Robert Cruikshank

“ Still the bell rings, the screams continue, and grow more distinct! Sarah faints, Betsy manages about half a fit, and Jane staggers a few paces and falls into the arms of Robert the gardener. A jug of ale, which the cook mistakes for water, flung into the face of the fair insensible, causes a sensation that arouses the whole party; and curiosity overcoming fear, leads them towards the stairs, where, hushed and horror-stricken, they await the dread intelligence that "a great black beadle has got into the parlour," his first appearance this season! ”

“ A writer in a German paper was led into an amusing blunder by an English review a few years ago. The reviewer, having occasion to draw a distinction between George and Robert Cruikshank, spoke of the former as the real Simon Pure. The German, not understanding the allusion, gravely told his readers that George Cruikshank was a pseudonym, the author's real name being Simon Pure. This seems almost too good to be equalled, but a countryman of our own has blundered nearly as grossly. ”

“ He ought therefore not to be nettled at our having obtained a superior artist.” The public, however, were not to be gulled; they perfectly well knew that Isaac Robert Cruikshank was an inferior artist in every respect to Seymour, and had not forgotten the tribute which the foolish editor had previously paid to the talents and ability of the latter. ”

“ The greater part of the illustrations—two-thirds, it is said—were by Robert Cruikshank; and his son (according to Blanchard Jerrold, Life of George Cruikshank, 1883, pp. 82–3) claimed the original idea for his father, who, he says, ‘conceived the notion, and planned the designs, while showing a brother-in-law, just returned from China, some of the “life” which was going on in London at the time. ”

“ Hamilton presents us with a dozen specimens of work of this kind which are nothing less than libels on his 90 graphic powers. To the general public of to-day the name of Robert Cruikshank is so little known, that comparatively few are cognizant of the fact that he was one of the most popular and successful graphic satirists of his time. It is the misfortune of the caricaturist that his wares attain only a transitory popularity, whilst it is their peculiarity that after he is dead their value is increased fourfold. ”

“ Robert had meantime lost ground as an artist, and had contracted bad habits. Isaac Cruikshank was at this time etching theatrical portraits and scenes for a publisher named Roach, who dwelt in Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane. This connection drew the two sons into an acquaintance with Edmund Kean, then an obscure player, and the three got up an amateur performance of “Blue Beard” in Roach’s kitchen, Kean taking the principal part, Robert and George Cruikshank playing the two brothers, and Miss Roach appearing as Fatima. The copper was the tyrant’s castle. ”

“ But this study of Rembrandt and of Hogarth, this minute attention to detail, this careful and conscientious elaboration, would have done little for George Cruikshank if he had not possessed in an eminent degree that faculty of creation, otherwise of originality, which men call genius. Various descriptions of this gift have been attempted by eminent men, but the most felicitous seems to us to be that given by Robert William Elliston: “A true actor,” says this distinguished comedian, “must possess the power of creation, which is genius, as well as the faculty of imitation, which is only talent.” ”

“ At the opening of the present chapter we said that Robert Seymour was almost a genius. Genius, however, he never absolutely touched; he was destitute of the inventive faculties which distinguished John Leech, and lacked the vivid imagination which enabled George Cruikshank to realize any idea which occurred to him, whether comical, grave, realistic, or terrible. His talents as an artist, though undoubtedly great, ran in a narrow groove, and their bent is shown by the well-known “Humorous Sketches,” and the less known but far more admirable designs which he executed for the “Comic Magazine.” ”

“ À Beckett was not unnaturally angry, and an angry man in his passion is apt to lose both his head and his memory. Forgetting the manner in which he had shortly before acknowledged the services and talent of the artist, he now attacked him and his abilities with a malice which would be unintelligible if we had not seen something of his nature and disposition. In his favourite “Notices to Correspondents” in the number of 13th September, 1834, he professes to account for the employment of Isaac Robert Cruikshank after the following disingenuous fashion: “Mr. ”

“ The closing years of George Cruikshank’s life were harassed by a controversy about a design he made and a statue he modelled of King Robert the Bruce, to be erected by subscription at Bannockburn. The consequence was a very lamentable quarrel, during which Cruikshank claimed that he had been engaged by the committee to make the design, * and that the statue modelled by Mr. Currie was originated by him—the contrary being, according to the committee, the fact. Cruikshank, in co-operation with Mr. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. CRUIKSHANK AS A POLITICAL CARICATURIST. It is recorded that when it was proposed to cast a statue of Sir Robert Peel, the portrait selected as most striking in its resemblance, most faithful to his natural expression, was found in a cartoon by John Leech, published in Punch; and that from this drawing the head was modelled. The caricaturist is something more than the mere portrait-painter, who produces his work after a few sittings, and with his model in a set position. Gillray, for example, spent his life in studying his subjects. ”

“ George Cruikshank’s “Monstrosities” are familiar to all acquainted with his works; and his brother Robert and his contemporaries were equally fond of ridiculing the preposterous fashions of their time. We find in the year 1818 a pictorial satire by Robert, which shows us a pair of Dandies at Tea, habited in the short-waisted, long-tailed coats, tight breeches, terrific stocks, shirt collars, and top boots of the period. “My dear fellow, Mr. Sim,” one of them, asks, “is your tea agreeable?” ”

