), and one sees the difference between mere Lavaterism and emotion detected with delight. Compare Daumier's facetious ruffian asking the time of the man he intends to rob with almost any ruffian in Cruikshank's humorous gallery and one can only say that, in effect, one drew him to haunt the mind ; the other to bore it. One ruffian surpasses his type without deserting it ; the other is the type itself. Here and there, however, Cruikshank creates an individual who is more than his type without being divergent from it. Do we find such a one in the serious eater in Hope (" Phrenological Specimens," 1826), in
'79
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whose bone, already as innutritions as a tooth- brush, his dog confides for sustenance? I think so, because I see him when I think of appetite as of tragedy. H umour accepts him in deference to her idea that there is nothing that cannot be laughed at, and she is worthy of deification when she goes down, down, down, laughing where even her worshippers are mute.
I doubt if Cruikshank twice excelled in respect of authenticity in humour the host and guest whom he presented in the re- produced subjects from Heads of the Table (1845). Humour ascends from his Hope to them as to a heaven of animals from a purga- torial region. That even what I have called Cruikshank's Lavaterism can be amusing is proved by his portrait of Socrates at the moment before he said "rain follows thunder."
We owe probably to Cruikshank's inveterate love of punning the capital study in disdain as provoked by envy exhibited in one of the lions in The Lion of the Party (1845). Of his animal humour I shall have more to say : these lions are more human than many of his representa- 1 80
From " A Comic Alphabet," 1836. See Pope's "The Wife of Bath "(after Chaucer), II. 3^7-392.
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tions of homo sapiens ; they need no foot- line.
The student of Cruikshank's humour must follow him through many volumes in which his pencil is subservient to literature ; and in this journey he will often open his mouth to yawn rather than to laugh. The professional humorist, like the professional poet, is the prey of the Irony that sits up aloft ; and Cruikshank was not an exception. Indeed one may say of some of his crowded caricatures that one has to wade through them. In the humorous illustration of literature his work is seldom risible, but it usually pleases by a combination of neatness and energy.
Despite his intense egotism he ventured to associate his art with the works of Shakespeare, Fielding, Smollett, R. E. Raspe, Cowper, Byron, Scott, Dickens, Goldsmith, Douglas Jerrold, Thackeray, Le Sage, and Cervantes. These names evoke a world of humorous life in which is missing, to the knowledge of the spectator, only the humour which shines in jewels of brief speech and rings in the heavenly onomatopoeia of absurdity. Lewis Carroll and Oscar Wilde are decidedly not of that world,
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though Raspe, by a freak of irony, graced his brutal pages with lines which the snark-hunter might have coveted, and Smollett's elegance in burlesque gravity is dear to an admirer of " The Importance of being Earnest."
For Shakespeare, Cruikshank seems to have felt a tender reverence. As early as 1814 we find him drawing Kean as Richard III., and Hamlet for J. Roach, the publisher of "The Monthly Theatrical Reporter" ; 1815 is the date of a lithograph of Juliet and the Nurse published by G. Cruikshank and otherwise unmemorable ; in 1827 he made one of his " Illustrations of Time, "a vivacious portrait of Puck about to girdle the earth. In 1857-8 came the Cruikshankian series of etchings for R. B. Brough's " Life of Sir John Falstaff." This series exhibits great skill and conscientiousness ; the critic of " The Art Journal" (July 1858) was able to suppose them "actual scenes." Falstaff has a serene and majestic face ; his bulk is too dignified for the scales of a showman ; one understands his aesthetic abhorrence of a " mountain of mummy." Humour cancels his debt of shame for cowardice, and well would it have been if that rebellious Lollard, Sir John Oldcastle, 184
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the original of Falstaff, could have looked into FalstafTs roguish eyes as he reclined on the field of Shrewsbury and peeped at his freedom from all the bigotries which threaten and terrify mankind. Cruikshank unconsciously imparts this thought, but it is with conscience that he is amiable to Falstaff, who, begging, hiding, shamming, "facing the music," and dying, is his pet and ours by grace of his refined and beautiful art.
We meet Cruikshank's Falstaff again in the drawing entitled The First Appearance of William Shakespeare on the Stage of the Globe (January 1 863). Here we have the elite of Shakespeare's creations in a throng about his cradle. Titania and Oberon are at its foot, as though he owed them birth ; Touchstone and Feste try to catch a gleam of laughter from his eyes ; Prospero waves his wand ; Othello gazes with hate at the guarded enchanter, more potent than Prospero, who is to bring his woe to light ; Romeo and Juliet have eyes only for each other. Richard the Third is there, sadder than Lear ; the witches who prophesied the steps of Macbeth towards hell gesticulate hideously by their cauldron ; and Falstaff,
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cornuted as becomes the "deer" of Mrs Ford, smiles at a vessel that reminds him, as do all vessels,, of sack and metheglins. There is charm and beauty of ensemble in this picture, which I have described from a coloured drawing in the South Kensington Museum made by its designer in 1864-5. I know nothing that suggests more forcibly the fateful ness hidden in the inarticulate stranger who appears every day in the world without a history and without a name.
Smollett and Fielding, both novelists who present humour as the flower of annoyance and catastrophe, were hardly to be con- gratulated when Cruikshank innocently showed them up in " Illustrations of Smollett, Fielding, and Goldsmith " (1832). In both the reader of literature discerns a gentleman. In Fielding he sees a radiant man of the world from whom literary giants who succeeded him drew nutriment for ambition. Both Smollett and Fielding have heroines, and touch men in the nerve of sweetness, and fell them with love. But Cruikshank cared naught for their women, though he reproduced something equivalent to the charm of Shakespeare's 188
ADAMS'S VISIT TO PARSON TRULLIBER. Frontispiece to" Joseph Andrews," 1831. The book is dated 1832. This is one of the plates in " Illustrations of Smollett, Fielding, and Goldsmith " (1832).
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"Merry Wives." When first he went to Smollett, it was for a Point of Humour (1824), which centres in an " irruption of intolerable smells" at dinner. The point pricked, as one may say, but it was blunt in effect compared with that of a later artist's drawing of Columbus and the Egg or that of Cruikshank's cook swallowing to order in Land Sharks and Sea Gulls (1838). The really vivid picture is recognised by a lasting imprint on a mind which is incapable of learning Bradshaw by heart, and Cruikshank's drawings for Smollett are reduced in my mind to Mrs Grizzle extract- ing three black hairs from Mr Trunnion, and his drawings for Fielding are reduced into the ruined face and rambling fat of Blear-eyed Moll. Those who will may compare the Smollett of Rowlandson with that of Cruikshank. The comparison may determine whether a dog is funnier while being trodden on or immediately after, and shows the indifference of Rowlandson to his artistic reputation. Cruikshank's attempts to illustrate Goldsmith are few and, as a series, unsuccessful. The reproduced specimen is a fair example of his realistic method. It exhibits the blackguard's sense 191
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of absurdity in the Christian altruism which paralyses the nerves of the pocket — sensitive usually as the nerves of sex — and which tyrannises over the nerves of pride.
Fisher, Son, & Co., the publishers of Cruikshank's illustrations of the "Waverley" novels (1836-7-8), assumed "the merit of having been the first to illustrate the scenes of mirth, of merriment, of humour, that often sparkle " in these works. In " Landscape Historical Illustrations of Scotland and the Waverley Novels" he supplied the comic plates ; his Bailie Macwheeble rejoicing before Waverley, for chapter Ixvi. of "Waverley," was the first etching done by him on steel. His "Waverley" etchings are characteristic works, sometimes brilliant in pattern or com- position, occasionally ministering to a love of physiognomical ugliness which the small nurses of the dolls called "golliwoggs" can better explain than I. His predilection for the curious and uncanny is shown in some striking plates, including that in which he depicts the terror of Dougal and Hutcheon as they mistake the ape squatting on Redgauntlet's coffin for "the foul fiend in his aiii shape." 192
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD PREACHING TO THE PRISONERS. From " Illustrations of Popular Works," 1830
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Cruikshank's illustrations for " Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron" (1824-5) are cuts which include such deplor- able effects of bathos (e.g. Haidee saving Don Juan from her Father's wrath) that one has no heart to praise the rough vigour of Juan oppos- ing the Entrance to the Spirit Room. A Byron illustrated by protected aborigines seems realis- able after seeing these pictures. If anybody paid the artist for them it should have been Wordsworth ; that they did not weigh on Cruikshank's conscience, we may infer from the fact that in 1833 he cheerfully caricatured Byron for " Rejected Addresses " as a gentle- man in an easy-chair kicking the terrestrial globe.
We have already discussed the fruit of Cruikshank's association with Dickens. We have not, however, paid tribute to Cruikshank's capital etchings for " Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi," edited by Boz (1838). The portrait of the famous clown holding in his arms a hissing goose and a squeaking pig, while voluble ducks protrude their heads from his pockets and a basket of carrots and turnips afflicts his back, is extraordinarily funny.
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Though Cruikshank's relations with Thackeray were far happier than with Dickens, they resulted in nothing important to his reputation. His etchings illustrating Thackeray's contributions to "The Comic Almanack" (1839-4-0) weary one with plain or uninteresting faces, though that which exhibits the expressive, blubber-face of Stubbs, horsed for the birching earned by his usury, provokes an irrational smile which serves for praise. His illustrations to " A Legend of the Rhine " (Thackeray's contribution to " George Cruikshank's Table-Book," 1845) are not equal to Thackeray's drawings for " The Rose and the Ring" (1855).
In the world of humour one does not descend in moving from Thackeray to Charles James Lever. With Lever's own portrait of his hero to guide him, Cruikshank illustrated "Arthur O'Leary " (1844). Among his ten etchings in this novel is an amusing exhibition of Corpulence submitting to identification by measurement ; it surpasses the scene by Du Maurier in which the tailor promises to be round in a minute if his customer will press one end of the tape-measure to his waist. 196
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Cruikshank's ten etchings for " Gil Bias " (1833) are the works of an intelligent machine, which may be called humorous because it takes down the fact that Dame Jacintha held the cup to the Canon's mouth "as if he had been an infant." R. Smirke, R.A., with his sym- pathetic eye for flesh (as of a gardener for flowers) is obviously preferable to Cruikshank as Le Sage's illustrator, though our artist's Euphrasia is a dainty miss. Cruikshank's fifteen illustrations for « Don Quixote " (1833- 34) are neat and for the most part uninspired renderings of pathological humour. Although it was within his ability to make a readable picture without words, he merely reminds one of the anecdote of the attack on the wind- mills. Compare the plate referred to with the painting on the same subject by Jose Moreno Carbonaro. Cruikshank's combatant is no more than a knight about to attack something — presumably a wind-mill. Carbonaro chooses the moment that exposes the knight as mad, futile, dismally droll, and we see him and his horse in the air, the latter enough to make Pegasus hiccup with laughter. Cruikshank's designs for " Don Quixote " com- 199
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pare favourably, however, with the audacious scratches which constitute most of his brother Robert's chronicle of the Knight of La Mancha (1824). The collector who affords a crown to buy the former designs should also acquire " Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote," by H. D. Inglis, with six etchings by George Cruikshank (1837). The etchings— three of which are perfect anecdotes — were evidently done con amore; but, good as they are, they were lucky if they satisfied an editor who believed Inglis's "New Gil Bias" to be "one of the noblest and most finished efforts in the line of pure imaginative writing that ever fell from the pen of any one man."
It would be a species of literary somnam- bulism to wander further in a path of bibli- ography where ideas must be taken as they come instead of being ideally chosen and grouped. There is this mischief in Cruikshank's fecundity, that it tends to convert even a fairly bright critic into a scolytus boring his way through a catalogue. We emerge from our burrowing more percipient than before of the speculative nature of the undertaking to illustrate illustrious works of imagination. 200
DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO RETURNING HOME. From "The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote," 1833.
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Sinking in competitive humour is akin to drowning ; for he who materialises images despatched to the mind's eye by literary genius incurs the risk of having his work not only excelled by images in the eyes of minds other than his own, but ignored in compliment to them. Fortunate, then, is Cruikshank in the fact that on the whole we do not regret the healthy industrialism which permitted him to illustrate so many examples of imaginative literature.
The reader to whom any appearance of digression is displeasing in art will now kindly believe that only a second has elapsed since he began the only complete paragraph of page 183. The scolytus is converted, and we return to our true viewpoint — the middle of a heterogeneous litter — and look for character- istics of Cruikshankian humour.
We have seen so much of Cruikshank's kingdom of supernature that it is scarcely necessary to revisit it. The reader will note, however, that the degradation of the terrible to the absurd is his chief humorous idea of supernature, and that he respects the serious- ness of fairy tales. Not even the burlesque 203
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metaphors of Giambattista Basile — that monkey of genius among the euphuists — tempts him to ridicule the stories in "II Pentamerone " ; no one less than Milton can banish the ridiculous from his idea of Satan. A Satan who is a little lower than Punch, is he not more absurd than Man figured as a little lower than the angels? He is both more absurd and more satisfactory. Out of the folklore of Iceland and Wales and Normandy he comes to us outwitted by mortals who seem paradoxically to think that the Father of lies has a right to their adherence to the letter of their agreements with him. Out of Cruikshank's caricature he comes to us with a tail capable of delineating a whole alphabet of humour. The fire which he and his demons can live in without con- sumption becomes jocose. If you doubt it, com- pare Cruikshank's etching for 1 )ouglas Jerrold's story, "The Mayor of Hole-cum-Corner" (1842), with his etching, Sing old Rose and burn the Bel- lows in "Scraps and Sketches" (1828). The human-looking demon with his left leg in the flabbergasted mayor's fire is much funnier in effect than the negro sailor boiling the kettle 204
NEW READINGS. The Irishman tries to read a reversed sign by standing on his head. From " The Humourist," vol. iv., 1821.
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over his wooden leg. Human terror at superiority over natural law is highly ludicrous when the superiority is evinced as though it were ordinary, negligible, and compatible with sociableness. We cannot now say of such humour that it is a revelation, though once it was brighter than all the fires of Smithfield. There are foes of peace which in Cruikshank's simplicity he thought of as good. For these, too, there is a Humour to keep them at bay, until Science delivers us from their evil by making them obsequious to all who see them. When Humour pretends to drop from the supernatural to the commonplace, it — I cannot for the moment persuade myself to write he or she— is about to continue its most important mission, for it deserts a subject which is naturally laughable for one which is not ; it goes from the supernatural to the common- place. The supernatural is naturally laughable because the human animal instinctively laughs at that which at once transcends and addresses his intelligence, on a principle similar perhaps to that which Schopenhauer acted on when he smiled at the angle formed by the tangent and the circumference of a circle. At the 207
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commonplace, however, the human animal never spontaneously laughs. Its staleness is not dire to him ; but negativeness is not good, and Cruikshank helps the commonplace to be his friend.
