Blanchard Jerrold

“ Cruikshank was not of those who needed the warning. He remained heart and soul in his creative work throughout a long career, content to live modestly, and to rest his claim to the respect of the world upon his labours. If his indefatigable industry failed to bring him the fortune which fashion now lavishes upon his inferiors, he was consoled by the fervid admiration of such critics as Thackeray and Ruskin, and other distinguished contemporaries, whose opinions on his genius I have freely given, as the best aids to a thorough estimate of him as an artist. ”

“ There is life in every accessory. Nature morte did not exist for him. “Dead as a door-nail” he could not understand; for under the magnetism of his etching-needle the nail would laugh and speak. He was so full of life himself—a hornpipe dancer in his eighty-fourth year *—that, in spite of him, he infused it into anything he touched. No artist ever threw such movement and infused such vital breath into his pictures, as this untaught man of genius spontaneously breathed into his etchings and woodcuts. ”

“ Nor is this perfection the result of a lucky hit or happy accident, by which a far inferior artist may sometimes succeed in producing what is acknowledged by the eye as the impersonation of the impression produced on the mind by the art of the novelist or the poet. It is the result of deep study and profound sympathy, with all the varied action of the human heart. It is genius, the twin-brother of that which inspired Garrick and Kean, and which, in its rarest and most refined developments, brings before our eyes even now new beauties latent in the characters of Hamlet and of Rosalind. ”

“ There is a fellow in the ‘Points of Humour’ who is offering to eat up a certain little general, that has made us happy any time these sixteen years; his huge mouth is a perpetual well of laughter—buckets full of fun can be drawn from it. We have formed no such friendships as that boyish one of the man with the mouth. But though, in our eyes, Mr. Cruikshank reached his apogee some eighteen years since, it must not be imagined that such is really the case. ”

“ Generally speaking, people consider him as a clever, sharp caricaturist, and nothing more—a freehanded, comical young fellow, who will do anything he is paid for, and who is quite contented to dine off the proceeds of a ‘George IV.’ to-day, and those of a ‘Hone’ or a ‘Cobbett’ to-morrow. He himself, indeed, appears to be the most careless creature alive, as touching his reputation. ”

“ What a deal of thought and humour has the artist expended on this little block of wood! a large picture might have been painted out of the very same materials which Mr. Cruikshank, out of his wondrous fund of merriment and observation, can afford to throw away upon a drawing not twi inches long. From the practical dustmen we pass to those purely poetical. Here are three of them, who rise on a cloud of their own raising, the very genius of the sack and shovel. ”

“ We say this in no spirit of exaggeration, but with a profound conviction that no hand could have produced such works as those of George Cruikshank, which was now the index of the organ of a heart deeply imbued with the finest sympathies of humanity, and an intellect highly endowed with power of the keenest perception and the subtlest analysis. ”

“ Other men, of lesser genius, had arisen and taken his place. He had been voted old-fashioned. His figures were of a time gone by. His women were the grandmothers of the living generation in their youth. He had passed from the shop-windows, where laughing crowds used to greet him, to the portfolios of collectors. How great Cruikshank’s popularity once was—that is, his popularity with the masses of his countrymen—a few of our older readers may recollect. ”

“ When the street folk were languidly before the print-shop windows, thoughtful men were looking quietly over their shoulders, perceiving in the artist much more than the caricaturist of the follies of the hour. ”

“ Within the range of this decade of feverish activity is amassed such wealth of fancy, of invention, of jocund spirit, of sympathy for suffering, of rage over wrong, of minute observation of men and things, and withal such conscientious, ever-improving execution with pencil and needle, and lithographic ink and tinting-brush, upon wood and stone, and steel and copper, as not all the caricaturists or comic artists who have swarmed in Fleet Street since the Queen’s coronation day could equal, if they made a joint show of their best. ”

“ From the murderer’s cell to the pauper’s deathbed there is no phase of crime and misery which has not served him to point a moral. But his sympathies are never perverted, or his sense of right and wrong dimmed by the atmosphere in which he moves. He is a stern though kindly moralist. In his hands vice is vice—a foe with whom no terms are to be kept. ”

“ The family tradition was to the effect that Dickens, calling one day in Amwell Street, saw a series of illustrations which Cruikshank had prepared for a story he had in his mind of the life of a thief. Dickens was so struck with them, and with the artist’s account of his plan, that he determined to make London the scene of Oliver Twist’s adventures. Cruikshank’s intimate knowledge of low life in every part of London made him the most efficient and penetrating illustrator of Dickens’s book: this, and nothing more. ”

