THE LIFE
of
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK

In 1835 the late Mr. Tilt, publisher, of Fleet Street, started the Comic Almanac, and engaged George Cruikshank to illustrate it. It was a happy idea, exactly suited to the more popular side of the mood and genius of the artist; and Cruikshank entered upon his task with zest For nineteen years this annual comic and satirical commentary on passing and probable events, not only furnished him with a regular income, giving him work on which he might reckon with certainty in estimating his very fluctuating resources; but it afforded him the opportunity, in which he always delighted, of recording in his own quaint, original manner, his opinions on the questions of the day.

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In the nineteen volumes to which the Almanac ran, there are nearly two hundred and fifty etchings by him; and among these there are some of his happiest bits of observation, of his shrewdest exposures of folly and vice and cant, and of his original fancy. After looking over these nineteen volumes, and noticing that the wit and earnestness of purpose are as fresh and strong in that of 1853 as in the first volume, the reader cannot refuse to endorse what Thackeray said of Cruikshank’s humour—viz., that it is so good and benevolent, any man must love it. While in his illustrations of books the many-sided artist continued to express his serious or tragic power, which Mr. Ruskin has asserted to be as great as his grotesque power, though warped by “habits of caricature”; in these pleasant annual volumes, in the letterpress of which he had the assistance of his friends, Thackeray, Gilbert à Beckett, Albert Smith, Robert Brough, Horace and Henry Mayhew, he maintained his original popularity with the laughter-loving sections of the British public.

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In 1835, when the first almanac appeared, the water cure was amusing the public. Cruikshank’s first plate shows one enthusiast under the water-butt, another under a burst water-pipe, and a third in an elegant attitude, being pumped upon by his servant, and remarking, “Well, I could not have supposed that being ‘pumped upon’ was such a luxury! and so invigorating! And to think that so good a thing should hitherto have been thrown away upon qui tam attorneys, sprained ankles, and pickpockets!” Then Mr. Rigdum Funnidos (originated by the late Mr. Vizetelly, I am informed by his son Henry), enters upon the scene, and continues year after year to be the nom de plume of a succession of wits and humourists; and Cruikshank unfolds his series of plates of the months, each season being indicated by some humorous incident or some happy notes of observation of our London streets. The ice-carts and slides of January; the muddy streets and bustling postmen of St. Valentine’s day,—how unlike (with their great leather bags) the postmen of our day! the winds of March outside Mr. Tilt’s shop, blowing even a dog’s tail over his back; showery April, with a wonderful group of Cockneys standing up; the sweeps of Mayday; June, at the Royal Academy—a bit of Cruikshank at his brightest; July, in Vauxhall Gardens, with the band in cocked hats, and the famous master of the ceremonies in pumps; Cruikshank’s old friend, the dustman, eating his first oyster in August; Greenwich Fair in September; going into the country by the stage coaches in October; Guy Fawkes in November; and the Christmas pudding, with a laughing company welcoming it, in December. As pictures of the humorous side of London life upwards of forty years ago, these spirited etchings, which teem with life, are invaluable.

The fun of Mr. Rigdum Funnidos was of a kind that has found many imitators. In the “proceedings of learned societies” we find that the fossil remains of an antediluvian pawnbroker had been dug up within a mile of Hog’s Norton; that a successful method of converting stones into bread has been transmitted to the New Poor Law Commissioners, and a three-and-sixpenny medal presented to the ingenious discoverer thereof; then that a laborious investigator has reckoned that there are exactly nine millions, one hundred and sixty-four thousand, five hundred and thirty-three hairs on a tom-cat’s tail, which he defies all the zoologists of Europe to disprove. Later on (1839) Thackeray contributed “Stubbs’ Diary” and “Barber Cox, or the Cutting of his Comb,” to the pages of Funnidos. From the first, Cruikshank hit hard at quacks and shams. The first almanac has an “advertisement extraordinary” of the “British Humbug College of Health,” and some amusing testimonials from Gudgeon and Gosling, who have been cured by “Morising Pills.” The moral at the close of the almanac is, “While we venerate what is deserving of veneration, let us not forget that quackery, knavery, bigotry, and superstition always merit exposure and castigation.”