When we view the demeanour of Cruikshank towards the commonplace we are agreeably surprised by his agility and daring. For instance, take a book called " Talpa," by C. W. Hoskyns (1852). It is a narrative of agricultural operations, in the course of which the author says, " The worst-laid tile is the measure of the goodness and permanence of the whole drain, just as the weakest link of a chain is the measure of its strength." Cruikshank, not being in the mood for drawing a drain, depicts a watchdog who has broken his chain's weakest link and is enthusiastically rushing towards an intruder whose most bitable tissues are reluctantly offered to him in the attempt to scale a wall. The hackneyed metaphor thus obviously illustrated being valueless on the page where we find it, our smile is for the " cheek " of the artist in calling attention to it rather than for the humour of the drawing as an exhibition of 208
"THE WITS MAGAZINE" (2 vols., 1818) is " one of the rarest books illustrated by G. Cruikshank." A perfect copy is said to be worth ,£80. Another rendering by him of the above incident will be found in " The Humourist," vol. iv. (1821)
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funk and glee. Thus the "obvious" marries the obvious, and the result is what is called originality. Again, what is more commonplace in its effect on the mind than decoration as viewed on wall-paper, frames, and linoleum, and in all those devices which flatter Nature's alleged abhorrence of vacuum? It is unhealthy to observe their repetitiousness. Cruikshank, however, saw that to be amusing where the utmost demanded is an inoffensive filling of vacancy was to triumph against dulness in its own sanctum. Consequently in the decora- tions above and below the main designs in "The Humourist" (1819-20) an appropriate hilarity animates effects which do not frustrate the decorative idea of announcing the complete- ness of the pictures of which they are the crown and base. His treatment of title-pages is delightfully droll. Thus the title-page of "My Sketch Book " (1834) takes the form of a portrait of himself, with a nose like the ex- tinguisher of a candlestick, directing the posing of the required capital letters on the shelves of a proscenium. On the title page of " The Comic Almanac" (1835) the letter L is a man sitting sideways with his legs stretched 21 1
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horizontally together, and on the title-page of "The Pentamerone " (1848) the polysyl- lable becomes the teeth of an abnormal king. Studies by Cruikshank in the South Kensington Museum (9950-T) show that he imagined the letter M as two Chinamen united by their pigtails, which form the V between the per- pendiculars of that letter, and are also em- ployed as a hammock. This play with the alphabet is exhibited as early as 1828 in The Pursuit of Letters, where all the letters in the word Literature flee, on legs as thin as the track of Euclid's point, from philomathic dogs, while their brethren ABC attempt to escape from three such babes as might have sprung from the foreheads of men made out of the dust of encyclopaedias. As late as July 1874, in reply to a coaxing letter from George S. Nottage, we see Cruikshank making human figures of the letters of the word " Portraits."
We return now to the zoological humour which has flashed across these pages. In the United States the art of humanising the creatures of instinct to make them articulately droll has been practised with such success by Gus Dirks, J. S. Pughe, and A. Z. Baker, that 212
" while he spake a braying ass Did sing most loud and clear."— WILLIAM COWPER.
From " The Diverting History of John Gilpin," 1828. An earlier design by Cruikshank for "John Gilpin" is in "The Humourist," vol. iii. (1819). 1836 is the date borne by a new edition of W. A. Nield's very monotonous musical setting of John Gilpin, "illus- trated by Cruikshank " (presumably Robert). C/7
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if Noah's Ark is not too l ' denominational/' it is there that we should seek the origin of their humour. Cruikshank, though he did re-draw William Clarke's swimming duck holding up an umbrella (in "Three Courses and a Dessert/' 1830), achieved nothing so triumphantly zoo- logical as the ostrich who swallowed her medi- cine but forgot to uncork the bottle containing it, or the porcupine who asked a barber for a shampoo, or the cat who discovered that her Thomas was leading a tenth life, or the ele- phant who wondered how the stork managed to convey him to his parents, or the beetle- farmer who mowed a hairbrush. Cruikshank, however, was in the Ark before them, and brought back enough humour resembling theirs to show what he missed, besides humour of a different kind which they do not excel. In " Scraps and Sketches" (1829) he preceded the Americans in the humour which makes the horse the critic of the motor-car, though not in that which seems to make the motor-car the caricaturist of the horse ; and in the above- named publication he represents a dog in the act of prophesying cheap meat for the canine race. Again, in " Scraps and Sketches " (1832) 215
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two elephants laugh together over a pseudo- pun on the word trunk.
We are not, however, reminded of America by the inquiry printed below the elephant on the next page, which might well have surprised Lewis Carroll by resemblance more than all the works of Mr G. E. Farrow. Neither does America recognise the silence of her own laughter in those drawings in which Cruik- shank caricatures humanity under zoological likenesses. His alderman realising Haynes Bayly's wish to be a butterfly in " My Sketch Book" (1 835), his coleopteral beadle in " George Cruikshank's Omnibus" (1842), are simple attempts to make tours de force of what is rather obscurely called the obvious, and one realises that art can find itself strong in embracing feeble idea. The most striking of his zoological ideas is the effect of abnormal behaviour on human people. Witness in " Scraps and Sketches " (1832) the "dreadful tail " unfolded in the dialogue : " Doth he woggle his tail ? " " Yes, he does." " Then I be a dead mon ! " One may also cite the horror of the diver at the rising in air of a curly and vociferous salmon from the dish in 216
When the Elephant stands upon his Head, does he himself know whether he is standing upon his Head or his Heels?" "George Cruikshank's Magazine," February 1854.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
front of him (ibid.). Among all his drawings of animals (those for Grimm excepted) there is one etching which stands out as a technical triumph produced by a sense of irony. I refer to the etching entitled The Cat Did It ! in ".The Greatest Plague of Life " (l 847). Fifteen pussies in a kitchen throw the crockery off the dresser, topple the draped clothes-horse into the fire, smash the window glass and devour the provisions. The scene is like a burlesque of one of its designer's etchings in Maxwell's " Irish Rebellion." It is unique.
We must not quit Cruikshank's zoological drawings without remarking on the curious inconsistency of his attitude towards animals. We find him both callous and tender. In illustrating " The Adventures of Baron Munchausen " he chose (one assumes) to draw the Baron flaying the fox by flagellation ; at any rate we have his woodcut depicting the abominable operation ; and in " Scraps and Sketches" (1832), poor Reynard, for the sake of a pun, is exhibited as " Tenant intail " of a spring-trap. Yet in " My Sketch Book " (1835) he presents us with frogs expostulating with small boys for throwing stones at them 219
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
(" I pray you to cease, my little Dears ! for though it may be sport to you, it is death to us"). Again, his canine reference to cats' meat, already mentioned, implies a heartless- ness towards horses which is contradicted by his touching but not much prized etching The Knacker's Yard, to be found in "The Voice of Humanity" (May 1831), in "The Melange" (1834), and in "The Elysium of Animals" (1836). Moreover, in "My Sketch Book" (1835) he severely exhibits human insensitiveness to the sufferings of quadrupeds in The Omnibus Brutes — qy. which are they ? It is therefore clear that Cruikshank thought ljumanely about animals, though as a humorist he was irresponsible and gave woe's present to ease — its comicality. And before we write him down a vulgarian let us remember our share in his laughter at the absurdity of incarnations which confer tails on elemental furies and indecencies, and compel elemental importances and respectabilities to satisfy their self-love by ruinous grimaces and scaffoldings of adipose tissue.
In a comparison I have already associated Cruikshank with Lewis Carroll, who was 220
THE CAT DID IT I " From " The Greatest Plague in Life "(1847).
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
systematically the finest humorist produced by England till his death in 1898. The most intensely comic thing ever wrought by the hand of Cruikshank is, I think, by the absolute perfection of its reasoning a priori, a genuine " carroll in a minor key. It is the drawing in "Scraps and Sketches" (1832) in which, to a haughty, unamused commander, the complain- ant says, " Please, your Honor, Tom Towzer has tied my tail so tight that I can't shut my eyes."
One of Cruikshank's humorous ideas is particularly his own, because it satisfies his passionate industry. I mean those processions of images which he summoned by the enchant- ment of single central ideas. The Triumph of Cupid in " George Cruikshank's Table Book" (1845) is as perfect an example as I can cite. Cruikshank is seated by a fire with his " little pet dog Lilla " on his lap. From the pipe he is smoking ascends and curls around him a world of symbolic life. The car of the boy- god is drawn by lions and tigers. Another cupid stands menacingly on a pleading Turk ; a third cupid is the tyrant over a negro under Cruikshank's chair ; a fourth cupid, sitting on 223
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Cruikshank's left foot, toasts a heart at the "fire office " ; more cupids are dragging Time backwards on the mantelpiece, and another is stealing his scythe. Consummate ability is shown in the delicate technique of this etching, which was succeeded as an example of mulium in parvo by the well-known folding etching Passing Events or the Tail of the Comet of 1853, appearing in " George Cruikshank's Magazine " (February 1854).
Playing on words is very characteristic of Cruikshank's humour. Thus he shows us " parenthetical " legs, as Dickens wittily called them, by the side of those of "a friend in- kneed," and a man (dumbly miserable) arrested on a rope-walk is " taken in tow." Viewing Cruikshank at this game does not help one to endorse the statement of Thomas Love Peacock, inspired by the drawing of January in "The Comic Almanack" (1838),
f ( A great philosopher art thou, George Cruikshank, In thy unmatched grotesqueness,"
for a philosopher is a systematiser and a punster is an anarchist. But we do not need him as a philosopher or as an Importance of any kind.
224
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
What we see and accept as philosophy in him is the appropriation of misery for that Gargantuan meal of humour to which his Time sits down. Yet in that philosophy it is certain that ironists and pessimists excel him.
An entomologist as generous in classification as Mr Swinburne, author of " Under the Microscope/' will now observe me in the process of being re-transformed into a scolytus. " Impossible! " cries the reader who remembers my repentance on page 203. But I say " In- evitable." Since I had the courage to bore my way through a catalogue of famous books illustrated humorously by Cruikshank, I feel it my duty to bid the reader look at a list of works of which he should acquire all the italicised items, in such editions as he can afford, if he wishes to know Cruikshank's humour as they know it who call him " The Great George."
The Humourist (4 vols., 1819-20). German Popular Stories (2 vols., 1823-4). Points of Humour (2 vols., 1823-4). Mornings at Bow Street (1824). Greenwich Hospital (182(>). More Mornings at Bow Street (1827). 227
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Phrenological Illustrations (1826).
Illustrations of Time (1827).
Scraps and Sketches (4 parts and one plate of an
unpublished 5th part, 1828-9, 1831-2, 1834). My Sketch Book (9 numbers, with plates dated
1833, 1834, 1835). Punch and Judy (1828). Three Courses and a Dessert (1830). Cruikshankiana (1835). The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman (1839). George Cruikshank's Omnibus (9 parts, 1841-2). The Bachelor's Own Book (1844). George Cruikshank's Table Book (12 numbers,
1845). George Cruikshank's Fairy Library (4 parts,
1853-4, 1864). George Cruikshank's Magazine (2 numbers, 1854).
This list reminds us that, though Cruikshank often conferred a bibliophile's immortality upon authors more " writative," to quote the Earl of Rochester, than inspired, he was some- times the means of arresting great literary merit on its way to oblivion. A case in point is William Clarke's " Three Courses and a Dessert," a book of racy stories containing droll and exquisite cuts by Cruikshank, after rude sketches by its author, who did Cruikshank 228
The Turk's only daughter approaches to mitigate the sufferings of Lord Bateman." "The Loving Ballad of Lord Bate- man," 1839.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
the service of accusing him in "The Cigar" (1825) of being stubbornly modest for half an hour. Again, we owe to Cruikshank our knowledge of " The Adventures of Sir Frizzle Pumpkin ; Nights at Mess ; and Other 'Pales " (1836), a work of which I will only say that its anonymous narrative of good luck in cowardice won a smile from one of the most lovable of poets on the day she died.
" The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman " is one of the puzzles of literature. Mr Andrew Lang decides that it is a volkslied, to which, for the version of it illustrated by Cruikshank, Thackeray contributed the notes considered by some to be by Dickens. Mr Blanchard Jerrold thinks " nobody but Thackeray " could have written the lines about " this young bride's mother Who never was heard to speak so free," and I think that the notes are Thackeray's, and the ballad an example of a class of literature from which Thackeray drew comic inspiration. Cruikshank heard it sung outside " a wine vaults " (sic) at Battle Bridge by a young gentleman called "The Tripe- skewer." The ballad became part of Cruik- shank's repertory. Mr Walter Hamilton states 2gl
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
that Cruikshank sang "Lord Bateman " in the presence of Dickens and Thackeray ' ' at a dinner of the Antiquarian Society, with the Cockney mal-pronunciations he had heard given to it by a street ballad-singer." He adds that Thackeray expressed a wish, which he allowed Cruikshank to sterilise, to print the ballad with illustrations. We may there- fore suppose, despite the omission of the notes to Lord Bateman from the ' e Biographical Edition " of Thackeray's works, that they are by the author of "The Ballad of Eliza Davis." Cruikshank, overflowing with lacteal kindness, added three verses to the "loving ballad " as he heard it, in which the bride who yields place to the Turk's daughter is married to the "proud porter." Cruikshank's etchings are charmingly naive and expressive. The bibliophool pays eight guineas for a first edition, minus the shading of the trees in the plate entitled The Proud Young Porter in Lord Bateman s State Apartment.
"The Bachelor's Own Book" is a story told in pictures and footlines, both by the artist. The hero is " Mr Lambkin, gent," a podgy- nosed prototype of Juggins, who amuses him- 232
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
self by the nocturnal removal of knockers and duly appears in the police court, but is ulti- mately led to domestic felicity by the dreary spectacle of a confirmed bachelor alone in an immense salon of the Grand Mausoleum Club. Some of the etchings — notably Mr Lambkin feebly revolting against his medicine — are mirth -provoking, and his various swaggering attitudes are well-imagined.
" Cruikshankiana " conveniently presents a number of George Cruikshank's caricatures in reprints about a decade older than the plates. The preface solemnly but with ludicrous in- accuracy states that in each etching " a stern moral is afforded, and that in the most powerful and attractive manner."
We are now brought to the conclusion of our most important chapter. Will Cruikshank's humour live? or, rather, may it live? for things live centuries without permission, and the fright of Little Miss Muffet is more re- membered than the terror of Melmoth. The answer should be " Yes " from all who acknow- ledge beauty in the sparkle of evil and of good. No humorist worthy of that forbidden fruit which made thieves of all mankind can refrain
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
from the laughter which is paid for by another. Mark Twain, who has nerves to thrill for martyred Joan of Arc, delights in the epitaph, "Well done, good and faithful servant," pro- nounced over the frizzled corpse of a negro cook. Lowell, the poet, extracted a pun from the blind eyes of Milton. Punch, in 1905, amused us with the boy who supposed that horses were made of cats' meat, and in 1905 Sir Francis Burnand thought that the most humor- ous pictorial joke published by him in Punch was Phil May's drawing of a fisherman being invited to enter the Dotty ville Lunatic Asylum. There is heroism as well as vulgarity in laughter saluting death and patience, hippophagy and cannibalism, ugliness and deprivation. He is a wise man who sees smiling mouths in the rents of ruin and the spaces between the ribs of the skeleton angel. Humour, irresponsible and purposeless, is of eternity, and to me (at least) it is the one masterful human energy in the world to-day. It is against compassion and importance and remorse and horror and blame, but it is not for cruelty, or for indifference to distress. Nothing exists so separate from truth and falsehood and right and wrong.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Nothing is more instant in pure appeal to the intellect, no blush is more sincere than that of the person who before company cannot see a joke. Humorists are dear to the critic because they criticise by re-making in the world of idea the things they criticise. Among them Cruik- shank is dearer than some, less dear than others. Through the regency and reign of the eldest son of George the Third he, even more than Cobbett, seems to me the historian of genius, by virtue of prodigious merriment in vulgar art. The great miscellany of humour which he poured out revitalises his name whenever it is examined by the family of John Bull. For it is his own humour — the humour of one who had the power to appropriate without disgrace because he was himself an Original,
235
VII
OUR classification of Cruikshank's works has enabled us to see the objective range of his artistic personality. A few words must now be said of the media in which he worked. Of these media the principal was etching.
