ROBERT AND GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
In the early years of the nineteenth
century, when Gillray was fast drinking himself into
imbecility, and Rowlandson had turned his attention
to book-illustration, English caricature, that once
vigorous plant, showed signs of premature decay.
In the opinion of all lovers of pictorial satire,
the promise displayed in the as yet immature designs
of a couple of youthful brothers, Robert and George
Cruikshank, held out the best hopes for the future.
The two boys were the sons of a Lowland Scotchman,
Isaac Cruikshank (c. 1756-c. 1811), who
came to London with his Highland wife some time in
the “eighties,” and made a modest mark
as a water-colour painter and caricaturist. He
produced a large number of political caricatures in
the style of Gillray, which were coloured by his wife
and later by his two boys, who enjoyed but little
schooling, and only so much artistic training as he
could give them. It was owing, probably, to Isaac’s
passion for Scotch whisky, which is said to have hastened
his end, that the little household in Duke Street,
Holborn, had a hard struggle to make both ends meet,
and George (1792-1878), while yet a child himself,
was set to illustrate children’s books for the
trade. Before he was out of his teens he was producing
coloured caricatures, of which the arrest of Sir Francis
Burdett is the earliest important example, and contributing
etchings to The Scourge (1811-16), a scurrilous
publication, edited by “Mad Mitford.”
The principal subjects of his somewhat crude satire
were the Regent, Buonaparte, and a certain number
of too notorious personages in “high life.”
In 1814, George illustrated a Life of Napoleon
in Hudibrastic verse, by Dr. Syntax, not our friend
Combe, but some anonymous admirer of his hero.
Young Cruikshank’s talent attracted the attention
of William Hone of Table-Book fame, who employed
him to illustrate a series of radical squibs, including
The Political House that Jack built, The
Political Alphabet, and The Queen’s Matrimonial
Ladder. It was for Hone that George designed
his famous Bank-note “not to be imitated,”
which, he fondly believed, put a stop to hanging for
the forgery of one pound notes. Hone seems to
have been a very poor paymaster, but his custom brought
the young artist great notoriety, and by 1820 “the
ingenious Mr. Cruikshank” was firmly established
as a popular favourite.
After his father’s death, George
continued to keep house with his mother, sister, and
brother, and we are told that the wild ways of her
two boys gave the thrifty, serious Mrs. Cruikshank
a great deal of anxiety. She is reported to have
chastised George with her own hands when he came home
tipsy o’ nights, and she was accustomed to say,
with more than maternal candour, “Take the pencil
out of my sons’ hands, and they are no better
than two boobies.” However, it was probably
owing to their familiarity with “the haunts
of dissipation” that they became acquainted
with Pierce Egan (1772-1849), the pet of peers and
pugilists, an accomplished professor of Cockney slang,
and the greatest living authority on questions relating
to boxing, bull-baiting, cock-fighting, and all such
“manly sports.” Pierce, who handled
a pen much as he might have handled a quarter-staff,
had already won fame as a sporting reporter, and as
the author of Boxiana, or Sketches of Modern Pugilists,
published in 1818. In 1821 he conceived, or had
suggested to him, the idea of a book on Life in London
as seen by a young man about town, and he engaged
the brothers Cruikshank to illustrate it. It has
been claimed that the idea originated with Robert Cruikshank,
who drew the characters of Corinthian Tom, Jerry Hawthorn,
and Bob Logic, from himself, his brother, and Pierce
Egan. George IV. gave permission for the proposed
work to be dedicated to himself, and in July 1821 it
began to appear in monthly numbers, under the title
of 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 Metropolis.
The work was illustrated by fifty-six hand-coloured
etchings by the two Cruikshanks, as well as numerous
engravings on wood. The very first number took
the town by storm, and the colourists were unable
to keep pace with the demand. Scenes from the
tale were painted on fans, screens, and tea-trays,
numerous imitations were put forth, even before the
book was issued in volume form, and more than one
dramatised version appeared on the stage. Every
street broil was transformed into a “Tom and
Jerry row,” the Methodists distributed tracts
at the doors of the theatres in which the piece was
played, and it was declared that Egan had turned the
period into an Age of Flash. But all protests
were speedily drowned in a general chorus of admiration,
to which the European Magazine put the climax
with its public declaration that “Corinthian
Tom gives finished portraits; with all the delicacy
and precision of Gerard Douw, he unites the boldness
of Rubens with the intimate knowledge of Teniers!”