The versatility and the perennial vigour and vivacity of Cruikshank’s genius is nowhere more strikingly displayed than in the variety with which he has treated of the seasons in the Comic Almanac. One year March is illustrated by a meeting of workmen going to work, and roysterers returning home, day and night being nearly equal. Next March the cook is tossing pancakes. April is now shown upon the famous hill in Greenwich Park, and now in a wet return from the races. One November we have Lord Mayor’s Day, with one of Cruikshank’s dense crowds, and the next year we are treated to a delicious bit of humour.

Guys in council over the gunpowder plot May now famishes the artist with one of his happiest bits of suburban scenery, “all a-growing,”—a housewife exchanging old garments for spring flowers; and now such a crowd of lean-shanked charity boys, with such a beadle as only the “inimitable George” could draw before Leech’s time, are beating the bounds. July furnishes a whimsical scene of the dog-days—with London dogs fighting, drawing carts, playing Toby in a Punch and Judy show, running under a truck, and an aristocratic dog looking haughtily down from a first-floor window. (Landseer took more than one hint from Cruikshank’s animals.) June “down at Beulah,” a December dance; May “settling for the Derby”—a wonderful assemblage of broad and long faces; July at the seaside, with cockneys donkey-riding—“long days and long ears;” a November fog; December—“a swallow at Christmas,” a procession of the many substantial items of Christmas cheer, making a procession into the prodigious maw of John Bull. The fountain of humour is inexhaustible. The satirical contrasts also, are capital. Premium, a smart gentleman, with the ladies smiling upon him; Discount, in the dumps, and shabby, with the ladies’ backs resolutely turned towards him. The Parlour and the Cellar, each getting drunk after its fashion. The “Shop and the Shay,” two delightful bits of London life. Then there is the British Museum in 2043, with a gibbet, the pillory, a stage coachman, a Whig, a Tory, and a tax-gatherer’s book among the curiosities.

In 1844, Cruikshank began a series of large folded drawings, with a most humorous etching of the probable effects of over-female emigration. An importation of the fair sex from the savage islands has been effected, “in consequence of exporting all our own to Australia;” and the dark ladies are making eyes at a crowd of anxious men, who are advancing towards them, while in the distance would-be husbands are running to the scene. The faces of the imported squaws on shore, as well as those in the boats, being landed from the big ship, are the creations of a most searching humorous observer. Cruikshank’s cartoon of Guy Fawkes treated classically is wonderfully funny. The artist explained it himself in his own rough fantastic way.

“Having been advised,” he said, “by my friends to publish a sketch of my cartoon” (the great cartoon competition for the Houses of Parliament was going on in 1844) “intended for exhibition at Westminster Hall, I think the public, upon seeing it, will require some explanation of it. The subject has often been treated, and sometimes rather ill-treated, by preceding artists. Being forcibly struck by the grand classical style, I have aimed at it, and I trust I have succeeded in hitting it. At all events, if I have not quite come up to the mark, I have had a good bold fling at it. The first thing I thought it necessary to think of (though, by-the-bye, it is generally the last thing thought of in historical painting) was to get a faithful portrait of the principal character. For that purpose I determined to study nature, and strolled about London and the suburbs on the 5th of November, in search of a likeness of Fawkes, caring little under what Guys it might be presented to me. Unfortunately, some had long noses and some had short; so, putting this and that together, the long and the short of it is, that I determined on adopting a living prototype, who has been blowing up both Houses of Parliament for several years, and if not a Guy Fawkes in other respects, is at least famous for encouraging forking out on the part of others. Having got over the preliminary difficulty,

“I set to work upon my cartoon; and being resolved to make it a greater work than had ever before been known, I forgot the prescribed size, for my head was far above the consideration of mere fact, and I did not reflect, that where Parliament had given an inch, I was taking an ell as the very lowest estimate.