"O! I've seen Etching!" exclaims Cruikshank in 1 859 ; " it's easy enough, you only rub some black stuff over the copper plate, and then take a[n] etching needle, and scratch away a bit — and then clap on some a-ke-ta-ke (otherwise aquafortis) — and there you are ! " " Wash the steel," he says in another of his quaint revelations, "with a solution of copper in Nitro\ii\s acid — to tarnish the tarnation Bright steel before Etching, to save the eyes."
In his 77th year he says : " I am working away as hard as ever at water color drawings and paintings in oil, doing as little Etching as possible as that is very slavish work."
As he had etched about 2700 designs when
236
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
he made this statement, it is impossible not to sympathise with his recreative change of medium. It must be remembered that, except in dry-point etching, the bite of the acid is trusted to engrave the design of the needle and that, when the stronger lines are obtained " by allowing the acid to act for a longer time " on a particular part or parts of the etched plate, the mechanical work, and work of calculation, imposed upon the etcher is formid- able. Until, in the late seventies of the nine- teenth century, the invasion of the process- block gave manual freedom to the bookseller's artist, that individual was continually sighing over the complexity of the method by which he paid the tribute of his imagination to Mammon. In the hands of the wood-engraver an artist's uiiengraved work was apparently always liable to the danger of misrepresentation unless the artist engraved it himself. Even the great John Thompson is not free from the suspicion of having unconsciously assisted "demon printers" in transforming into "little dirty scratches " some designs by Daniel Maclise, whose expressions are preserved in this sentence. Cruikshank who, if we add his
239
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
woodcuts to his etchings, saw upwards of 4000 designs by him given with laborious indirectness to the world, would have been more than human if he had considered his unskilfulness in the art of producing and employing the colours between black and white as a reason for refraining from painting in oils. In 1853 "he entered as a student at the Royal Academy"; but his industry, in the role of a pupil of 60, was, it seems, less than his humility, for " he made very few drawings in the Antique" says Mr Charles Landseer, " and never got into the Life." Cruikshank, however, had exhibited in the Royal Academy as early as 1830, and in 1848 he dared to paint for the Prince Consort the picture entitled Disturbing the Congregation. This picture of a boy in church looking passion- ately unconscious of the fact that his sacri- legious pegtop is lying on the grave of a knight in full view of the beadle, is an anecdote painted more for God to laugh at than for Christians of the " so-called nineteenth century," but a philosophic sightseer like myself rejoices in it. This picture and The Fairy Ring, already praised, reveal Crnikshank's 240
0) CRUSOE'S FARMHOUSE. (A) CRUSOE IN HIS ISLAND HOME. From "Robinson Crusoe," 1831
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
talent sufficiently to prevent one from regret- ting that he ultimately preferred covering canvases to furrowing plates.
To do him justice he was academically interested in the whole technique of pictorial art as practised in his day. He admitted, for instance, to Charles Hancock, "the sole inventor and producer of blocks by the process known as ' Etching on Glass/" that if this invention had come earlier before him "it would have altered the whole character" of his drawing, though the designs which he produced by Hancock's process — the first of which was completed in April 1864 — include nothing of importance.
We will not further linger over the media of reproduction employed by our artist, but summon a few ideas suggested by the vision we have had of him sitting like a schoolboy in the schoolroom of the Royal Academy.
As a draughtsman he had been professorial in 1817 when he published with S. W. Fores two plates entitled Striking Effects produced by lines and dots for the assistance of young draftsmen, wherein he showed, like Hogarth, the amount of pictorial information which an
243
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
artist can convey by a primitively simple method. He was professorial, too, when in 1865 he attempted to put in perspective a twelve mile giant taking a stride of six miles, on a plate 6 inches long and 3| inches broad, and informed the publisher of " Popular Romances of the West of England " (1865) that about 1825 he had attempted to put in perspective the Miltonic Satan whose body
ef Prone on the flood, extended long and large, Lay floating many a rood."
Cruikshank's greatest enemy was his mannerism which may even delude the pessi- mist of scant acquaintance with him into the idea that it imperfectly disguises an inability to draw up to the standard of Vere Foster. The Cruikshankian has merely to direct the attention of such a person to the frontispiece executed by Cruikshank for T. J. Pettigrew's " History of Egyptian Mummies" (1834). If a man can draw well in the service of science his mannerism is the accomplishment of an intention.
Ruskin said that Cruikshank's works were " often much spoiled by a curiously mistaken 244
THE VETERANS. From " Songs, Naval and National,
of the late Charles Pibden," 1841. cr
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
type of face, divided so as to give too much to the mouth and eyes and leave too little for forehead," and yet there is extant a curious MS. note by Cruikshank to the effect that Mr Ruskin's eyes were " in the wrong Place and not set properly in his head," showing that Cruikshank was a student of even a patron's physiognomy and suggesting that, if Ruskin had roamed in Cruikshank' s London he would have convicted the artist of a malady of imitativeness. It must be remembered that he repeatedly drew recognisable portraits of his contemporaries ; indeed he was so far from being a realist devoted to libel that Mr Layard confides to us that various studies by George Cruikshank of " the great George " would, he thinks, " have resulted in an undue sublimation had completion ever been attained."
Yet the sublimation of the respectable is precisely the rosy view of Cruikshank the man enjoyed by me at the present moment. He is Captain of the 24th Surrey Rifle Volunteers ; he is Vice-President of the London Temperance League. He sketches a beautiful palace as a pastime. He is in the same ballroom as Queen Victoria, and Her Majesty bows to 247
GEOftGE CRUIKSHANK
him. Withal he is sturdy and declines the Prince Consort's offer for his collection of works by George Cruikshank. In the end St Paul's Cathedral receives him, and the person who knew him most intimately declares on enduring stone that she loved him best.
We are now at the end, and cannot stimulate the muse of our prose to further efforts. She being silent obliges our blunt British voice to speak for itself. Inasmuch as Cruikshank was a mannerist, he is inimitable except by them who take great pains to vex the critical of mankind. Inasmuch as he expressed the beauty of crookedness, as though he found the secret of artistic success in punning on his own name, he offers a model worthy of practical study. His fame as an etcher is too loud to be lost in the silence of Henri Beraldi, who enumerated " Les graveurs du dix-neuvieme siecle," in 12 tomes (1885- 1 892), without mentioning his name. Though C is more employed in the initials of words than any other letter in our alphabet, the name of Cruikshank comes only after " Curious " in its attractiveness for the readers of entries under the letter C in English catalogues of second- 248
VIGNETTE. From -'Pet-ps at Life," by the London Hermit (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.), engraved by Bolton, 1875.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
hand books. It may be that to etchings in books of Cruikshank's period is ascribed, since the usurpation of the process-block, the factitious value of curios, and that he, Beraldi's Great Omitted, profits thereby. It is a fact that he is "collected" like postage-stamps, though no published work of his has attained the price per copy of the imperforate twopenny Mauritius of J847. But we have descended to a comparison so unfortunate in its logical consequences that it is well to prophesy the immortality of Cruikshank from other than commercial tokens. Those tokens exist in the undying praises of Dickens, Thackeray, "Christopher North," and Ruskin, in the enormous work of his principal bibliographer George William Reid, and, not least to the spiritual eye, in the permanence of the impression made by a few of his designs on a memory that has forgotten a little of that literary art which is the only atonement offered by its owner to the world for all the irony of his requickened life.
25
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Numbers referring to illustrations are in larger type. The titles of illustrations are in italics, the titles of books and periodicals in inverted commas. An article or demonstrative adjective in par- enthesis in the first line of an entry indicates that the article parenthesised begins the title of the subject of that entry.
Achilles in Hyde Park, 171. See Brazen, Ladies, Making.
Acton, John Adams. See Cruikshank, George.
Adam-tilers. An Adam-tiler is a receiver of stolen goods, a pickpocket, a fence, 103.
" Adventures (The) of Gil Bias of Santillane. Translated from the French of Lesage, by T. Smollett, M.D. To which is prefixed a memoir of the author, by Thomas Roscpe. Illustrated by George Cruik- shank [and K. Meadows] " (2 vols., London : Effingham Wilson, 1833 ; being vols. xvi. and xvii. of " The Novelist's Library, edited by Thomas Roscoe, with illus- trations by George Cruik- shank "), 199.
" Adventures (The) of Joseph Andrews, by Henry Fielding, Esq., with illustrations by George Cruikshank " (Lon- don: James Cochrarie & Co., 1832. It is vol. vii. of " The Novelist's Library : edited by Thomas Roscoe, Esq., with illustrations by George Cruikshank"), 189.
" Adventures (The) of Sir Frizzle Pumpkin ; Nights at Mess ; and Other Tales. With illus- trations by George Cruik- shank" (William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh ; and T. Cadell, Strand, London, 1836. The author is Rev. James White). 231.
A. E. (George Russell), 161.
A Going! A Going! The Last Time A Going!!! (print
Sub. 12 April 1821 by G. umphrey), 25.
Ainsworth, William Harrison, 77, 81. See Ainsworth's, Artist, Guy Fawkes, Jack Sheppard, Miser's, Rook wood, S[ain]t James's, Sir Lionel, Tower, \Vindsor.
" Ainsworth's Magazine : a Miscellany of Romance, General Literature, and Art. Edited by William Harrison Ainsworth " (illustrations by George Cruikshank appear in the first 6 vols. and the gth vol. " Guy Fawkes " was reprinted with Cruikshank's etchings in vols. xvi. xvii. in 1849 and 1850. The first 9 vols. were published in
253
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
London by [successively] Hugh Cunningham, 1842 ; Cunningham & Mortimer, 1842-1843 ; John Mortimer, 1843-1845 ; Henry Colburn, 1845 ; Chapman & Hall, 1846), 86, 87, 90, 91, 93, 137-
Akerman, John Yonge, 125, 126. See Gentleman.
Albert, Prince (the Prince Con- sort, born 1819, died 1861), 44, 240, 248. See Original.
Albert Memorial, 43.
Alfieri, 72.
Almanack. See Comic Alma- nack.
Alphabet. 211-212. See Comic Alphabet.
Andersen, Hans Christian, 36.
" Angelo's Picnic ; or, Table Talk, including numerous Re- collections of Public Char- acters, who have figured in some part or another of the stage of life for the last fifty years ; forming an endless variety of talent, amusement, and interest, calculated to please every person fond of Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes. Written by Himself. ... In addition to which are several original literary contributions from the following Distinguished Authors : — Colman, Theodore Hook. Bulwer, Horace Smith, Mrs 'Radcliffe, Miss Jane Porter, Mrs Hall, Kenny, | Peake, Boaden, Hermit in | London, &c." ( London : John Fbers, 1834), 225.
" Annals (The) of Gallantry, or the Conjugal Monitor," by A. Moore, LL.D.(s vols., London: printed for the proprietors by M. Jones, 1814, 1815. First issued in 18 parts), 70-71. Anti-Slavery. See New.
" Arabian Nights " (the publisher, Mr John Murray, has a record that George Cruikshank was paid £67. 45. for some illustrations for the " Arabian Nights "), 156.
Arnold, Matthew, 69.
" Arthur O'Leary : His Wan- derings and Ponderings in many Lands. Edited by his Friend, Harry Lorrequer, and Illustrated by George Cruik- shank. In Three Volumes " (London : Henry Colburn, 1844), 196.
" Artist (The) and the Author. A Statement of Facts, by the Artist, George Cruikshank. Proving that the Distinguished Author, Mr W. Harrison Ains- worth, is ' labouring under a singular delusion ' with re- spect to the origin of ' The Miser's Daughter,' ' The Tower of London,' &c." (London : Bell & Daldy, 1872), 60.
" Art Journal (The)," 184.
" Athena?um (The)," 82.
"Attic Miscellany," n.
Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (6th son of George III., born 1773, died 1843. George Cruikshank etched facsimiles of five illustrations in a isth century Hebrew and Chaldee Pentateuch, copies of two illuminations from a i3th century Armenian MS. of the Gospels and an illumination to a Latin Psalter of the loth century for " Bibliotheca Sussexiana. A descriptive catalogue, accompanied by historical and biographical notices of the manuscripts and printed books contained in the library of His Royal High- ness the Duke of Sussex, K.G., D.C.L., &c. &c. &c. &c.,
254
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
in Kensington Palace. By Thomas J oseph Pettigrew, F.R.S., F.A.S., F.L.S., and librarian to H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex " [London : Long- man & Co., Paternoster Row ; Payne & Foss, Pall Mall; Harding & Co., Pall Mall East ; H. Bohn, Henrietta Street ; and Smith & Son, Glasgow, 1827]). See Illus- trations of Popular.
Bacchus. See Worship ; Oil Painting.
" Bachelor's (The) Own Book. The Adventures of Mr Lambkin, Gent., in the Pur- suit of Pleasure and Amuse- ment, and also in search of Health and Happiness " (designed, etched, and pub- lished by George Cruikshank, i Aug. 1844), 232-233.
Baker, A. Z., 212.
Ballooning, 40.
" Banbury Chap-Books." See Pearson, Edwin.
" Bands (The) hi the Parks. Copy of a letter supposed to have been sent from a High Dignitary of the Church to ' the Right Man in the Right Place,' upon the subject of the military Bands Playing in the Parks on Sundays. Picked up and published by George Cruikshank " (London : W. Tweedie, 1856), 59.
Bank of England, 28.
Bank Restriction Note (Hone is said to have realised over £700 by the sale of this shocker), 28.
Barham, Rev. Richard Harris (" Thomas Ingoldsby " ; born 6 Dec. 1788, died 17 June 1845) . See Ingoldsby Legends.
Barker, M. H. ("The" and
"An" "Old Sailor"), 95. See Greenwich, Old Sailor's Jolly Boat, Topsail-sheet.
Bartholomew Fair, 39.
Basile, Giambattista, 204. See Pentamerone.
Bateman, Lord. See Loving.
Bath. See New Bath.
Bayly, Thomas Haynes (died 22 April 1839), 216.
Beachy Head, 108.
" Beauties (The) of Washington Irving, Esq. . . . Illus- trated with woodcuts, en- graved by Thompson ; from drawings by George Cruik- shank, Esq." (4th ed., London: Thomas Tegg & Son, 1835. G. Cruikshank illustrated " Knickerbocker's New York" [sic] with a fine etching entitled Ten Breeches, and another entitled Anthony Van Corlear &• Peter Stuy- vesant, pub. in " Illustra- tions of Popular Works," 1830). See Thompson, John.
" Bee (The) and the Wasp. A Fable — in verse. WTith de- signs and etchings, by G. Cruikshank "(London : Charles Tilt, 1832. The text is by Richard Frankum), 148.
Beerbohm, Max, 22.
Belch, W., 12.
Bentley, Richard, publisher (died 10 Sept. 1871 in the 77th year of his age), 86.