Thackeray, in a charming essay, has recalled his early
delight in the book, in those far-off days when every
schoolboy believed that the three heroes were types
of the most elegant and fashionable young fellows the
town afforded, and thought their occupations and amusements
those of all high-bred English gentlemen. Twenty
years later, Thackeray describes how he went to the
British Museum to renew his acquaintance with his old
favourite, and was disillusioned by the letterpress,
which he found a little vulgar, “but the pictures,”
he exclaims, “the pictures are noble still!”
DAVID CAREY
The earliest imitation of Life
in London was called Real Life in London, or
the Rambles and Adventures of Bob Tallyho, Esq., and
his Cousin the Hon. Tom Dashall. By an Amateur.
This book, which some have supposed to be the work
of Egan in rivalry with himself, was illustrated by
Rowlandson, Alken, and Dighton. A year later,
in 1822, came Life in Paris, Comprising the Rambles,
Sprees, and Amours of Dick Wildfire and Squire Jenkins,
by David Carey; while The English Spy, by Bernard
Blackmantle, appeared in 1824. David Carey (1782-1824)
was a young Scotchman, son of a manufacturer at Arbroath,
who began his career in Constable’s publishing
house in Edinburgh but presently came south, and devoted
himself to literary journalism. He attracted some
attention by means of a satire, called the The
Ins and Outs, and also wrote some long-forgotten
novels and sketches. In 1822 he went to Paris,
where he wrote his account of life in that city; and
then, his health breaking down, returned to his native
town to die of consumption. It was claimed for
the illustrations to his book, which were from the
pencil of George Cruikshank, that “To accuracy
of local delineation is added a happy exhibition of
whatever is ludicrous and grotesque in character.”
Now George had never been in France, and therefore
was obliged to take his local colour from the “views”
of other artists, but the ludicrous and grotesque
side of French life and character came only too easily
to his John Bullish imagination. To him, as Thackeray
points out, all Frenchmen were either barbers or dancing-masters,
with “spindle shanks, pig-tails, outstretched
hands, shrugging shoulders, and queer hair and moustaches.”
In his regenerate days, George was wont to assert,
a propos of Life in London, that, finding
the book was a guide to, rather than a warning against,
the vicious haunts and amusements of the Metropolis,
he had retired from the alliance with Egan, leaving
about two-thirds of the plates to be executed by his
brother Robert. If this be true, he showed some
inconsistency in consenting to illustrate Carey’s
book, which is a frank imitation of Egan’s,
though in a French setting.
CHARLES MOLLOY WESTMACOTT
A more ambitious book in the same
genre was The English Spy; an Original Work, Characteristic,
Satirical, and Humorous, comprising Scenes and Sketches
in every Rank of Society, being Portraits of the Illustrious,
Eminent, Eccentric, and Notorious. The author,
Charles Molloy Westmacott, alias Bernard Blackmantle,
editor of The Age, has been described as a
typical editor of the rowdy school of journalism.
He claimed to be the son of Sir Richard Westmacott,
the Royal Academician, by a certain Widow Molloy,
who kept the King’s Arms at Kensington.
The system of journalistic blackmail was brought to
a higher degree of perfection by Westmacott than by
any other free lance of the time. For the pieces
justificatives relating to a certain scandalous
intrigue in which various exalted personages were
implicated, Westmacott is said to have received nearly
L5000. With his ill-gotten gains he fitted up
a villa near Richmond, where for a time he lived in
luxury, though not, it would appear, in security.
In 1830 he was soundly horsewhipped by Charles Kemble
for an insulting allusion to his daughter Fanny in
The Age, and he was threatened with the same
punishment by Bulwer Lytton. In his portrait
by Daniel Maclise he is represented with a heavy dog-whip,
probably a necessary weapon of defence. In his
later days Westmacott took refuge in Paris, where
he died in 1868.
In 1823, Westmacott published his
Points of Misery, illustrated by George Cruikshank,
and in 1825 he brought out a roman a clef called
Fitzalleyne of Berkeley, in which various scandals
relating to the Berkeley family were introduced.