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“Having strolled towards Westminster Hall to survey the scene of my future triumphs, it struck me that I had carried the grand classical to such a height as to preclude all chance of my cartoon being got in through the doorway; and I therefore, with the promptitude of a Richard the Third, determined to ‘off with his head’ by taking a slice off the top of the canvas. This necessary piece of execution rather spoiled the design, but it enabled me to throw a heaviness into the brows of my principal figure, which, if it marred the resemblance to Fawkes, gave him an additional look of the Guy at all events. It then occurred to me that I might diminish the dimensions by taking a couple of feet off the legs; and this happy idea enabled me to carry out the historical notion that Fawkes was the mere tool of others, in which case, to cramp him in the understanding must be considered a nice blending of the false in art with the true in nature. The Guy’s feet were accordingly foreshortened, till I left him as he appeared when trying to defend himself at his trial, with hardly a leg to stand upon. Besides, I knew I could fresco out his calves in fine style, when once I got permission to turn the fruit of my labours into wall fruit on the inside of the Houses of Parliament.

“It will now be naturally asked why my cartoon was not exhibited with others, some of which were equally monstrous, in the Hall of Westminster. The fact is, if the truth must out, the cartoon would not go in. Though I had cramped my genius already to suit the views of the Commissioners and the size of the door, I found I must have stooped much lower if I had resolved on finding admittance for my work. I wrote at once to the Woods and Forests, calling upon them to widen the door for genius, by taking down a portion of the wall: but it will hardly be believed, that though there were, at the time, plenty of workmen about the building, no answer was returned to my request. Alas! it is all very well to sing, as they do in Der Freischutz, ‘Through the Woods and through the Forests,’ but towards me the Woods and Forests proved themselves utterly impenetrable.

“It will be seen that the arch-conspirator—for so I must continue to call him, though he could not be got into the archway—has placed his hat upon the ground, a little point in which I have blended imagination with history, and both with convenience. The imagination suggests that such a villain ought not to wear his hat; history does not say that he did, which is as much as to hint that he didn’t; while convenience, coming to the aid of both, renders it necessary for his hat to lie upon the ground; for if I had tried to place it on his head, there would have been no room for it There was one gratifying circumstance connected with this cartoon, which, in spite of my being charged with vanity, I must repeat. As it was carried through the streets, it seemed to be generally understood and appreciated; every one, even children, exclaiming as it passed, ‘Oh! there’s a Guy!’

“George Cruikshank.”

There was some bitterness in this jesting; for Cruikshank felt conscious of the latent power to execute a cartoon about which there should have been no buffoonery. Alas! his lines had been cast in humble places. 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. “Touch not—taste not,” says the preacher-pump: “if you must take anything, take the Pledge.”

Paterfamilias, with a severe frown and aggressive attitude, has turned upon the intruder. “Dost thou think,” he says, “because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” Pater’s friend is more insinuating, and has an excuse. “Why, you see, old gent,” he remarks, “the case is this—the ladies insist upon my singing a comic song, and I should like to know how I am to manage that over a glass of pump-water.” The grandfather pleads: “Won’t you allow an old gentleman a little warm elder wine this cold night?” And the buxom lady of the house is coaxing: “Pray take a chair, sir, and taste my home-made wine, or a glass of our home-brewed ale.” These suggested compromises expressed very faithfully the mood of the artist’s mind at the time. His sympathies inclined him towards the Apostle of Temperance; but he was not yet prepared to go over, body and soul, to the cause. The picture is accompanied by an “Ode to Father Mathew,” conceived in a spirit of hearty opposition, that only goes towards proving that Cruikshank was at the half-way house of elder and home-made wines and home-brewed beer, between the punch bowl and the pump. The ode is in the fine old style:—

“Oh, Father Mathew I why dost thou incline
Against all spirits thus to whine?
To preach against good liquor is a scandal.
Why to such rash conclusions jump—
To airy, dull, unsocial pump,
Why give a handle?
Water is very well—but then ‘tis known
That well is always better let alone.
Washing is water’s only function,
Save when a little drop poured in—
To brandy, whisky, rum, or gin,
Makes glorious grand junction.”