Bentley's Miscellany (64 vols., London : Richard Bentley, 1837-1868. George Cruik- shank contributed illustra- tions to the first 14 vols. Charles Dickens edited vols. i.-v., and part of vol. v. William Harrison Ainsworth was the next editor, but started an opposition maga- i zine in 1842), 74 (vol. iv.,
255
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
|
1838), 133 (The Handsome |
Wales. Price six shillings," |
|
Clear Starcher), 175 (The |
27, 55-57, 69. |
|
Ingoldsby Legends). |
Bowring, John. See Minor. |
|
Beraldi, Henri, 248, 251. |
Boz. See Dickens, Charles. |
|
Berenger, Lt.-Col. Baron De. |
Brazen (This) Image was erected |
|
See Stop. |
by the ladies, in honor of |
|
Bergami, Baron Bartolomo, 26. |
Paddy Carey O'Killus, Esq., |
|
" Betting (The) Book. By |
their Man o' Metal. (J. P***y |
|
George Cruikshank " (Lon- |
invt., G. Cruikshank feet. |
|
don : W. & F. G. Cash, |
Caricature published by J. |
|
1852), 58. Blake, William (born 1757, died 12 Aug. 1828). See Three. |
Fairburn, 20 July 1822), 171. Breaking Up (Holiday scene by George Cruikshank, |
|
Blewitt, Mrs Octavian, 134. |
published 12 Dec. 1826 by |
|
See Rose and the Lily. |
S. Knight), i. |
|
Blucher (Old) beating the Cor- |
Brighton Pavilion (" the Folly"), |
|
sican Big Drum (caricature |
44- |
|
published by S. W. Fores, |
Broadley, A. M., 12. See Facing, |
|
8 April 1814), 20. |
Reid. |
|
" Blue Light (The)," 159. |
" Brooks alias Read," publisher |
|
Boleyn, Anne, 90. |
who employed Percy Cruik- |
|
Bolton, engraver, 249.* |
shank and who was cari- |
|
Boney Hatching a Bulletin, or |
catured insultingly by George |
|
Snug Winter Quarters (cari- |
Cruikshank, 60. |
|
cature published Dec. 1812 |
Brough, Robt. B. See Life of Sir. |
|
by Walker & Knight), 18. |
Bruton, H. W., 133. |
|
Boney' s Elb(a)ow Chair (cari- |
Buck, Adam (portrait painter, |
|
cature published 5 May 1814 |
born 1759, died l833- The |
|
by S. Knight), 20. |
Duke of York was among his |
|
Boney's Meditations on the |
sitters), 26. |
|
island of St Helena. The |
Bull, John, 4, 7, 176. See John |
|
Devil addressing the Sun. (G. |
Bull, John Bull's, Johnny |
|
H. invt., G. Cruikshank feet. |
Bull, Preparing. |
|
Caricature published by H. |
Bunyan, John, 120, 125. See |
|
Humphrey, Aug. 1815), 133. |
Christian, Pilgrim's (2 items). |
|
Boney Tir'd of War's alarms |
Burnand, Sir Francis Cowley, |
|
(caricature published by |
(born 29 Nov. 1836 ; became |
|
Walker & Knight, Jan. 1813), |
editor of " Punch " in 1880), |
|
18. |
234. |
|
" Bottle (The). In eight plates, |
Burns, Robert, 116 (The Deil |
|
designed and etched by George |
cam fiddling thro' the Town), |
|
Cruikshank. Dedicated to |
172 (" The Jolly Beggars "). |
|
Joseph Adshead, Esq., of |
See Royal Academy, 1852. |
|
Manchester. London : pub- |
" Bursill's Biographies. No. i. |
|
lished for the artist, September |
George Cruikshank. Artist |
|
ist, 1847, by David Bogue, |
— Humorist — Moralist " |
|
86 Fleet Street ; Wiley & Put- |
(London : John Bursill), 162. |
|
nam, New York ; and J . |
Buzmen. A Buzman is a pick- |
|
Sands, Sydney, New South |
pocket, 103. |
256
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Byron, Lord, 183, 195. See Memoirs of the Life.
" Cakes and Ale. By Douglas Jerrold" (2 vols., How & Parsons, 1842), 204 (The Mayor of Hole-cum-Corner).
Callot, Jacques (born 1592, died 28 March 1635), 93, 94.
Carbonaro, Jose Moreno, 199.
Carbonic Acid Gas. See Good Effects.
Carey, David, 46, 47.
Caroline of Brunswick, wife of George IV. (born 17 May 1768, married George, Prince of Wales, 8 April 1795, died 7 Aug. 1821. If the belief still linger that Cruikshank was a Caroliniac, see his draw- ing of The Radical Ladder in " The Loyalist's Magazine," 1821. The preface to this publication remarks on " that Reginal mania, which for a season transported our coun- trymen "), 25. See A Going, Queen's, Royal Rushlight.
Carpenter, 27.
Carroll, Lewis, 32, 183-184, 216,
220, 223.
Cash, William, 57.
Catalani, Angelica, n.
" Catalogue (A) of a Selection from the Works of George Cruikshank, Extending over a Period of Upwards of Sixty years [from 1799 to X863,] Now Exhibiting at Exeter Hall. Consisting of Upwards of One Hundred Oil Paint- ings. Water- Colour Drawings, and' Original Sketches ; to- gether with over a Thousand Proof Etchings, from his most popular Works, Cari- • catures, Scrap Books, Son[g] j Headings, &c. ; and The | Worship of Bacchus. Open \
Daily from Ten till Dusk. Admission One Shilling. Lon- don : William Tweedie, 337, Strand, 1863. Price Two- pence " ('This title is copied from that of the 2nd ed. of the catalogue, desirable'on ac- count of G. Cruikshank's pre- face which is dated February, 1863), i.
" Catholic Miracles ; illustrated with seven designs, including a characteristic portrait of Prince Hohenlohe, by George Cruikshank. To which is added a reply to Cobbett's Defence of Catholicism, and his Libel on the Reformation " (London : Knight & Lacey. Dublin : Westley & Tyrrell, 1825), 140.
Cato Street, 3. See Interior View of Hayloft.
Cervantes, 183. See History and, Illustrations of Don.
Chamisso, Adelbert von, 125. See Peter.
Charles Gustavus, King of Sweden, 74.
Chesson, Nora (poet), 231.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (quoted), 104.
Children's Lottery Print (first published in 1804, by W. Belch, Newington Butts, price Jd. Mr G. S. Layard observes that " George did not make his copy from the earliest state of the plate"), 15.
Child's Christmas Piece — Daniel in the Lion's Den. (An etching. Capt. Douglas writes, " the centre is left blank in which the child has to write its Christmas piece "), n.
Cholic (The) (caricature pub- lished by G. Humphrey, 12 Feb. 1819), 166.
Christian passing through the
257
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Valley of the Shadow of Death (print of which the foundation is unknown. Published by W. Tweedie, 337 Strand. De- scribed on p. 125 from No. 10,043 hi The George Cruik- shank Collection, South Ken- sington Museum).
" Cigar (The) " (2 vols. Lon- don : T. Richardson, 98 High Holborn ; Sherwood, Jones & Co., Paternoster Row ; W. Hunter, Edinburgh, 1825. The vols. contain 25 different cuts ; the same design appears on both their title - pages. Though W. Clarke was the editor of and chief contribu- tor to "The Cigar," a re- issue in one vol. of the greater part of its contents, containing all the cuts except those on pp. 99 and 378, vol. i., and pp. 259 and 378, vol. ii., states that "The Cigar" is "by George Cruikshank, author of 'Three Courses and a Dessert ' " !), 231.
" Cinderella and the Glass Slipper, edited and illustrated with ten subjects, designed and etched on steel, by George Cruikshank " (London : David Bogue, 1854), 57, 153. See Royal Academy, 1854, 1859.
Clarke, William (born 1800, died 1838), 215, 228, 231. See Cigar, Three Courses.
Clarke, Mrs Mary Anne (nee Thompson, born 27 June 1771), married Clarke a stone- mason in 1794. In 1803 she appears to have been set up in the world of fashion by the Duke of York, whose mistress she became. In 1809 her practice of accepting bribes from those desiring military promotion scandalised the
House of Commons, and com- pelled the Duke to resign the post of Commander-in-Chief of the British army. She died 21 June 1852. Author of " The Rival Princes " (2 vols., London : C. Chappie, 1810), 4, 26-27. See Mrs, Return, Woman.
Clarke, Mary Cowden, 152. See Kit.
" Clement Lorimer, or, the Book with the Iron Clasps. A Romance by Angus B. Reach " (London : David Bogue, 1849 ; first published in 6 parts), 107, 109.
Cobbett, William (born March 1762, died 18 June 1835. Author of " History of the Regency and Reign of King George the Fourth " [Lon- don : William Cobbett, 1830]), 8, 35, 235. See Cobbett at.
Cobbett at Court, or St James's in a bustle (extracted from No. III. of " The Censor." Pub. by W. Deans, Catherine St., Strand, 16 Oct. 1807), 32.
Collier, John Payne, 130. See Punch and Judy.
Columbus and the Egg, 191.
Comic Almanack (19 vols., 1835- 1853. The first six, 1835- 1840, were published by Tilt. The next three, 1841-1843, were published by Tilt & Bogue. The remaining vols., 1844-1853, were published by David Bogue. The following is an abridged copy of the words of the first title-page : " The Comic Almanack for 1835 : an Ephemeris in jest and earnest ... by Rig- dum Funnidos, Gent. A- dorned with a dozen of ' right merrie' cuts, pertaining to the months, sketched and etched
258
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
by George Cruikshank, and divers humorous cuts by other hands. London : Imprinted for Charles Tilt, Bibliopolist, in Fleet Street. Vizetelly, Branston & Co., Printers, Fleet Street "), 32, 35, 39-40, 41, 52, 53, 196, 211-212, 224. See Guys.
" Comic (A) Alphabet, designed, etched, and published by George Cruikshank, No. 23 Myddelton Terrace, Penton- ville,i836,"i8o (Socrates),181. Comic Composites for the Scrap Book (published by S. W. Fores, circa 1821-1822. 2nd state published i June 1829 by W. B. Cooke), 141, 142. Composites. See Comic Com- posites.
Coriolanus addressing the Ple- beians (caricature published 27 Feb. 1820 by G. Hum- phrey), 4, 35.
Coronation (The] of the Empress of the Nai rs (in " The Scourge, ' ' i Sept. 1812), 24. Cowper, William, 183, 213.
See Diverting.
Cow (The) Pox Tragedy. Scene the Last (caricature published 1812 in " The Scourge," Aug. 1812), 31. Crinolines, 32. Cruikshank, Miss Eliza (died
young), 112 .
Cruikshank, Mrs Eliza (nee Widdison, who married George Cruikshank, 7 March 1850), H2, 113, 248. See Original. Cruikshank, George. For Bib- liographies of his works, see Catalogue, Reid, Three Cruikshanks, Works. For Biographies of him and kin- dred works, see Bursill's, Jerrold (Blanchard), Layard, Memoir, Meynell, Sala,
Stephens. For literary and artistic volumes by him, see Artist, Bands, Betting, Cinderella, Cruikshankiana, Discovery, Drawings, Few, George Cruikshank's (4 items), Glass, Handbook, History of J ack, Hop - o' - my - thumb, Illustrations of Time, Jack, My, Phrenological, Pop-Gun, Puss, Scraps, Slice, Stop. For pictures exhibited by him, see Royal Academy. For portraits of him, see frontispiece, 15, 27, 35, 47, 111,112,131. Themonument to him, which includes a bust of him, in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, was designed and executed by J ohn Adams Acton. A. Clayton sold a bust of G. Cruikshank to the National Portrait Gallery. There is an engraved portrait of him, full of character, by D. J . Pound, from a photo, by John and Charles Watkins, Parliament St. For his re- sidences, see 10.
Cruikshank, Isaac (born 1756 ?, died 1810 or 1811), 10, n, iii. See Facing.
Cruikshank, Isaac Robert (born 1789 or 1790, died 1856), 46, 47, 60, 67, in, 200, 213.
Cruikshank, Percy, 60, 65.
"Cruikshankiana: An Assem- blage of the Most Celebrated Works of George Cruikshank " (London : Thomas McLean, 1835), 233.
Crusoe, Robinson. See Life and.
Cumberland, Duke of (Ernest Augustus, fifth son of George III.), 139-140.
D'Aiguille, P.", 27. Daniel in the Lion's Den, n. See Child's Christmas.
259
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Daumier, Honore (born 26 Feb. 1808, died n Feb. 1879. His extraordinary industry, evidenced by the fact that the catalogue of his lithographed works alone enumerates 3958 plates, reminds us of George Cruikshank), 176, 179.
Davenport, Samuel (line en- graver, born 10 Dec. 1783, died 15 July 1867 ; he was one of the earliest to engrave on steel).
Defoe, Daniel. See Life and, Journal.
Delort, C., 90.
Demonology. See Twelve.
Design for a Palace. See Palace.
Devil (The), 18-19, 116.
Dibdin, Charles. See Songs.
Dickens, Charles (" Boz," born 7 Feb. 1812, died 9 June 1870), 99, 195, 224, 231-232. See Oliver, Sketches, Sir Lionel.
" Dick Whittington and his Cat " (a Banbury Chap-Book designed by Cruikshank, engraved by Branstone [writes Edwin Pearson], and published by [? J . G.] Rusher about 1814. George and Robert Cruikshank designed and etched the folding coloured frontispiece to " History of Whittington and His Cat," published by Dean & Munday, Threadneedle St., 1822), 155.
" Dictionary (A) of the Slang and Cant Languages " (London : George Smeeton, 1809), 46.
Dinner (The) oftheFour-in-Hand Club at Satthill (caricature by George Cruikshank, published in " The Scourge," i June 1811, by M. Jones), 51.
Dirks, Gus, 212.
" Discovery (A) Concerning Ghosts; with a rap at the
260
' Spirit- Rappers,' by George Cruikshank. Illustrated with Cuts. Dedicated to the 'Ghost Club ' " (London : Frederick Arnold, 1863), 59-60, 116.
Distant (A) View of Shake- speare's Cliff, Dover, 107.
Disturbing the Congregation (oil- painting painted in 1848 for the Prince Consort), 240.
" Diverting (The) History of John Gilpin. Showing how he went farther than he in- tended and came safe home again," with six illustrations by George Cruikshank (Lon- don : Charles Tilt, 1828), 213.
Don Quixote 199-200, 201. See History and Illustrations of Don.
Dots. See Striking.
Douglas, Capt. R. J. H., 16. See New Union, Works.
Doyle, Richard (born 1824, died 10 Dec. 1883), 4.
" Drawings by George Cruik- shank prepared by him to illustrate an intended auto- biography. Published for Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson by Chatto & Windus, 214 Piccadilly, London, J anuary 2ist, 1895," 59, 108.
" Drunkard (The), a Poem," by John O'Neill, with illustra- tions by George Cruikshank (London : Tilt & Bogue, 1842), 52, 55.
" Drunkard's (The) Children, a Sequel to The Bottle in eight plates, by George Cruikshank (London : published July ist, 1848, by David Bogue), 55, 57.
Dumas, Alexandra (pere), 94.
Du Maurier, George Louis Pal- mella Busson (born 6 March 1834, died 8 Oct. 1896), 43, 176, 196.
