"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, "illustrated by Cruikshank" (presumably Robert)."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, "illustrated by Cruikshank" (presumably Robert).
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, thatif Noah's Ark is not too "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 zoological as the ostrich who swallowed her medicine 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 elephant 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)two elephants laugh together over a pseudopun on the word trunk.
"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."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.
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 Cruikshank caricatures humanity under zoological likenesses. His alderman realising Haynes Bayly's wish to be a butterfly in "My Sketch Book" (1835); his coleopteral beadle in "George Cruikshank's Omnibus" (1842), are simple attempts to maketours de forceof 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 infront 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 entitledThe Cat Did It!in "The Greatest Plague of Life" (1847). 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 wood-cut 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("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 heartlessness towards horses which is contradicted by his touching but not much prized etchingThe Knackers 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 inThe Omnibus Brutes—qy. which are they?It is therefore clear that Cruikshank thought humanely 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.
"THE CAT DID IT!" From "The Greatest Plague in Life" (1847)."THE CAT DID IT!" From "The Greatest Plague in Life" (1847).
In a comparison I have already associated Cruikshank with Lewis Carroll, who wassystematically 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 reasoninga 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 complainant 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 enchantment of single central ideas.The Triumph of Cupidin "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 onCruikshank'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 ofmultum in parvoby the well-known folding etchingPassing Events or the Tail of the Comet of 1853, appearing in "George Cruikshank's Magazine" (February 1854).
TITLE PAGE OF "ILLUSTRATIONS OF TIME," 1827 This drawing borrows idea from Gillray, as also does the frontispiece by Cruikshank to "Angelo's Picnic" (1834). Compare Gillray's John Bull taking a Luncheon (1798).TITLE PAGE OF "ILLUSTRATIONS OF TIME," 1827 This drawing borrows idea from Gillray, as also does the frontispiece by Cruikshank to "Angelo's Picnic" (1834). Compare Gillray's John Bull taking a Luncheon (1798).
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),
"A great philosopher art thou, George Cruikshank,In thy unmatched grotesqueness,"
"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.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 "Inevitable." 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(1826).More Mornings at Bow Street(1827).
Phrenological Illustrations (1826).Illustrations of Time (1827).Scraps and Sketches(4 parts and one plate of anunpublished 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 sometimes 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 Cruikshankthe 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 Tales" (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 Turk's only daughter approaches to mitigate the sufferings of Lord Bateman." "The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman," 1839."The Turk's only daughter approaches to mitigate the sufferings of Lord Bateman." "The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman," 1839.
"The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman" is one of the puzzles of literature. Mr Andrew Lang decides that it is avolkslied, 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 Cruikshank's repertory. Mr Walter Hamilton statesthat 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 therefore suppose, despite the omission of the notes to Lord Bateman from the "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 naïve and expressive. The bibliophool pays eight guineas for a first edition, minus the shading of the trees in the plate entitledThe 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 himselfby the nocturnal removal of knockers and duly appears in the police court, but is ultimately 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 inaccuracy 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 remembered than the terror of Melmoth. The answer should be "Yes" from all who acknowledge beauty in the sparkle of evil and of good. No humorist worthy of that forbidden fruit which made thieves of all mankind can refrainfrom 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," pronounced 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 humorous pictorial joke published by him in Punch was Phil May's drawing of a fisherman being invited to enter the Dottyville 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.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 Cruikshank 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.
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 1859; "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 thesteel," he says in another of his quaint revelations, "with a solution ofcopperinNitro[u]s acid—totarnishthetarnation Bright steelbefore Etching, to save the eyes."
NORNA DESPATCHING THE PROVISIONS. Illustrates "The Pirate," by Sir Walter Scott, in "Landscape-Historical Illustrations of Scotland, and the Waverley Novels," 1838.NORNA DESPATCHING THE PROVISIONS. Illustrates "The Pirate," by Sir Walter Scott, in "Landscape-Historical Illustrations of Scotland, and the Waverley Novels," 1838.
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 whenhe 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 formidable. Until, in the late seventies of the nineteenth 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 unengraved 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 hiswoodcuts 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 rôle of a pupil of 60, was, it seems, less than his humility, for "he made very few drawings in theAntique," says Mr Charles Landseer, "and never got into theLife." 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 entitledDisturbing the Congregation. This picture of a boy in church looking passionately unconscious of the fact that his sacrilegious 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 andThe Fairy Ring, already praised, reveal Cruikshank'stalent sufficiently to prevent one from regretting that he ultimately preferred covering canvases to furrowing plates.
(a) CRUSOE'S FARMHOUSE. (b) CRUSOE IN HIS ISLAND HOME. From "Robinson Crusoe," 1831.(a) CRUSOE'S FARMHOUSE. (b) CRUSOE IN HIS ISLAND HOME. From "Robinson Crusoe," 1831.
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 entitledStriking Effects produced by lines and dots for the assistance of young draftsmen, wherein he showed, like Hogarth, the amount of pictorial information which anartist 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 3-3/5 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
"Prone on the flood, extended long and large,Lay floating many a rood."
"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 pessimist 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.
THE VETERANS. From "Songs, Naval and National, of the late Charles Dibden," 1841.THE VETERANS. From "Songs, Naval and National, of the late Charles Dibden," 1841.
Ruskin said that Cruikshank's works were "often much spoiled by a curiously mistakentype 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 tohim. 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.
VIGNETTE. From "Peeps at Life," by the London Hermit (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.), engraved by Bolton, 1875.VIGNETTE. From "Peeps at Life," by the London Hermit (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.), engraved by Bolton, 1875.
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-neuvième siècle," in 12 tomes (1885-1892), 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-handbooks. 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 1847. 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.
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 parenthesis in the first line of an entry indicates that the article parenthesised begins the title of the subject of that entry.