The kindly humourist’s etching-needle was inspired by every good cause. These almanacs have all morals underlying the fun. Cruikshank liked to have an object in view. No class, no creature was too humble for his sympathy. Landseer never drew anything better than the plate of the Dog-Days—suggested by “the Dogs Bill” of 1843. Two hard-working, very radical dogs who are drawing a truckful of hardware, scowl at a pair of genteel dogs, extravagantly arrayed, and smoking cigars, who cross their path. First radical dog says he believes they don’t know the side “their tails hang on,” they are so proud—adding, “Why, a cousin of mine, as lives at Barking, tells me as how the celebrated dog Billy has grown so proud that he has declined to kill any more rats. And as to cigars! why bless you, there ain’t a Puppy about Town but wot has got a cigar stuck in his mouth.” In a corner a watch-dog and a dancing dog are talking over their grievances; while in the distance a lady tells her footman to take care her spaniel, Duchess, does not get her feet wet. The dogs are inimitable. Bloomers, crinoline, over-population (a Cruikshankian plate showing the housetops covered with the superabundant humanity), the “steamed-out” stage-coachman, the “fast man,” female parliaments, baby-jumpers, cheap excursion trains, taking the census, the effect of the Peace Society (a regiment hay-making), Jullien as the President of the French Republic, “with entire new politics and polkas,” a pack of knaves, being a meeting of the betting interest,—these are but a few notable pictures of the crowded gallery. Cruikshank revelled in the fun, and sought to extract wisdom from it He had an old-fashioned idea of woman and her rights, and was sharp with his needle over female suffrage, ladies in pantalettes, and women of mind.

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Henry Mayhew wrote some verses on a woman of mind, during one of the years of his editorship (1847), beginning,—

“My wife is a woman of mind,
And Deville, who examined her bumps,
Vow’d that never were found in a woman
Such large intellectual lumps.
‘Ideality’ big as an egg,
With ‘Causality’—great—was combined;
He charg’d me ten shillings, and said,
‘Sir, your wife is a woman of mind.’”

Cruikshank’s picture of her is one of his stereotyped, ill-favoured, stuck-up, figureless ladies, of whom a friend said one day, when looking over some sketches, in Amwell Street, “Why, George, your females are all shaped like hour-glasses.”

For pure fun nothing could be better than the “Banquet of the Black Dolls,” in commemoration of the reduction of the Duty on Bags. The doll who occupies the chair has before her a Grand Potage de Dripping, and the menu includes Pâté de Horseshoes, Omelette de Old Iron, Bones Boil-é, Rag-out de Superior White Linen Rag, Fricassée de Broken Glass, and Poudin Kitchen Stuff.

The arrival of Tom Thumb, and his reception by the élite of society, as the bills said, and the brilliant court he held under a shower of John Bull’s gold in Piccadilly, suggested two scenes to hard-working and most moderately-paid Cruikshank. The first is called “Born a Genius.” In a garret a poor artist sits in despair and poverty—his empty plate upon the table, his tattered boots upon the floor. The second is called “Born a Dwarf.”

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The little man reclines upon a sofa, with a jewel-case and full money-bags beside him. He toys with a trinket, having finished his foie-gras and champagne.

He had seen inexcusable personalities in the paper, he remarked; and when Lemon said to him, “We shall have you yet,” George shouted in reply, striking one of his theatrical attitudes, “Never!”

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He had repented of his early days of unscrupulous caricature. It must be remembered, always to Cruikshank’s lasting honour, that, his wild youth past, he refused scores of tempting offers of work that did not quite commend itself to his conscience. He used to say he would illustrate nothing which he did not feel.