Dunstan, St.,122,123. S^True.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Dussek, O. B. See Fairy Songs. \ Fairies. See " George Cruik-
Dutton, Thomas. See Monthly.
Education. See Few.
Egan, Pierce (born 1772, died 1849), 46.
Ehrhart, S. D., 162.
" 1851 : or The Adventures of Mr and Mrs Cursty Sandboys." See World's.
Elizabeth, Princess (afterwards Queen of England), 85.
' ' Elysium (The) of Animals : A Dream. By Egerton Smith " (London : J. Nisbet, 1836. The etching by Geo. Cruikshank entitled The Knackers [sic] Yard, or the Horses [sic] last home ! here contains the notice " Licensed for Slaughtering Horses"), 220.
Etching. 236, 239.
" Every- Day (The) Book, or Everlasting Calendar of Pop- ular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Man- ners, Customs, and Events, Incident to each of the Three Hundred and Sixty - Five Days, in Past and Present Times," by William Hone (2 vols., London : Hunt & Clarke, 1826-7. " The Table Book," by William Hone [2 vols., London : Hunt & Clarke, 1827-8] is associated with " The Every- Day Book " in a collective title-page [1831], 85.
Facing the Enemy (caricature published at Ackermann's Gallery, 1797-8. Mr A. M. Broadley has an impression of this caricature on which George Cruikshank has written " etched by Ik. Cruikshank not any by me G. Ck."), 12.
shank's Fairy Library." Fairy (The) Ring, 160, 240. " Fairy Songs and Ballads for the Young. Written, com- posed and dedicated to Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, by O. B. Dussek. In Two Books " (London :
D'Almaine & Co.), 155. f, 48, 135. S^Lifeoi Farrow, G. E., 216.
Falstaff, 48, 135. See Life of Sir.
Fashion, 7, 31-2, 33, 37. See Monstrosities of 1816, Mon- strosities of 1826, Mushroom.
Fat (The) in the Fire, cut at end of " ' Non mi Ricordo ! ' &c. &c. &c." (London: William Hone, 1820), 4.
" Few (A) Remarks on the System of General Education as prepared by the National Education League, by George Cruikshank, with a second edition of A Slice of Bread and Butter, upon the same subject, with cuts " (London : William Tweedie, 1870), 59.
Fielding, Henry, 183, 188. See Adventures of Joseph, Illus- trations of Smollett, Tom.
" Fireside Plate (The)," an etching for " Oliver Twist," 9.
First (The) Appearance of William Shakespeare, on the stage of " The Globe," sur- rounded by part of his Dramatic Company, the other members coming over the hills. (De- signed by George Cruikshank, Jan. 1863. The drawing in the South Kensington Museum was done by our artist in 1864-5, and is " from the original water color drawing by George Cruik- shank, in the possession of T. Morson, Esq., Junr." A replica of the design for Mr
CJ-
26l
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
|
Morson was " printed in |
wards George ..IV. -(born 12 |
|
permanent pigments " by the |
Aug. 1762, died 26 June |
|
Autotype Fine Art Co., Ltd., |
1830), 4, 8, 19, 22-26, 35, 133. |
|
and published by them at |
See Boney's Meditations, |
|
36 Rathbone Place, London. |
Coriolanus, Coronation, Fat, |
|
No. 10,081 of the George |
John Bull Advising, Kick, |
|
Cruikshank coll. at the South |
Meditations, Princely Agility, |
|
Kensington Museum is a |
R[egen}t, Results, Wright |
|
smaller version of the_ same |
(Thomas). |
|
design with a different "colour |
" George, Cruikshank's Fairy |
|
scheme signed " George |
Library" (4 numbers, London : |
|
Cruikshank, 1876 "), 187. |
David Bogue, 1853, 1854, |
|
See Royal Academy, 1867. |
1864), 57 and 153 (Cinderella), |
|
Fitting out Moses for the Fair. |
59, 74 (Hop-o'-my-Thumb), |
|
See Royal Academy, 1830. |
155-156, 157, 159 (Jack and |
|
Fitzherbert, Mrs, 17, 22. |
the Beanstalk). |
|
Flight, Edward G. See True. Flying Machines, 40. |
"George Cruikshank's Magazine" (Edited by Frank E. Smedley. |
|
Fores, S. W., publisher. 50 |
London : D. Bogue, 1854, |
|
Piccadilly, boasted " an Ex- |
Jan. and Feb.), 39 (Passing |
|
hibition of the compleatest |
Events), 44, 59, 217, 224. |
|
Collection of Caricatures in |
" George Cruikshank's Omnibus. |
|
Europe," 243. |
Illustrated with one hundred |
|
Four-in-hand Club. See Dinner. |
engravings on steel and wood. |
|
Frankum, Richard, 148. See Bee. |
Edited by Laman Blanchard, |
|
Frederick, Duke of York and |
Esq." (London : Tilt & |
|
Albany, second son of George |
Bogue, Fleet Street, 1842. |
|
III. (born 16 Aug. 1762, died |
First issued in 9 monthly |
|
5 Jan. 1827), 23, 26. See |
parts, the first for May 1841 |
|
Clarke, Mrs Mary Anne ; Osna- |
the last for Jan. 1842). |
|
burg ; Return to Office. |
Frontispiece, 20, 35, 43, 216. |
|
Frederick the Great, 74. |
"George Cruikshank's Table |
|
French Musicians, or Les Savo- |
Book " (Edited by Gilbert |
|
yards (an etching. London: G. |
Abbott a Beckett." London : |
|
Humphrey, 16 June 1819), 100. |
published at the Punch Office, |
|
French Republic. See Leader. |
92 Fleet St., 1845. First |
|
Funnidos, Rigdum. See Comic |
issued in 6^12 monthly |
|
Almanack. |
numbers from Jan. to Dec, |
|
1845), 35> 40, 43, 147, 177, |
|
|
" Gentleman (The) in Black," |
180 and 185 (The Lion of |
|
by John Yonge Akerman (London : William Kidd, |
the Party), 223-224. " German Popular Stories, |
|
1831), 60, 125. |
translated from the Kinder |
|
" Gentlemen's (The) Pocket |
und Haus Marchen, collected |
|
Magazine and Album of |
by M. M. Grimm from Oral |
|
Literature and Fine Arts " |
Tradition " (London : C. |
|
(London : Joseph Robins, |
Baldwyn, 1823, but issued |
|
1827-1829), 96. |
1822 ; vol. ii., London : |
|
George, Prince of Wales, after- |
James Robins & Co. ; Dublin : |
|
262 |
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Joseph Robins, Jun., & Co., 1826. The etchings were so skilfully imitated in Cruik- shank's lifetime that he at first sight imagined the copies in question to be impressions from the lost plates etched by him), 144, 145, 147, 152.
German Romance. See Speci- mens.
Ghosts, 31, 59-60, 136, 139-140. See Discovery.
Gibson, Charles Dana, 176.
Gil Bias, 199. See Adventures of Gil.
Gillray, James (born 1757, died i June 1815), 7, 8, n, 16-18, 21, 31, 166, 225. See Grego.
Glascock, Capt. (R.N.), 139. See Land Sharks.
"Glass (The) and the New Crystal Palace. By George Cruikshank, with cuts " (Lon- don: J. Cassell), 58-59, 62, 63.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 183, 191. See Illustrations of Smollett, Royal Academy 1830, Vicar.
Goles'( = Golls ; go'll means hand),
23-
Good (The] Effects of Carbonic Acid Gas (caricature pub- lished by S. W. Fores, 10 Dec. 1807), 31.
Good (The) Genius that turned everything into gold, or, The Queen Bee and the Magic Dress, A Christmas Fairy Tale, by the Brothers Mayhew, with illustrations by George Cruikshank " (called on the paper cover, " Books for the Rail, the Road, and the Fireside. II. The Magic of Industry." London : David Bogue, 1847), 148, 149, 150.
Gorey, 95.
Gould, Sir Francis Carruthers, 4.
" Greatest (The) Plague of Life : or The Adventures of
a Lady in Search of a Good Servant. By One who has been ' almost worried to death.' Edited by the Brothers Mayhew. Illustrated by George Cruikshank " (Lon- don : David Bogue, 1847. First issued in 6 parts), 176, 219, 221.
" Greenwich Hospital, a series of Naval Sketches, Descriptive of the Life of a Man-of- War's Man. By an Old Sailor," by M. H. Barker (London: James Robins & Co. ; Dublin : Joseph Robins, Junr., & Co., 1826 ; first issued hi four parts, Demy 4to), 95.
Grego, Joseph (author of " The Works of James Gillray, The Caricaturist, edited by Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.A." [London : Chatto & Windus, 1873], also of " Rowlandson the Caricaturist " [2 vols., Chatto & Windus, 1880], Mr Grego died J an. 24, 1908), 166. See Oliver.
Grimaldi, Joseph (born 18 Dec. 1779, died 31 May 1837). See Memoirs of Joseph.
Grimm, Jacob Ludwig Carl and Wilhelm Carl (brothers), 43, 144, 159. See German.
Guy, 39 and 85 (Guys in Council, in "The Comic Al- manack," 1838), 85 (Guy for " The Every- Day Book ").
" Guy Fawkes ; or, The Gun- powder Treason. An His- torical Romance by William Harrison Ainsworth," (3 vols., London : Richard Bentley, 1841. It came out in " Bentley's Miscellany," vols. vii., viii., ix., x., 1840-1841), 85-86, 140.
" Guy Mannering," by Sir Walter Scott, 197.
263
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Hall, Samuel Carter. See Old Story.
Hamilton, Walter, 112, 231. See Memoir of.
Hancock, Charles, 243. Sec Handbook.
" Handbook (A) for Posterity : or Recollections of Twiddle Twaddle by George Cruik- shank about himself and other people. A series of sixty-two etchings on glass with descriptive notes " (London : W. T. Spencer, 1896. The notes are by Charles Hancock), 243 (quoted).
Harley, Robert (Earl of Oxford, born 1661, died 21 May 1724), 91.
Hastings, 107.
Headache (The) (caricature published by G. Humphrey, 12 Feb. 1819), 166.
Henry VIII., 24, 90, 137.
Hepenstall, Lieut., 94-95.
Hermit. See Peeps,
Herne, 90, 135, 136, 137.
Hertford, Marchioness of, 4, 24. See Coronation.
" Historical (An) Account of the Campaign in the Netherlands in 1815, "by William Mudford (London: Henry Colburn, 1847. The late Edwin Truman, M.R.C.S., as famous for his Cruikshank collection as for his success in purifying gutta- percha, states on the mount of the original etched plate of "The Battle of Waterloo," for this book, that he con- siders it the most valuable Slate in his collection), 71. istory (The) and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote: from the Spanish of Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra. By T. Smollett, M.D. To which is
prefixed a memoir of the author by Thomas Roscoe. Illustrated by George Cruik- shank. In three volumes " (London : Effingham Wilson ; Dublin : W. F. Wakeman ; Edinburgh : Waugh & Innes, 1833 ; being vols. xiii., xiv., xy. of " The Novelist's Library, edited by Thomas Roscoe, with illustrations by George Cruikshank "), 199, 201. See Illustrations.
" History (A) of Egyptian Mummies, and an Account of The Worship and Embalming of the Sacred Animals by the Egyptians ; with Remarks on the Funeral Ceremonies of Different Nations, and Obser- vations on the Mummies of the Canary Islands, of the ancient Peruvians, Burman Priests, &c. By Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, F.R.S., F.S.A., F.L.S." (London : Long- man, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1834), 244.
" History (The) of Jack and the Beanstalk, edited and illustrated with six etchings, by George Cruikshank " (London : David Bogue, 1854),
the Irish Rebellion in 1798 ; with memoirs of the Union, and Emmett's Insur- rection in 1803. By W. H. Maxwell, Esq." (London : Baily, Brothers, Cornhill, 1845 ; first published in 15 parts), 93.
Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm, author of " Meister Floh " (Master Flea), which George Cruikshank illustrated in " Specimens of German Romance " (vol. ii., 1826), 151
264
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Hogarth, William (born 1697, died 26 Oct. 1764), 8, 77, 78, 243. See Trusler.
Hone, William (born 1779, died 6 Nov. 1842), 28, 35. See Every-Day, Non, Queen's.
Hood, Thomas (born 1798, died 3 May 1845), 165.
" Hop-o'-my- Thumb and The Seven-League Boots. Edited and illustrated with six etchings by George Cruik- shank " (London : David Bogue, 1853), No. I. of " George Cruikshank's Fairy Library"), 74, 156.
Hoskyns, C. W., 208. S^Talpa.
" House and Home," Part viii., New Series, Oct. 1882 (No. for Sept. 29, 1882. London : E.G.)., 69.
Humour, 165.
" Humourist (The), A Collec- tion of Entertaining Tales, Anecdotes, Epigrams, Bon Mots [sic], &c. &c." (4 vols., London : J. Robins & Co., 1819-1820. First issued in numbers), 35, 72-73, i79, 205, 209, 211, 213.
Humphrey, H., publisher, 20.
Hunt, Robert. See Popular.
Hyde Park, 3, 171.
" Illustrations of Don Quixote, in a series of fifteen plates, designed and etched by George Cruikshank" (London: Charles Tilt, 1834), 199-200, 201.
" Illustrations of Popular Works. By George Cruik- shank" (Part I., without successor. London : pub. for the Artist by Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, 1830. George Cruikshank dedicates this work to H.R.H. Prince Augustus Frederick,
Duke of Sussex), 116, 191-192, 193. See Beauties.
" Illustrations of Smollett, Fielding, and Goldsmith, in a series of forty-one plates, designed and engraved by George Cruikshank. Accom- panied by descriptive ex- tracts " (London : Charles Tilt, 1832), 188, 189.
" Illustrations of Time. By George Cruikshank " (Lon- don : published May ist, 1827, by the Artist, 22 Myddelton Terrace, Penton- ville), 184, 225.
Imperial (The) Family Going to the Devil (caricature pub- lished i March 1814, by T. Hughes, Ludgate Hill), 19.
" Impostor (The) Unmasked ; or, the New Man of the People ; with anecdotes, never before published [sic], illustrative of the character of the renowned and immaculate Bardolpho. Inscribed without permission, to that superlatively honest and disinterested Man, R. B. S-r-d-n, Esq." (London : Tipper & Richards, 1806. Bardolph was a nickname of R. B. Sheridan), 15.
Inglis, Henry David (died 20 March 1835), 200. See Rambles.
" Ingoldsby (The) Legends or Mirth and Marvels, by Thomas Ingoldsby, Esquire " (London : Richard Bentley, 1840, 1842, 1847. The author was Rev. Richard Harris Barham), 117, 119, 175 (Lady Jane).
Interior View of Hayloft, etc., in Cato Street, occupied by the Conspiratars (etching pub- lished by G. Humphrey, 9 March 1820).
265
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
" Interior View of the House of God (caricature published in " The Scourge," i Nov. 1811), 27.
Ireland, 93-95.
Irish Rebellion. See History of the.
Irving, Washington. See Beauties.
" Italian Tales. Tales of Humour, Gallantry, and Romance, selected and trans- lated from the Italian, with sixteen illustrative drawings by George Cruikshank " (London : Charles Baldwyn, Newgate St., 1824. The words " Italian Tales " are not printed on the title-page of the second edition. The suppressed plate is The Dead Rider, not to be confounded with the etching of the same title, representing two friars, each on horseback), 166.