The book was eagerly bought and read, and Westmacott,
who had vainly tried to extort money for its suppression,
must have made a handsome sum by its publication. The
English Spy was brought out in two volumes, and
contained seventy-two large coloured plates as well
as numerous vignettes on wood, the majority being
from the designs of Robert Cruikshank, who figures
in the book under the pseudonym of “Robert Transit.”
Two of the coloured plates were contributed by Thomas
Rowlandson, notably a sketch of the Life Academy at
Somerset House, with the R.A.’s of the period
busily engaged in drawing from a female model.
Most of the social celebrities of the time are introduced
into the book, Beau Brummell, Colonel Berkeley, Pierce
Egan, Charles Matthews, “Pea-green” Hayne,
and “Golden” Ball; while life at the University,
in sporting and fashionable London, and at the popular
watering-places, is vividly described. On the
last page is an interesting little vignette representing
the author and artist in the act of handing the second
volume of their work to an eagerly expectant bookseller.
The success of this book, and of many other imitations
of Life in London, induced Egan to compose
a sequel to his work, which appeared in 1828 under
the title of The Finish to the Adventures of Tom,
Jerry, and Logic, in their Pursuits through Life in
and out of London, illustrated by Robert Cruikshank.
In this curious book an attempt is made to propitiate
the Nonconformist conscience of that day by bringing
the majority of the characters to a bad end. Corinthian
Tom breaks his neck in a steeplechase, Corinthian
Kate dies in misery, Bob Logic is also killed off,
and Splendid Jem becomes a convict; but Jerry Hawthorn
reforms, marries Mary Rosebud, a virtuous country maiden,
and settles down at Hawthorn Hall as a Justice of
the Peace and model landlord.
PIERCE EGAN AND THEODORE LANE
In 1824, Egan had started a weekly
newspaper called Pierce Egan’s Life in London,
which, being sold to a Mr. Bell, enjoyed a long period
of popularity as Bell’s Life in London.
In the same year Pierce published his Life of an
Actor, dedicated to Edmund Kean, and illustrated
by Theodore Lane. Lane, who was born at Isleworth
in 1800, was the son of a drawing-master in poor circumstances.
At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to John
Barrow, an artist and colourer of prints, who was
living in St. Pancras. Thanks to the encouragement
of his master, Lane early came into notice as a miniaturist
and painter in water-colours, and he exhibited works
of that class at the Academy between 1819 and 1826.
But his real talent lay in the direction of the quaint
and the humorous. In 1825 he made a series of
thirty-six designs representing scenes in the life
of an actor, which he took to Egan and begged that
popular author to write the letterpress. After
some hesitation, Egan undertook the task, chiefly,
as he says, with the idea of introducing a meritorious
young artist to the public. For his designs Lane
received L150 from the publisher, and the book really
proved a stepping-stone, not to fortune, but to regular
employment. His work was praised by the two Cruikshanks,
and a writer in The Monthly Critical Gazette
declared that his designs would not discredit the
pencil of Hogarth. Lane illustrated Egan’s
Anecdotes Original and Selected of the Turf, the
Chase, the Ring, and the Stage in 1827, and also
published two or series of humorous designs.
In 1825 the young artist, though left-handed, took
up oil-painting with success, and attracted favourable
notice by his pictures The Christmas Presents
and Disturbed by Nightmare, which were exhibited
at the Academy in 1827 and 1828. His best work,
however, was The Enthusiast a gouty
angler fishing in a tub of water which
is now in the National Gallery. On 21st May 1828
poor Lane’s promising career was cut short in
most tragical fashion. While waiting for a friend
at the Horse Repository in the Gray’s Inn Road,
he stepped upon a skylight, and, falling through, his
brains were dashed out upon the pavement below.
He left a widow and two children, for whose benefit
Egan published a little work in verse called The
Show Folks, with illustrations by Lane, as well
as a short memoir of the unfortunate artist.
Of Egan’s numerous other works it is only necessary
to mention his Book of Sports and Mirror of Life
(1832), and The Pilgrims of the Thames in Search
of the National (1838), illustrated by his son,
and dedicated by express permission to the young Queen
Victoria. “The Fancy’s darling child,”
as he has been aptly named, died at his house in Pentonville in 1849, respected
by all who knew him -- vide
Bell’s Life.