Later, when Punch goodnaturedly rallied him on his temperance eccentricities, he declared that he had a great mind to go down to Fleet Street “and knock the old rascal’s wooden head about.”

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CHAPTER XII. LORD BATEMAN AND THE TABLE BOOK.

Between 1837 and 1847, in addition to his work with Dickens and Ainsworth, and in his Omnibus and “Comic Almanac,” Cruikshank threw off some of his most popular minor drawings and etchings. Within this decade he etched many of his plates for the “Waverley Novels,” he illustrated “Peter Parley’s Tales about Christmas,” “Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote” (1837), “More Hints on Etiquette” (1838), “Lympsfield and its Environs” (1838), “The Life of Mansie Waunch (1838) for Blackwood, “Land-Sharks and Sea-Gulls” (1838), “Rejected Addresses” (1838), “Out and About,” a boy’s adventures, by Hain Friswell (1840), John O’Neill’s poem of “The Drunkard” (1842), Dibdin’s Songs (1841-2), “Picnic Papers” (1841), edited by Dickens; Douglas Jerrold’s “Cakes and Ale” (1842), “Modern Chivalry, or a new Orlando Furioso” (1843); Martin’s “Vagaries,” a sequel to “A Tale of a Tub” (1843); “The Bachelor’s own Book, or the Life of Mr. Lambkin, gent” (1844); Harry Lorrequer’s “Arthur O’Leary” (1844); Maxwell’s “Irish Rebellion” (1845), “The Old Sailor’s Jolly Boat” (1845), “The Comic Blackstone” (1846), Mrs. Gore’s “Snow-Storm” and “New Year’s Day” (1845), “Our Own Times” (1845), the Brothers Mayhew’s “Greatest Plague of Life” (1847), “The Emigrant,’ by Sir Francis Head, Captain Chamier’s “Ben Brace” (1847), “Nights at Mess,” and Laman Blanchard’s “Sketches from Life.” He also began his capital illustrations to “The Ingoldsby Legends,” in Bentley’s Miscellany. To this period, also, his wellknown “John Gilpin” and “Lord Bateman” (1839) belong.

According to Mr. Walter Hamilton, the history of the “Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman” is, that George Cruikshank “sang the old English ballad, in the manner of a street-ballad singer, at a dinner of the Antiquarian Society, at which Dickens and Thackeray were present.

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The latter is reported to have remarked, “I should like to print that ballad, with illustrations.” But Cruikshank warned him off, saying that this was exactly what he himself had resolved to do. The original ballad was much longer than that which Cruikshank illustrated, and to which Charles Dickens furnished humorous notes; and was not comic in any respect. Mr. Sala’s version is the more vraisetnblant:—

“The authorship of the ballad itself, which has furnished the basis for no less than three theatrical burlesques—one by a forgotten dramatist at the Strand, another by Robert Brough at the Adelphi, and a third by Henry J. Byron at the Globe—is involved in mystery. George Cruikshank’s assertion, and one to which he doggedly adhered, was that he heard the song sung one night by an itinerant minstrel outside a public-house near Battle Bridge; and that he subsequently chanted and ‘performed’ (George was as good as any play, or as a story-teller in a Moorish coffee-house, at ‘performing’) the ditty to Charles Dickens, who was so delighted with it that he persuaded George to publish it, adorned with copper-plates. But internal evidence would seem to be against the entire authenticity of the artist’s version. That he had heard some doggerel sung outside a tavern, and relating to Lord Bateman, is likely enough. ‘Vilikins and his was immortalised by Robson in Jem Baggs. George Cruikshank’s error, it strikes us, was more one of omission than of commission. He may have lyrically narrated the adventures of the ‘Noble Lord of High Degree’ to Dickens; but he assuredly warbled and ‘performed’ them too in the presence of Thackeray, who in all probability ‘revised and settled’ the words, and made them fit for publication. Nobody but Thackeray could have written those lines about ‘The young bride’s mother, who never before was heard to speak so free,’ and in the ‘Proud Young Porter’ all Titmarshian students must recognise the embryo type of James de la Pluche.”