“ Jeanjean, the conscript in France, is laughed at, to be sure, but then it is because he is a bad soldier; when he comes to have a huge pair of moustachios and the croix d’honneur to briller on his poitrine cicatrisé, Jeanjean becomes a member of a class that is more respected than any other in the French nation. The veteran soldier inspires our people with no such awe: we hold that democratic weapon the fist in much more honour than the sabre and bayonet, and laugh at a man tricked out in scarlet and pipeclay.”
“In the supernatural,” says Thackeray, “we find Cruikshank reigning supreme. ”

“ Thackeray rates these “Jack Sheppard” plates among the most finished and the most successful of Cruikshank’s performances; dwelling lovingly on the conscientiousness of the artist, and that shrewd pervading idea of form which is one of his principal characteristics. They bear witness to the minuteness as well as to the fidelity of the artist’s observation. Not the smallest object, nor its proper place in his design, escapes his eye. ”

“ The author of “Vanity Fair” was not often carried away by his emotion, but in the presence of the fire of his friend’s genius he warmed to an unwonted heat. “He has told a thousand new truths in as many strange and fascinating ways; he has given a thousand new and pleasant thoughts to millions of people; he has never used his wit dishonestly; he has never, in all the exuberance of his frolicsome nature, caused a single painful or guilty blush.”
* This passage is extracted from an article on Cruikshank written by Thackeray, in the Westminster Review (1840) ”

“ But the full strength of the artist can be estimated only after an examination of the sum of minor work which he got through at the same time. When his “Life in London” and Paris, “Phrenological Illustrations,” “Humourist,” “Points of Humour,” and many series of book illustrations—comprehending a notable quantity of his best creations—are estimated, in conjunction with his hand-to-mouth work for the caricature shops, and the whole has been surveyed at once, the connoisseur stands literally amazed at the immeasurable fecundity of the artist. ”

“ We find a quality akin to this in the burlesque work of George Cruikshank. He is inclined always to moralize with his etching-needle. He dignifies some of his most fantastic and even repulsive scenes with a lofty purpose. Of gentler disposition, and a less ardent politician than Gillray, Cruikshank’s political caricatures are tame when compared with those of the “Georgian Juvenal”; but he had walks and powers which Gillray never approached. Gillray is the rougher, sterner, more audacious genius, reflecting in these qualities the spirit of his times. ”

“ James’s Street and Piccadilly, where the crowd stretched even into the roadway, laughing at, and discoursing over, Gillray’s last. Cruikshank, although he never had Gillray’s academical training, enjoyed the benefit of his master’s matchless skill and infinite variety. Gillray unconsciously provided him with a rich inheritance. It has been justly observed that the works of Gillray preserve an entire social revolution; they form the link uniting the habits, fashions, and manners of the past, with the later generation which inaugurated our present ways of life. ”

“ A bad preacher will get admiration and a hearing with this point in his favour, where a man with three times his acquirements will only find indifference and coldness. Is any man more remarkable than our artist for telling the truth after his own manner? Hogarth’s honesty of purpose was as conspicuous in an earlier time, and we fancy that Gillray would have been far more successful and more powerful, but for that unhappy bribe, which turned the whole course of his humour into an unnatural channel. ”

“ No teaching, no hard study, will ever enable other people to equal, in their several ways, the works of Leech or Cruikshank; whereas the power of pure drawing is communicable, within certain limits, to every one who has good sight and industry. I do not, indeed, know how far, by devoting the attention to points of character, caricaturist skill may be laboriously attained; but certainly the power is, in the masters of the school, innate from their childhood. ”

“ CHAPTER V. “LIFE IN LONDON,” “LIFE IN PARIS,” “POINTS OF HUMOUR,” ETC. And yet it is no trifle to be a good caricaturist,” exclaimed Professor Wilson, writing an article on Cruikshank, in Blackwood, in July 1823. “Forbid the thought, ye shades of Bunbury and Gillray! forbid it, even thou, if thou be still in the land of the living, good Dighton! forbid it, charming, laughter-moving Rowlandson! Bunbury was a great genius, and would have been a great caricaturist, had he been possessed of art at all in proportion to his imagination. ”

“ One day, in his early volunteer days, when passing down Ludgate Hill in his striking uniform, of which a tall feather and tight green trousers were the conspicuous features, he was laughed at, and followed by some men and boys. He turned upon them and singled out the chief aggressor. A ring was formed in the street, and Private Cruikshank gave his assailant a sound thrashing, treating his second to a pot of beer afterwards by way of acknowledgment. * Robert Cruikshank was even more smitten with soldiering than George, and the weakness remained with him to the end of his life. ”