Jack and the Beanstalk. See History of Jack.
"Jack Sheppard. A Romance. By W. Harrison Ainsworth, Esq." (3 vols., London : Richard Bentley, 1839), 77-78, 79, 80, 104.
Jenner, Edward (M.D., born 1749, died 1823), 31.
Jerrold, Blanchard, author of " The Life of George Cruik- shank in two epochs " (new ed., London : Chatto & Windus, 1898), 46, 231.
Jerrold, Douglas William (born 3 Jan. 1803, died 8 June 1857), 165. See Cakes.
Jersey, Frances, Countess of, 4.
Johannot, Tony (born 9 Nov. 1803, died 4 Aug. 1852), 89.
John Bull Advising with his Superiors (print pub. by S. W. Fores, 3 April 1808). 23.
John Bull's Three Stages, or from Good to Bad, and from Bad to Worse (caricature pub- lished in " The Scourge " for March 2, 1815), 27.
Johnny Bull and his Forged Notes !! or Rags and Ruin in the Paper Currency!!! (cari- cature published Jan. 1819 by J. Sidebotham, 287 Strand), 28, 29.
" Journal (A) of The Plague Year ; or Memorials of the Great Pestilence in London, in 1665. By Daniel De Foe " (London : John Murray, 1833), 96, 97, 104.
Juliet and the Nurse (In Reid 2732, George Cruikshank coll., British Museum, are in- cluded a plain and a coloured lithograph signed " G. Ck. feet. 1815." In MS. below each design are the words " Juliet and the Nurse. Pubd. by G. Cruikshank, 117 Dorset St., City, 1815." The nurse is enormous and seated ; Juliet stands behind her at left. Reid 2733, a coloured unsigned, undated lithograph without publisher's name, has a printed footline — "Juliet and the Nurse." Juliet stands at the right of the nurse and there is a curtain at left. The figures are the same as in Reid 2732, and Reid says that the design [Reid 2733] is copied from a Spanish sketch or etching), 184.
Juvenile Monstrosities (carica- ture published by G. Humphrey, 24 Jan. 1826. Reprinted in " Cruikshank- iana"), 32, 33.
Karslake, Frank, 107. Kean, Edmund, 184.
266
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Keene, Charles Samuel (born 10 Aug. 1823, died 4 Jan. 1891), 43.
Kick (A) from Yarmouth to Wales ; or The New Rowly Powly (print pub. by J. Johnston, 1812. A publica- tion exists entitled " R-y-1 Stripes ; or, a Kick from Yar-h to Wa-s " [London : E. Wilson, 1812]), 24.
Kidd, William, 60.
" Kit Barn's Adventures ; or, the Yarns of an Old Mariner. By Mary Cowden Clarke " (London : Grant & Griffith, 1849), 152.
Knacker's (The) Yard, 220. See Elysium, Voice.
Konigsmark, 74.
Ladies Buy your Leaf !! (carica- ture by G. Cruikshank, pub. July 1822 by Fairburn, Broad- way : Irish Chairman), 171.
Lambert, Daniel, 73.
Lambeth, 86.
" Lambkin, Mr." See Bachelor's.
Landells, C. (wood-engraver. The only Landells famous as a wood-engraver in Cruik- shank's working-life is Ebenezer Landells, born 13 April 1808, died i Oct. 1860. Therefore, though " C. Lan- dells " is on the title-page of " The Gentleman in Black " [1831], I suggest that the cuts facing pp. 53, 95, of which the latter is clearly signed " Lan- dells " tout court, are by Ebenezer Landells), 126.
Landells, Ebenezer. See Lan- dells, C.
" Landscape- Historical Illus- trations of Scotland, and the Waverley Novels : from draw- ings by J. M. W. Turner, Pro- fessor, R.A., Balmer, Bentley,
Chisholm, Hart, A.R.A., Harding, McClise, A.R.A., Melville, etc. etc. Comic Illustrations by G. Cruik- shank. " Descriptions by the Rev. G. N. Wright, M.A., &c." (2 vols., Fisher, Son, & Co., London, Paris, and America, 1836-8. Cruik- shank's etchings appear in the same publisher's edition in 48 vols. of " Waverley Novels " [1836-8] and they are dated 1836, 1837, 1838), 169, 175, 192, 197, 237.5
Landseer, Charles, 240.
" Land Sharks and Sea Gulls." By Captain Glascock, R.N. (3 vols., London : Richard Bentley, 1838), 139, 191.
Lang, Andrew, 231.
Latham, O'Neill, 162.
Layard, George Somes, author of " George Cruikshank's Por- traits of Himself " (London : W. T. Spencer, 1897), 15, 35, 120, 247.
Leader (The) of the Parisian Blood Red Republic of 1870, or The Infernal Fiend (cari- cature designed, etched and published by George Cruik- shank, June 1871), 3.
"Legend (A) of the Rhine," 196.
Leloir, Maurice, 94.
Le Sage, Alain Rene, 183. See Adventures of Gil.
Lever, Charles James (born 1806, died 1872), 196.
" Life (The) and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner. With introductory verses by Bernard Barton, and illus- trated with numerous en- gravings from drawings by George Cruikshank, expressly designed for this edition "
267
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
(2 vols., London : John Major, 1831), 241.
Life in London ; or, the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq. and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom, accompanied by Bob Logic, the Oxonian, in their Rambles and Sprees through the Metro- polis. By Pierce Egan, author of ' Walks through Bath,' ' Sporting Anecdotes,' ' Pictures of the Fancy,' ' Boxiana,' &c. Dedicated to his most gracious majesty King George the Fourth. Embellished with thirty-six scenes from real life, designed and etched by I. R. and G. Cruikshank ; and enriched also with numerous original designs on Wood, by the same Artists " (London : Sher- wood, Neely, & Jones, 1821. First issued in 12 monthly parts, the first on 2 Oct. 1820, the last in July 1821), 46-47, 49, 67.
Life in Paris ; comprising the Rambles, Sprees, and Amours of Dick Wildfire, of Corinthian Celebrity, and his Bang-up Companion, Squire Jenkins and Captain O'Shuffleton ; with the whimsical Ad- ventures of the Halibut Family ; including Sketches of a Variety of other Eccentric Characters in the French Metropolis. By David Carey. Embellished with Twenty-one Coloured Plates, representing Scenes from Real Life, de- signed and engraved by George Cruikshank. En- riched also with Twenty- two Engravings on wood, drawn by the same Artist, and executed by Mr White " (London :
268
John Fairburn, 1822. It was issued in parts), 46-47.
" Life (The) of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself. A new Edition re- vised and greatly enlarged. With eight illustrations, by George Cruickshank [sic]. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh : and Thomas Cadell, London, 1839 " (The author is David Macbeth Moir), 175.
" Life (The) of Napoleon, a Hudi- brastic Poem in fifteen cantos, by Doctor Syntax, embel- lished with thirty engravings by G. Cruikshank." (Lon- don : T. Tegg, III. Cheap- side, Wm. Allason, 31 New Bond Street, and J. Dick, Edinburgh, 1815. Until H. R. Tedder wrote in " Dic- tionary of National Biog- raphy" that 'The Life of Napoleon " had been " wrong- fully ascribed," the author was generally supposed to be William Combe, who wrote " The Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of the Picturesque," etc.), 21 (The Red Man), 7 1-7 2.
" Life (The) of Sir John Falstaff. Illustrated by George Cruik- shank. With a biography of the knight from authentic sources by Robert B. Brough " (London : Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858. First issued in 10 monthly parts, 1857-8), 184.
Lilla (A long-eared spaniel. In the South Kensington Museum is a pretty pencil sketch, 9784 F, entitled George Cruikshank' s Godson, George Cruikshank Pulford, and his dear little pet dog Lilla, and another pencil
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
sketch, 9611 B, entitled My little pet dog Lilla), 223.
Lines. See Striking.
Linse, Jan, 171.
Locker - Lampson, Frederick, 159-160.
London 36, 46, 47, 96-107. See Life in London.
London Hermit. See Peeps.
Lottery Print, 15. See Children's Lottery.
Louis XVIII. (born 1755, died 1824), 7. See Old Bumblehead.
Lowell, James Russell, 234.
" Loving (The) Ballad of Lord Bateman, with xi. Plates by George Cruikshank " (Lon- don : Charles Tilt ; Con- stantinople ; Mustapha Syried, 1839. G. Cruikshank's draw- ing [for his contemplated autobiography] entitled " The Loving Ballad of Lord Bate- man," appears in " Draw- ings by George Cruikshank " [1895. See Drawings]), 229, 231-232.
" Loyalist's (The) Magazine." See Caroline.
Mackay, Dr Charles, 55.
Maclise, Daniel (died April 1870), 239.
Magdalen. See Woman, 27.
Making Decent ! ! (Caricature published by G. Humphrey, 8 Aug. 1822. Invented by Capt. Marryat whose signa- ture is an anchor. G. Cruik- shank, feet.), 171.
Mansie Wauch. See Life of Mansie.
Marchmont, Frederick. See Cigar, Three Cruikshanks.
Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of (born 1650, died 1722), 90.
Marryat, Capt. Frederick (born 10 July 1792, died 2 Aug.
1848), 95, 166, 171. See Making, Progress.
Mary I., Queen of England, 83.
Mathew, Father Theobald (born 1790, died 1857), 48.
Maxwell, William Hamilton, 93, 219. See History of the.
Mayhew, The Brothers, 149, 151. See Good Genius, Greatest.
Mayhew, Henry. See World's.
Mayor (The) of Hole-cum-Corner (frontispiece to vol. i. of Douglas Jerrold's " Cakes and Ale " [1842]), 204.
Meditations Amongst the Tombs (print pub. i May 1813, by J. Johnston), 24.
" Melange (The), a variety of Original Pieces in Prose and Verse; comprising the Elysium of Animals. Illustrated by engravings." (By Egerton Smith. Liverpool : Egerton Smith & Co., 1834), 220.
Melville, H., 120.
" Memoir (A) of George Cruik- shank, Artist and Humourist. With numerous illustrations and a £i Bank Note. By Walter Hamilton, F.R.G.S." (London : Elliot Stock, 1878. Students should get the 2nd edition, also dated 1878, which contains additional matter), 112, 231.
" Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. Edited by ' Boz.' With illustrations by George Cruik- shank. In two volumes" (London : Richard Bentley, 1838), 195.
" Memoirs of the Life and Writ- ings of Lord Byron. By George Clinton, Esq." (Lon- don: James Robins & Co., 1825. Two editions are of this date ; one has 43 plates, the other 40), 134, 195,
269
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
"Merry (The) Windsor," 191.
Wives of
" Meteor (The), or Monthly Censor " (vol. i. and 2 Nos. of vol. ii., London : printed by W. Lewis, and sold by T. Hughes, 1814), 35, 129.
Meynell, Mrs Alice (author under her maiden name of " A Bundle of Rue : Being Memorials of artists recently deceased, I. George Cruik- shank." This chapter ap- peared in " The Magazine of Art," March 1880), 35.
Michelangelo, 120.
" Midsummer Night's Dream." See Royal Academy, 1853.
Miller, Henry, 160.
Milton, John, 119.
"LMinor Morals for Young People. Illustrated in Tales and Travels. By John Bowring. With engravings by George Cruikshank and William Heath" (London: Whittaker & Co., 1834. The same publishers in 1835 issued Part II. of this work illustrated by George Cruik- shank alone, who also is the sole illustrator of Part III., issued in Edinburgh by William Tait, in London by Simpkin, Marshall & Co., and in Dublin by John Gumming, 1839), 133.
Miser's (The) Daughter. A Tale, by William Harrison Ains- worth (3 vols., London : Cun- ningham & Mortimer, 1842), 86, 87, 88.
Moir, David Macbeth (born 1798, died 1851). See Life of Mansie.
Monstrosities. See Juvenile, Mushroom.
Monstrosities of 1816, scene, Hyde Park (caricature by
G. Cruikshank, pub. by H. Humphrey, 12 March 1816), 7.
Monstrosities of 1822 (carica- ture by G. Cruikshank, pub. by G. Humphrey. Pub. 19 Oct. 1822), 7.
" Monthly (The) Theatrical Re- porter, or Literary Mirror," by- Thomas Dutton, A.M. (Lon- don: J. Roach. 1814-15), 184.
Moore, Dr A., 71. See Annals,
Moore, Julian, 89. See Three Craikshanks.
Moore, Thomas, 19
" More Mornings at Bow Street. A new Collection of Humour- ous and Entertaining Re- ports, by John Wight of the Morning Herald, with twenty- five illustrations by George Cruikshank " (London : James Robins & Co., 1827), 47.
Mornings at Bow Street : a Selection of the most humour- ous and entertaining reports which have appeared in the Morning Herald, by Mr Wight (Bow Street Reporter to the Morning Herald) with twenty - one illustrative
drawings by George Cruik- shank " (London : Charles Baldwyn, 1824), 47. See Thompson, John.
" Mother Hubbard and her Dog," a Banbury Chap-Bopk designed by George Cruik- shank (early work) and en- graved by Brans ton, 155.
Mother's (A) Love. See Three.
Mottram, Charles, engraver (born 9 April 1807, died 30 Aug. 1876). See Worship of Bacchus, or.
Mrs Clark's Petticoat (caricature published by S. W. Fores, 23 Feb. 1809), 26.
Mudford, William, 71. See Historical.
2/0
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Mummies. See History of Egyptian.
Munchausen. See Travels and.
Mushroom Monstrosities (carica- ture published by G. Hum- phrey, 24 Jan. 1826. Re- printed in " Cruikshankiana)," 7-
"My Sketch Book," by George Cruikshank (9 numbers pub- lished by George Cruikshank, 23 Myddelton Terrace, Penton- ville, 1834, 1835, 1836), 60, 108, 211, 219-220.
Nagler, Dr, 65.
Nairs. See Coronation.
Napier, Gen. Sir Charles J ames, G.C.B. (born 10 Aug. 1782, died 29 Aug. 1853), 103.
Napier Gen. Sir William Francis Patrick (born 17 Dec. 1785, died 10 Feb. 1860). See Pop-Gun.
Napoleon Buonaparte (born 15 Aug. 1769, died 5 May 1821), 3, 17-21, 71-72, 133, 159- See Blucher, Boney, Boney's, Boney Tir'd, Imperial, Life of Napoleon, Napoleon's, Old Bumblehead, Peddigree,Phenix.
Napoleon's Trip from Elba to Paris, and from Paris to St Helena (caricature by G. Cruikshank appearing in " The Scourge " for Sept. 1815).
Netherlands. See Historical.
Nevison, 77.
"New (The) Bath Guide; or Memoirs of the B-n-r-d Family, in a series of Poetical Epistles : by Christopher Anstey, Esq. ... A new edition : with a biographical and topographical preface, and anecdotal annotations, by John Britton, F.S.A., and member of several other societies. Embellished with
engravings " (London : Hurst, Chance & Co., 1830), 175.
Newcastle, Duke of, 91.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 74.
New (The) Union Club. Being a representation of what took place at a celebrated dinner given by a celebrated Society — vide Mr M-r-t's Pamphlet, More Thoughts, etc. etc. ( $ — G Cruikshank sculpt. Pub. 19 July 1819, by G. Humphrey. In Capt. R. J. H. Douglas's opinion this is " the chef d'ceuvre of George Cruik- shank's Caricatures." It did not impress me particularly. It humourously satirises William Wilberforce's Anti- Slavery Movement).