“ Our trade is very slack;
For that I shouldn't care a pin,
But I've a bill come back.
"Any loose cash you have to spare,
I wish that you would lend;
In these dilemmas I'm aware
There's nothing like a friend."
Cries Ellwide, while his bag of blunt
He hides from hapless Snob,
"Thro' the whole house if you were to hunt
You wouldn't find a bob.
"I'm sorry it should happen so,
But poverty's no crime;
You're always welcome here, you know—
Look in some other time.
[Pg 25]
GALLERY OF COMICALITIES—No. XXIV.
STEP THE TENTH.
Robert Seymour. ”

“ GALLERY OF COMICALITIES—No. CXVI.
In India, when a Husband dies—the Widow ne'er can smile,
She's burnt alive, a sacrifice, upon her husband's pile;
In London many Wives and Widows deem it not a sin,
To sacrifice and burn themselves alive with fire of Gin.
Gin, Gin, sweet, sweet Gin,
There's no drops like Gin.
Gin, Gin, Sir Robert Burnett's Gin.
Gin, Gin, Sir Robert Burnett's Gin. ”

“ Robert Seymour.
Go on and prosper, knowing lads!
In life there's nothing like variety,
To see thee makes my spirit glad,
In such respectable society.
Let every care disperse in smoke,
Each anxious thought in beer be drown'd,
While you enjoy your game, and smoke—
Top-sawyer of the skittle-ground. ”

“ 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 (née Widdison) , his second wife, whose prenomen 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. ”

“ He looked towards one of the attendants inquiringly, and the man made some sign in return, but both were scarcely perceptible.
"Is there nothing will prevail with you," said the young officer in deep distress; "will not a mother's tears—the supplications of a son—"
The Death of Brady and discovery of Frank's Father.
London. Tilt & Bogue. 86. Fleet Street.
[287]
"Nothing, nothing," doggedly returned Brady, "you have the property; your father you will see no more. Hah!" he shrieked and started, fixing his blood-shot but rolling eyes at an aged-looking man, who was standing in the door-way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The giant can carry nothing heavier than a cocked-hat note on a silver tray, and his labours are to walk from his sentry-box to the door, and from the door back to his sentry-box, and to read the Sunday paper, and to poke the hall fire twice or thrice, and to make five meals a day. Such a fellow does Cruikshank hate and scorn worse even than a Frenchman.
“The man’s master, too, comes in for no small share of our artist’s wrath. ”

“ He had lived to earn his bread from day to day in the grotesque market; and the solemn and poetic side of his genius had been left unworked, or had been only partially and fitfully developed as he became an illustrator of books.
In the Almanac which included the Guy Fawkes cartoon appeared Cruikshank’s Father Mathew, a nice man for a small party. Father Mathew appears in the shape of a pump or filter to a convivial domestic circle, and holds parley with them. The animated pump, with the extended handle for a warning arm, and the spout for a nose, is an old Cruikshankian figure. ”

“ Nobody, that has the least of an eye for art, can doubt that Cruikshank, if he chose, might design as many annunciations, beatifications, apotheoses, metamorphoses, and so forth, as would cover York cathedral from end to end. It is still more impossible to doubt that he might be a famous portrait painter. Now, these are fine lines both of them, and yet it is precisely the chief merit of Cruikshank that he cuts them both; that he will have nothing to do with them; that he has chosen a walk of his own, and that he has made his own walk popular. Here lies genius ”

“ 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. ”

“ A man incapable of rest, with a swift, glancing, steely eye, a mobile mouth, and a grotesquely fierce general aspect, aggravated by the hook-nose, which was awry; prodigal in the matters of whisker, shirt-collar, and wristband; old-fashioned enough, even in the year 1845, to strike boys. *
* George Cruikshank was very careful about any portrait of him that was drawn or painted. One in coloured chalks by his friend Mill, that hung in his Amwell Street studio, satisfied him entirely. The eyes were at their fiercest, and the whiskers were superb. ”

“ The present generation are familiar merely with the George Cruikshank of the last thirty years. But his course stretched through two generations of his fellow-men.
The public who knew the Cruikshank of the Regency, the Reform Bill, and of the dawn of the Victorian epoch, had ceased to laugh or weep, to take notes and criticise, when the veteran artist summoned his fellow-countrymen to inspect his Triumph of Bacchus. Cruikshank, the frolicsome, many-sided caricaturist, who worked with Hone and others as a political and social reformer ”

“ Fippence, then, please sir—two plates and two new'uns—fippence."
"You're a nice sample o' thievery for your age," says the dustman, contemplating the boy with one eye, and then counting out four penny pieces and four farthings with curious deliberation. "You're a nice article to cast a gen'l'm'n's bill. Do you happ'n to know a cove in London by the name o' Ketch—Jack Ketch?" "Yes, sir." "Vell then, the next time as you go his vay, have the goodness to leave your card, and say you was strongly recommended to him by me. ”

“ The rooting of the animal among the roses would in itself have awakened in us nothing but indignation; our pain arises from his being violently driven in by a man of genius, our own beloved friend, Mr. George Cruikshank. That incomparable artist is, of all men, the last who should lay his exquisite hand on fairy text. In his own art he understands it so perfectly, and illustrates it so beautifully, so humorously, so wisely, that he should never lay down his etching-needle to ‘edit’ the Ogre, to whom with that little instrument he can render such extraordinary justice. ”

“ A convict, he carries a weighty burden upon his shoulders, marked “for life.”
The many light, playful, and fanciful sketches that are included in the one thin volume to which in “The Table Book” ran, are trifles light as air, when compared with those two great efforts of Cruikshank’s genius, at its ripest and brightest. They mark the highest point of his ascent. In the sequel we shall find him executing much noteworthy, honourable Work,with the zeal of a great moral preacher; but he will not surpass these two noble etchings. ”