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
To return to George Cruikshank, who
was now in the full tide of success and overwhelmed
with commissions. It would be impossible here
to give a complete list of his productions, but mention
may be made of his illustrations to Peter Schlemihl,
the Man without a Shadow, and to Grimm’s
Popular Stories (1824), which were so much admired
by Ruskin; of his Illustrations of Phrenology
(1826), which marks his first appearance as an independent
author; the famous Mornings at Bow Street (1815);
the Comic Almanac, which began in 1835; the
series of etchings for the Sketches by Boz
(1836), and those for Oliver Twist in Bentley’s
Miscellany (1839), which led to his claim that
he had originated the story a claim that
naturally put an end to his connection with Dickens.
In 1839 began a long series of illustrations for the
novels of Harrison Ainsworth (1805-82), the editor
of Bentley’s Miscellany. Ainsworth
was born at Manchester, and bred up to “the law,”
but on coming to London to finish his legal studies,
he neglected his law books for literature. He
attained his first success with Rookwood in
1834, and in 1839 became editor of Bentley’s
Miscellany, in which his novel Jack Sheppard,
with illustrations by Cruikshank, first appeared.
In 1842 he started Ainsworth’s Magazine,
and engaged Cruikshank, who had quarrelled with Bentley,
as illustrator-in-chief, at a salary of L40 a month.
The engagement proved a fortunate one, resulting in
the excellent designs to The Tower of London,
The Miser’s Daughter, Windsor Castle,
and other novels, which Cruikshank himself described
as “a hundred and forty-four of the very best
designs and etchings I ever produced.”
The connection came to an end with the usual quarrel,
Cruikshank claiming to have suggested the plot and
characters of both The Miser’s Daughter
and The Tower of London.
In 1847, Cruikshank was converted
to teetotalism, and thenceforward laboured in the
cause with almost fanatic zeal. It was in this
year that he executed his famous group of eight designs
called The Bottle, which was reproduced in
glyphography, and circulated at a cheap price by temperance
societies. In 1850 he was employed to illustrate
the second edition of Smedley’s successful novel
Frank Fairlegh. Frank Smedley was born
at Great Marlow in 1818, and, being crippled by a malformation
of the feet, he was educated at a private tutor’s
instead of at a public school. He contributed
his first story, The Life of a Private Pupil,
to Sharpe’s Magazine in 1846-48, and a
couple of years later it was published under the title
of Frank Fairlegh. The book, in which
Smedley’s love of open-air life and sympathy
with outdoor sports are strongly manifested, made
a decided hit, and was followed during the next few
years by Lewis Arundel and Harry Coverdale’s
Courtship. Smedley has left an amusing account
of his first interview with George Cruikshank, who,
on seeing a cripple in a wheeled chair, could not
conceal his wonder, but kept exclaiming, “Good
God! I thought you could gallop about on horses.”
Smedley, who died of apoplexy in 1864, was editor
of the ill-fated Cruikshank’s Magazine,
started in 1853, which only reached its second number.
George Cruikshank’s last years
were taken up in great measure with his work in the
cause of temperance reform, and though he still occupied
himself in book-illustration, it became increasingly
evident that he had outlived his public. His
large oil-painting, The Triumph of Bacchus,
did not attract the multitude when exhibited at Exeter
Hall in 1863, though he had devoted three years to
its execution. Thanks to the kindness of his
friends, and the grant of two small pensions, actual
poverty was kept from his door, and he lived to a green
old age, bright-eyed and alert, the best of good company
over his glass of cold water, dancing a hornpipe at
past eighty, or dressing up and singing The Loving
Ballad of Lord Bateman, which he had illustrated
in 1839. He was taken ill early in 1878, and
died on 1st February, finding his final resting-place
in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
George Cruikshank, his biographer
Blanchard Jerrold tells us, always worked with great
care and deliberation, thinking out his subject thoroughly
before beginning to realise his conception. “He
made, to begin with, a careful design upon paper,
trying doubtful points upon the margin. The design
was heightened by vigorous touches of colour.
Then a careful tracing was made, and laid, pencil
side down, upon the steel plate. This was carried
to the printer, who, having placed it between damp
paper and passed it through the press, returned it,
the black-lead outline distinctly appearing on the
etching ground. And then the work was straightforward
to the artist’s firm hand.”