Nield, W. A., 213.
" ' Non Mi Ricordo ! ' &c. &c. &c." (London : William Hone [the author], 1820). See Fat in the Fire, also 25.
Nottage, George S. (the letter referred to is hi the George Cruikshank coll., South Kensington Museum, and is dated July 25, 1874, from the London Stereoscopic Co.), 212.
O'Hara, Kane. See Tom.
Oil (The) painting of " The Wor- ship of Bacchus," 13 feet 4 by 7 feet 8, being conveyed to the National Gallery Depart- ment of the British Museum, April 8, 1869, 66.
Old Bumblehead the i8th trying on the Napoleon Boots, or Preparing for the Spanish Campaign (caricature by G. Cruikshank, pub. by Jno. Fairburn, 17 Feb. 1823), 7.
Oldcastle, Sir John, 184.
Old Sailor. See Barker, M. H.
"Old (The) Sailor's Jolly Boat. Laden with Tales, Yarns,
271
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Scraps, Fragments, &c. &c. To Please all hands ; Pulled by Wit, Fun, Humor, and Pathos, and steered by M. H. Barker " (London : W. Strange ; Not- tingham : Allen ; Leicester : Allen, 1884; first appeared in 12 parts commencing i May 1843), 95, 175.
" Old (An) Story, by S. C. Hall, F.S.A., &c." (London : Virtue, Spalding, & Co., 1875. To this vol. George Cruikshank contributed his " last temperance piece "- The Last Half Hour, engraved by Dalziel Brothers), 69.
" Oliver Twist. By Charles Dickens " (3 vols., London : Richard Bentley, 1838. The first issue of the first edition contains the etching entitled " Rose Maylie and Oliver " known to collectors as " the Fireside plate," which Dickens disliked so much that in Oct. 1838 he wrote to Cruikshank asking him if he would object to design the plate afresh, the result being the etching of Rose and Oliver contemplat- ing the memorial tablet to Agnes. Nevertheless Cruik- shank made a water-colour drawing of " the Fireside plate," which was published in " Cruikshank's water- colours with introduction by- Joseph Grego," published by A. & C. Black early in 1904 — the date on title-page being 1903), 9 (" fireside plate "), 60, 99 (Mr Bumble), 103-104.
O'Meara, Dr, 27.
O'Neill, John, 52. See Drunkard.
On Guard. See Royal Academy, 1858.
O. P. (Old Prices) riots, n.
Original Sketch by George Cruik-
shank. Her Majesty and the Prince Consort at the Ball at Guildhall, July 1851. Mr and Mrs George Cruikshank passing before them and the Prince kindly saying to her Majesty " that is George Cruikshank," at which her most gracious Majesty smiled and bowed (No. 9454 in the George Cruikshank collection at the South Kensington Museum. The etching of this subject [See No. 9454-1] was never completed, but promised well), 247.
Osnaburg or Osnabriick, Han- over. On 27 Feb. 1764, Prince Frederick, afterwards Duke of York and Albany, was elected to the bishopric of Osnaburg which he re- tained till 1803, when the bishopric was secularised and incorporated with Hanover.
P***y, J-» 171- See Brazen.
Palace (G. Cruikshank's De- sign for a palace is No. 9396 A (a sheet of paper covered on both sides with pencil sketches of various subjects) in the George Cruikshank collection in the South Kensington Museum), 247.
" Paradise Lost," 119.
Paris. See Life in Paris.
Passing Events (etching in George Cruikshank's Maga- zine, Feb. 1854), 39, 224.
Patricius, 15.
Peacock, Thomas Love, 224.
Pearce, John, 69.
Pearson, Edwin, author of " Banbury Chap-Books and Nursery Toy Book Litera- ture (of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) with impressions from several
272
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
|
hundred wood-cut blocks, by |
Pied Piper, 159. |
|
T. and J. Bewick, Blake, Cruikshank, Craig, Lee, |
" Pilgrim's (The) Progress, by John Bunyan. Most care- |
|
Austin, and others " (Lon- |
fully collated with the edition |
|
don : Arthur Reader, 1890), |
containing the author's last |
|
155. See Dick Whittington. |
additions and corrections. |
|
Peddigree [sic] (The) of Corporal Violet (caricature published |
With explanatory notes by William Mason. And a life |
|
by H. Humphrey, 9 June 1815), 159. |
of the author, by Josiah Conder, Esq." (Fisher, Son, |
|
" Peeps at Life, and Studies in |
& Co., London and Paris, |
|
my Cell, by the London Her- |
1838), 120. |
|
mit " (London : Simpkin, Mar- |
" Pilgrim's (The) Progress, by |
|
shall & Co., 1875), 136, 249. |
John Bunyan, illustrated with |
|
" Pentamerone (The), or the |
25 drawings on wood by |
|
Story of Stories, Fun for the |
George Cruikshank, from the |
|
Little Ones, by Giambattista |
collection of Edwin Truman, |
|
Basile. Translated from the |
with biographical introduc- |
|
Neapolitan by John Edward |
tion and indexes " (London, |
|
Taylor. With illustrations |
Edinburgh, Glasgow, and New |
|
by George Cruikshank " |
York : Henry Frowde, 1903), |
|
(London : David Bogue, 1848), |
120, 125. |
|
151-152, 212. " Peter Schlemihl : from the |
Pin well, George John (water- colour painter, born 26 Dec. |
|
German of Lamotte Fouque |
1842, died 8 Sept. 1875), 156. |
|
[should be Adelbert von |
" Pirate (The)," by Sir Walter |
|
Chamisso]. With plates by |
Scott, 237 |
|
George Cruikshank" (London : |
" Pocket (The) Magazine. |
|
Geo. B. Whittaker, 1823), 125, |
Robins's Series " (4 vols., Lon- |
|
126, 127. |
don : James Robins & Co., |
|
Pettigrew, Thomas Joseph. |
1827, 1828), 147. |
|
See Augustus, History of |
" Points of Humour ; illustrated |
|
Egyptians. |
by the Designs of George |
|
Phenix [sic] (The) of Elba Resus- |
Cruikshank " (London : C. |
|
citated by Treason (caricature |
Baldwyn, 1823, 1824), 73-74, |
|
published in " The Scourge " |
136, 167, 172. |
|
for May 1815), 24. |
Pop-Gun (A) fired off by George |
|
" Phrenological Illustrations, or |
Cruikshank in defence of the |
|
an Artist's View of the Cranio- |
British volunteers of 1803, |
|
logical System of Doctors |
against the uncivil attack |
|
Gall and Spurzheim," by |
upon that body by General |
|
George Cruikshank. (Lon- |
W. Napier ; to which are |
|
don : published by George |
added some observations upon |
|
Cruikshank, Myddelton Ter- |
our National Defences, Self- |
|
race, Pentonville, 1826), 72, |
Defence,' &c. &c. &c. Il- |
|
173, 179-180. |
lustrated with Cuts " (Lon- |
|
Piccini, 130. |
don: W. Kent & Co., late |
|
" Pic Nic (The) Papers." See |
D. Bogue. The British |
|
Sir Lionel. |
Museum copy is stamped |
273
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
" 10 Fe[bruary] [i8]6o "), 44, 59, 60.
" Popular Romances of the West of England; or, The Drolls, Traditions, and Superstitions of Old Cornwall. Collected and edited by Robert Hunt, F.R.S." (2 vols., London : J. Camden Hotten, 1865), 244.
Portland, Duke of (William Henry Cavendish Bentinck- Scott), 129.
Portraits (sketch made hi 1874), 212.
Pound, D. J., engraver. See Cruikshank, George.
Poussin, Nicholas (born June 1594, died 19 Nov. 1665), 69.
Poynter, Sir Edward, 69.
Preparing John Bull for General Congress (caricature, dated as published Aug. i, 1813, which appeared in vol. vi. of " The Scourge,";i 8 1 3), 7, 43.
Prince Consort. See Albert.
Princely Agility or the Sprained Ancle (print pub. Jan. 1812, by J. Joh[n]ston), 98 Cheap- side, 24.
" Progress (The) of a Midship- man " (8 designs invented by Capt. Marryat, etched by George Cruikshank, published by G. Humphrey, London, 1820), 95.
Puck, 184.
Pughe, J. S., 212.
Pulford, George Cruikshauk. See Lilla.
" Punch and Judy, with illus- trations designed and en- graved by George Cruikshank. Accompanied by the dialogue of the puppet-show, an ac- count of its origin, and of puppet-plays in England " (London : S. Prowett, 1828. The text is by John Payne Collier), 130, 131.
" Punch, or the London Chari- vari," 234-
Pure, Simon, 65.
Pursuit (The) of Letters (etching " Designed, Etched and Published by Geo. Cruik- shank, May 2oth, 1828," in " Scraps and Sketches "), 212.
" Puss in Boots " (" George Cruikshank's Fairy Library," No. 4, London : Routledge, Warne, & Routledge, Broad- way, Ludgate Hill, and F. Arnold, 86 Fleet Street, 1864), 140, 157.
" Queen's (The) Matrimonial Ladder," by the author of "The Political House that Jack Built" (London: William Hone [the author], 1820), 25, 26. See White.
Rabelais, 166.
" Railway Readings." See Cigar.
" Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote. By the late H. D. Inglis, author of ' Spain ' : ' New Gil Bias, or Pedro of Penaflor ' : ' The Tyrol ' : ' Channel Islands,' &c. &c. With illustrations by George Cruikshank " (London : Whit- taker & Co., 1837), 200.
Ranelagh, 86, 89.
Raspe, R. E., creator of Baron Munchausen," 183, 184. See Travels.
Reach, Angus B. See Clement.
Read. See Brooks.
" Redgauntlet," by Sir Walter Scott, 192.
Red (The) Man (engraving by George Cruikshank in " The Life of Napoleon," by Dr Syntax), 21, 72.
R[egen]t (The) Kicking up a Row, or Warwick House in an
274
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
|
Uproar I ! ! (caricature by |
Roscoe, Thomas. See Adven- |
|
G. Cruikshank published 20 |
tures of Gil, Adventures of |
|
July 1814, by T. Tegg. In this caricature the Prince |
Joseph, History and. " Rose (The) and the Lily : how |
|
Regent declares he has burst |
they became the emblems of |
|
his stays), 23. |
England and France. A |
|
Reid, George William, compiler |
Fairy Tale. By Mrs Octavian |
|
of the bibliography entitled |
Blewitt. With a frontispiece |
|
" A Descriptive Catalogue of |
by George Cruikshank " |
|
the works of George Cruik- |
(London: Chatto & Windus, |
|
shank " (3 vols., London : |
1877. The etched frontis- |
|
Bell & Daldy, 1871. Mr A. |
piece bears the inscription |
|
M. Broadley possesses " the |
" Designed and Etched by |
|
latest corrected and anno- |
George Cruikshank, Age 83, |
|
tated copy " of Reid's George Cruikshank catalogue, " an- |
1875 "), i, 134-135. " Rose (The) and the Ring," by |
|
notated and corrected by him, |
W. M. Thackeray, 196. |
|
in a very voluminous manner, |
Rowlandson, Thomas (born |
|
with a view to a second |
1756, died 1827), 7, u, 16, 19, |
|
edition"), 12, 16, 120, 134. " Rejected Addresses : or, The |
51, 96-97, 191. See Grego, Joseph. |
|
New Theatrum Poetarum," |
Royal (The) Academy of Arts |
|
by James Smith and Horace |
(George Cruikshank ex- |
|
Smith. i8th ed. (London : |
hibited in the Exhibitions |
|
John Murray, 1833), 195. |
of this Academy pictures |
|
Rembrandt van Ryn (born 15 |
entitled as follows, the dates |
|
July 1606, died 1669), 147. |
being those of the exhibitions. |
|
Renard, Simon, 82, 83. |
Fitting out Moses for the fair, |
|
Results of the Northern Excur- |
1830. This picture illus- |
|
sion (print showing George |
trates " The Vicar of Wake- |
|
IV. relieving an irritated |
field." Tarn o' Shanter, 1852. |
|
cuticle, pub. by J. Fairburn, |
This picture illustrates the |
|
8 Sept. 1822), 25. |
lines — |
|
Return (The) to Office (caricature |
" And scarcely had he |
|
by G. Cruikshank published |
Maggie rallied, |
|
in " The Scourge " for i July |
When out the hellish legion |
|
1811), 26. |
sallied." — BURNS. |
|
Richard III., 184. |
A Scene from the Mid |
|
Richardson, Sir Benjamin Ward, |
summer Night's Dream — |
|
59, 108. See Drawings. |
Titania, Bottom, Mustard |
|
Roach, J., 184. |
Seed, Peas Blossom, Moth, |
|
Robinson Crusoe. See Life and. |
and Cobweb, 1853. This |
|
Rome, King of, 72. |
picture illustrates the line |
|
" Romeo and Juliet," 184. See |
" Nod to him elves, and do |
|
Juliet. |
him courtesies." Cinderella, |
|
" Rookwood, a romance by Wm. |
1854. On Guard, 1858. |
|
Harrison Ainsworth " (Lon- |
Cinderella, 1859. the |
|
don : John Macrone, 1836), |
Sober Man's Sunday, and the |
|
75, 77-' |
Drunkard's Sunday, 1859. |
275
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
The first appearance of William Shakespeare on the stage of the Globe, with part of his dramatic company, in 1564, 1867), 240.
Royal (The) Aquarium, London, 69, 107, 160.
"Royal (The) Rushlight (print published by G. Humphrey 3 March 1821), 25.
" R-y-1 Stripes." See Kick.
Rubens, Peter Paul (born 28 June 1577, died 30 May 1640), 69.
Rusher, printer of Banbury, Oxfordshire, 155.
Ruskin, John (No. 9955 G in the George Cruikshank collection in the South Kensington Museum is a pen-sketch en- titled Mr Ruskin's Head. The head has no beard), r47, 155-156, 159. 244, 247.
Russell, George (A. E.), 161.
Sailors, 95-96.
" Sailor's (The) Progress," series of etched illustrations in 6 compartments, signed "I. [- J] S. and G. CK. delt., G. CK. sculpt.," published 10 Jan. 1818 by G. Humphrey, 95.
" S[ain]t James's or the Court of Queen Anne. An Historical Romance by William Harrison Ainsworth " (3 vols., Lon- don : John Mortimer, 1844), 90, 91.
Sala, George Augustus (author of " George Cruikshank : A Life Memory," in The Gentleman's Magazine, May 1878), 15, 77.
Satan, 28, 119, 133, 134, 244.
"Satirist (The), or Monthly Meteor " (14 vols., Lon- don : Samuel Tipper, 1808-1814. George Cruik- shank's signature appears to
plates in New Series, vol. iii.,
1813, vol. iv., 1814. He also contributed plates to " The Tripod, or New Satirist," for
1814, July i and Aug. i, the only numbers published), 35.
Savoyards. See French.
Scale (The) of Justice Reversed (caricature published 19 March 1815, by S. W. Fores), 5>
! Scene (A) from the Midsummer Night's Dream. See Royal Academy, 1853.
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 207.
Scotch Washing (Cruikshank del., published by T. Tegg, 16 Aug. 1810), 175.
Scott, Sir Walter, 81, 139, 147. See Landscape - Historical, Twelve.
"Scourge (The), or Monthly Expositor of Imposture and Folly " (n vols., London, 1811- 1816 ; continued in 1816 as "The Scourge and Satirist," of which only 6 numbers appeared ; 7 and 43 (Pre- paring John Bull for General Congress), 19 (Napoleon's Trip from Elba), 20 (Quadru- peds), 24 (The Coronation of the Empress of the Nairs and The Phenix of Elba), 26 (The Return to Office), 27 (Interior View of the House of God and John Bull's Three Stages, 31 (The Cow Pox Tragedy), 51 (The Dinner of the Four-in-hand Club), 139-140 (A Financial Survey of Cumberland).
" Scraps and Sketches," by George Cruikshank (4 parts [1828-1832] and one plate [1834] published by the Artist at 22 Myddelton [also spelt Myddleton] Terrace, Pentonville. In 1830 George
276
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Cruikshank writes that " Scraps and Sketches " "is the third work which I have published on my own account"), 35-36, 37, 39, 51, 111-112, 116, 143, 163, 172,
204, 212, 215-216, 223.
Sellis, 140.
Seymour, Jane, 90.
Shakespeare, William, 183-184, 187-188. See First, Life, Juliet, Royal Academy, 1853, 1867.
Shakespeare's Cliff, 107, 108. See Distant.
Sheppard, Jack, 79, 80. See Jack.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley ;,Butler (born Sept. 1751, died
X 7 July 1816), 15. See Impostor.
Sheringham, Lieut. John, 95.
Sir Frizzle Pumpkin. See Ad- ventures of Sir.
" Sir Lionel Flams tead, a Sketch," by W. Harrison Ainsworth, identical with " The Old London Merchant, a Fragment," which was Ainsworth 's contribution to " The Pic Nic Papers. By Various Hands. Edited by Charles Dickens, Esq. . . . With illustrations by George Cruikshank, Phiz, &c. In three volumes " (London": Henry Colburn, 1841), 93. "
" Sketches by ' Boz,' illustrative of every-day life, and every- day people " (3 vols., London : John Macrone, 1836, 1837. Many of the illustra- tions were enlarged and re- etched for the edition, com- plete in one vol., published by Chapman & Hall in 1839, and issued in 20 numbers), 99- 100, 101, 105, 112.
Sleap, Joseph, 35.
" Slice (A) of Bread and Butter,
Cut by G. Cruikshank. Being the substance of a speech delivered at a public meeting, held for the benefit of the Jews' and General Literary and Mechanics' Institute " (London : William Tweedie), 59.
Smirke, Robert (painter, born 1752, died 5 Jan. 1845 ; the date of his illustrations of " Gil Bias " is 1809), 199.
Smith, Albert, 39. '
Smith, Egerton. See Elysium, Melange.
Smith, Horace (born 1779, died 1849). See Rejected.
.Smith, James (born 1775, died 1839). See Rejected.
Smoking, 58, 59. See Tobacco.
Smollett, Tobias, 90, 184. 188, 191. See Illustrations of Smollett.
Sober (The) Man's Sunday, and the Drunkard's Sunday. See Royal Academy, 1859
Socrates, 180, 181.
" Songs, Naval and National, of the late Charles Dibdin, with a memoir and addenda collected and arranged by Thomas Dibdin, with characteristic sketches by George Cruik- shank " (London : John Murray, 1841), 175, $45.
Sotheby, Wilkinson # Hodge, 13 Wellington Street, Strand, London, W.C., 70, 108, 119, 1 60.
South Kensington Museum ( = Victoria and Albert Museum), collection of George Cruikshank's work, 13, in, 112, 113. See Christian, First, Lilla, Original, Palace, Ruskin.
" Specimens of German Romance, selected and trans- lated [by G. Soane] from various authors. In three
277
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
volumes " (London : Geo. B. Whittaker, 1826), 151 (E. T. W. Hoffmann, q.v.}.
Spencer, Walter, 107.
Spielmann, Marion H. (F.S.A.), 120.
Stays. See R[egen]t.
Steel, 192, 236.
Stephens, Frederic G. (author of " A Memoir of George Cruikshank," to which is added Thackeray's Essay " On the Genius of George Cruik- shank," London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1891), 32, 93.
Stewart, John, 66.
" Stop Thief ; or, Hints to Housekeepers to Prevent Housebreaking. By George Cruikshank" (London: Brad- bury & Evans, 1851. G. and R. Cruikshank assisted in the embellishment of Lieut. Col. Baron De Berenger's " Helps and Hints How to Protect Life and Property " [Lon- don : T. Hurst, 1835]), 58.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. See Uncle.
Striking Effects Produced by Lines and Dots for the assis- tance of young Draftsmen (2 etchings published respec- tively 4 Aug. 1817 and 23 Sept. 1817 by S. W. Fores. In the same year G. Black- man, 362 Oxford St., Lon- don, published 2 more etchings by George Cruik- shank entitled Twelve Sub- jects formed by Dots and Lines [pub. 14 June] and Nine Sub- jects formed by Dots and Lines [pub. 19 July]. To George Cruikshank is also attri- buted an etching entitled A n- other Series formed of Lines and Dots], 243.
" Stubb's Calendar ; or, the Fatal Boots," 196.
" Sunday in London. Illus- trated in fourteen cuts, by George Cruikshank, and a few words by a friend of his ; with a copy of Sir Andrew Agnew's Bill " (London : ' Effingham Wilson, 1833 ; the friend in the title is John Wight), 51, 99.
Sussex, Duke of. See Augustus, Illustrations of Popular.
Syntax, Dr, 71. See Life of Napoleon.
"Table (The) Book." See
Every-Day.
"Tales of Irish Life, illus- trative of the manners, cus- toms and conditions of the people, by I. Whitty " (2 vols., London: J. Robins & Co., 1824), 93.
" Talpa : or the Chronicles of a Clay Farm. An Agricultural Fragment. By C. W. H." (London : Reeve & Co., 1852. The author is C .W. Hoskyns), 208.
Tarn o' Shunter. See Royal Academy, 1852.
Temperance, 48, 49, 52 et seq., 247. GeorgeCruikshankVLast temperance piece " was The Last Half Hour in S. C. Hall's " An Old Story " (1875). See Bottle, Drunkard, Drunkard's, Glass, Oil, Worship.
Termiel, Sir John, 176.
Thackeray, William Makepeace (born 18 July 1811, died 23 or 24 Dec. 1863), T, 25, 69, 78. 196, 231-232. See Stephens, Frederic G.
Thames, 78.
Thistlewood, Arthur (born 1770, hanged i May 1820), 3, 35.
Thompson, Alice. See Meynell, Mrs Alice.
278
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Thompson, John (wood-en- graver, born 25 May 1785, died 20 Feb. 1866. At the Paris Exhibition of 1855, he was awarded the grand medal of honour for wood-engraving. He engraved the cuts for " Mornings at Bow Street " and " The Beauties of Wash- ington Irving," &c.), 126, 129, 162, 239. See True.
Thomson, James, n.
Thornhill, Sir James (Hogarth's father-in-law), 78.
" Three Courses and a Dessert. The Decorations by George Cruikshank " (London : Vize- telly, Branston & Co., 1830. The author is W. Clarke), 215.
" Three (The) Cruikshanks. A Bibliographical Catalogue, describing more than 500 works . . . illustrated by Isaac, George, and Robert Cruikshank, compiled by Frederick Marchmont . . . The introduction by Julian Moore, with illustrations " (London : W. T. Spencer, 1897. A useful book. Prices are appended, which should not in some instances be paid by the collector who has time to look about him. The frontispiece, reproducing George Cruikshank's oil- painting A Mother's Love, re- minds one of William Blake's drawing in sepia of a mother discovering her child hi an eagle's nest).
Time. See Illustrations of Time.
Titian (=Tiziano Vecellio), 2, 69.
Tobacco (The most interesting anti-tobacco publication as- sociated with George Cruik- shank is " What Put My Pipe Out ; or, Incidents in the Life
of a Clergyman," published in London by S. W. Partridge,
• 1862), 58, 59-
" Tom Thumb ; a Burletta, altered from Henry Fielding, by Kane O'Hara. With Designs by George Cruik- shank " (London : Thomas Rodd, 1830), 156 (where Ruskin may be supposed by anyone who thinks, as I do not, that he was incapable of a lapsus calami, to refer to the designs for this volume).
" Topsail-Sheet Blocks ; or, The Naval Foundling. By 'The Old Sailor'" (3 vols., London : Richard Bentley, 1838, the author is M. H. Barker), 95.
Tothill Fields, 87.
" Tower (The) of London," by William Harrison Ainsworth (13 parts, the last 2 form- ing a double part. London : Richard Bentley, 1840), 60, 81-82, 83, 85.
" Town Talk, or Living Manners " (5 vols., London : J. Johnson, 1811-1814. A periodical. George Cruik- shank, contributed to vols. ii. [1812], iv. [1813], v. [1813]),
" Travels (The) and Surprising Adventures of Baron Mun- chausen. Illustrated with Five woodcuts by G. Cruik- shank, and Twenty- two full- page curious engravings." (London : William Tegg, 1867. The author is R. E. Raspe. The Cruikshank cuts were " used before in other books," says Capt. Douglas. George Cruikshank also con- tributed a frontispiece to " The Surprising Travels and Adventures of the Renowned
279
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Baron Munchausen," printed and sold by Dean & Munday, Threadneedle Street, London, 1817), 219.
Triumph (The) of Cupid, etching in " George Cruikshank's Table-Book" (1845), 67, 223-4.
"True (The) Legend of St Dunstan and the Devil, Show ing how the Horse-Shoe came to be a Charm against Witch- craft. By Edward G. Flight. With illustrations drawn by George Cruikshank and en- graved by John Thompson." (London : D. Bogue, 1848), 119, 122, 123.
Trusler, Rev. Dr, author of " Hogarth Moralized." (For an edition of that work published by John Major in 1831, George Cruikshank en- graved 4 groups of heads after Hogarth), 77.
Turpin, Dick, 75, 77.
Twain, Mark, 234.
" Twelve Sketches illustrative of Sir Walter Scott's Demon- ology and Witchcraft, by George Cruikshank " (Lon- don : J. Robins & Co., 1830), 139, 147-148.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," by Harriet Beecher Stowe (London : John Cassell, 1852), 10, 39-
" Universal (The) Songster ; or Museum of Mirth : forming the most complete, extensive, and valuable collection of ancient and modern songs in the English language ..." (3 vols., London : John Fairburn, 1825, 1826), 136- 137-
Vaccination. See Cow, Vacci- nation against.
Vaccination against Small Pox or Mercenary and Merciless spreaders of Death and De- vastation driven out of Society (caricature signed Cruikshank del. Published by S. W. Fores, 20 June 1808),
"Vicar (The) of Wakefield," 191-192, 193. See Royal Academy, 1830.
Victoria and Albert Museum. See South Kensington.
Victoria, Queen, 40, 44, 247. See Original.
" Voice 1 (The) of Humanity: for the Communication and Discussion of all subjects re- lative to the Conduct of Man towards the Inferior Animal Creation" (London: J. Nisbet 1830 [sic]. The etch- ing by Geo. Cruikshank en- titled The Knackers [sic] Yard, or the Horses [sic] last home ! is here without the notice " Licensed for Slaughtering Horses." The Knackers Yard appeared in the number for May 1831, and re- appeared in vol. iii. [the title-page of which is dateless], with the. words " Licensed for Slaught- ering Horses," added to the design. In the first state of the plate as published is the date 1831), 220.
Wardle, Col., Gwyllym Lloyd (member for Oakhampton, Devon, who, in the House of Commons, 27 Jany. 1809, made the charge against the Duke of York of implication in the misuse of money realised by the sale of com- missions), 26.
Watts, George Frederick (born 1817, died 1904), 2.
280
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Waverley," by Sir Walter Scott, 169, i75. *92.
Wedmore, Frederick, 100, 115.
Westminster Abbey, 86, 89.
" What Put My Pipe Out." See Tobacco.
Whistler, James McNeill (born circa 1835, died July 1903), 78.
White, engraver. See Life in Paris. (There was a wood engraver called Henry White, a pupil of Bewick who " pro- duced much good work, notably the illustrations for Hone's ' House that Jack Built,' ' The Matrimonial Ladder,' [sic], &c." Vide " Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers," revised ed. 1905).
White, Rev. James (born 1803, died 1862). See Adventures of Sir.
Whittington, See Dick.
Whitty, I., 93. See Tales.
Wight, John. See More, Morn- ings, Sunday.
Wilberforce, William (born 24 Aug. 1759, died 29 July 1833). See New Union.
Wild, Jonathan, 79.
Wilde, Oscar, 183-184.
Willesden Churchyard, 79.
" Windsor Castle, an Historical Romance," by W. Harrison Ainsworth (new edition, illustrated by George Cruik- shank, and Tony Johannot, with designs on wood by W. Alfred Delamotte. London : Henry Colborn, 1843. The first edition, also 1843, has only 3 etchings), 89, 90, i35> 137.
Winsor, Frederick Albert. See Winzer.
Winzer (born 1763, died n May 1830. One of the pioneers of
28l
gas-lighting and son of Friedrich Aiorechc Winzer. Apparently he was named after his father ; but he anglicised his name, and biography knows him as Frederick Albert Winsor), 31.
"Wits (The) Magazine and Attic Miscellany" (2 vols., London : Thomas Tegg, 1818), 209.
Woman (The) Taken in Adultery, or Mary Magdalen (caricature ascribed by G. W. Reid to George Cruikshank. Pub- lished by S. W. Fores, 15 March 1809), 27.
Women, 43.
Woodward, H. 12.
Wooler, Thomas Jonathan (born 1785 or 1786, died 29 Oct. 1853, editor of " The Black Dwarf " which started 29 Jan. 1817. He was a tall man), 35.
" Works (The) of George Cruik- shank Classified and Arranged
with References to Reid's Catalogue, and their approxi- mate value1*. By Capt. R. J. H. Douglas, with a frontis- piece " (London : printed by J. Davy & Sons, 1903. Though not quite exhaustive and with several errors this book is indispensable to the collector. It is the only bibliography which attempts to include all the artist's works to the date of his death).
World's (The) Show, 1851, or the Adventures of Mr and Mrs Sandboys and Family, who came up to London to enjoy themselves, and to see the Great Exhibition, by Henry Mayhew and George Cruikshank " (London :
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
David Bogue, 1851. First published in 8 parts. The title-page here quoted is the one designed by G. Cruikshank, but above the first line of text the title is as quo ted on p. 44).
Worship (The) of Bacchus ; oil-painting by George Cruik- shank (1862), 65-70. See Oil painting.
Worship (The) of Bacchus, or the Drinking Customs of Society, showing how uni- versally the intoxicating liquors are used upon every occasion in life from the cradle
to the grave. The figures outlined on the steel-plate by George Cruikshank, and the engraving finished by Charles Mottram (London : William Tweedie, 1864), 65. Wright, Thomas (M.A., F.S.A.), Author of " Caricature History of the Georges " (1867), ii.
Xantippe, 181.
Yarmouth, The Countess of, 4,
24.
Yedis, 28. York, Duke of. See Frederick.
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