“Lord Bateman” was Cruikshank’s delight. The exquisite foolery expressed in his plates of this eccentric nobleman he would act, at any moment, in any place, to the end of his life. Mr. Percival Leigh remembers a characteristic scene at the Cheshire Cheese tavern, in Fleet Street, about 1842 or 1843. “This,” * he says, “was in G. C.‘s pre-teetotal period. After dinner came drink and smoke, of course; and G. C. was induced to sing ‘Billy Taylor,’ which he did with grotesque expression and action, varied to suit the words. He likewise sang ‘Lord Bateman,’ in his shirt-sleeves, with his coat flung cloak-wise over his left arm, whilst he paced up and down, disporting himself with a walking-stick, after the manner of the noble lord, as represented in his illustration to the ballad.”

Six-and-twenty years afterwards we find the bright-hearted old man still with spirits enough for his favourite part.

* Letter to B. J., Feb. 18,1878.

“One day,” says Mr. Frederick Locker, “he asked us to tea, and to hear him sing ‘Lord Bateman’ in character, which he did to our infinite delight. He posed in the costume of that, deeply interesting but somewhat mysterious nobleman. I am often reminded of the circumstance; for I have a copy of ‘Lord Bateman’ (1851), and on the false title is written—

‘This Evening, July 13, 1868,
I sang LORD BATEMAN to
My dear little friend Eleanor Locker.
George Cruikshank.’”

This in his seventy-sixth year!

Within the busy decade, 1837—1847, Cruikshank executed many separate etchings for Bentley’s Miscellany and Ainsworth’s Magazine. His work is to be found scattered far and wide. One month he appears as the illustrator of a humorous song or scena by J. Blewitt—“The Matrimonial Ladder” (the ladder was a favourite form with him for conveying the various aspects of a subject)—or Keeley in the new comic song of “Wery Ridiculous”; the next he is the whimsical illustrator of Beaufoy’s Advertisement of his Cure for the Toothache—wood drawings engraved by Orrin Smith. Nor had he quite put aside his habit of expressing himself pictorially on political events. In 1843 he published, from Mr. David Bogue’s shop in Fleet Street, a separate design entitled “The Queen and the Union. No Repeal! No O’Connell!” It was a woodcut enclosing text in type, the text being Cruikshank’s own declamation against the Irish Agitator. Britannia and Erin are represented in the drawing seated, with joined hands, on the shores of the Channel; while the “blustering, foul-mouthed bully, with one foot on Britannia’s shoulder, and the other on Erin’s harp, has raised an axe to sunder the friends.” Frontispieces and covers he designed by the score,—now to “A Tale of a Comical Stick,” and now to The Yorkshireman, a religious and literary journal; and now again a headpiece to one of Mrs. S. C. Hall’s “Sketches of Irish Character,” or a frontispiece to a book on “Prisons and Prisoners.” To every item of this extraordinary quantity and variety of pictorial labour Cruikshank gave his utmost energy. He was a most faithful worker, who never stinted himself, even when the humblest or least important subject was in hand. Let me note, however, some exceptions.

* Letter to B. J.

In 1843 he had quarrelled with Mr. Bentley, and purposely put bad work in them. This was his revenge—and to the end of his life he never perceived the fault he committed in this act. “One day,” says Mr. Locker,* u at my house, he explained how these (the bad etchings) had been etched. It appears that he had quarrelled with Mr. Richard Bentley (he was a singularly kind-hearted man, but, I fancy, had a somewhat remarkable faculty for quarrelling with almost every one with whom he was connected in business), and was obliged to fulfil his contract to supply an etching for each monthly number of Bentley’s Miscellany, and he did them as badly as he possibly could, and etched his name under them so illegibly as to be quite indecipherable: ‘And,’ said he, ‘I used to take out my watch, and put it beside me on the table, and give myself just—’ (mentioning the number of minutes) ‘for each plate.’”

It was after another and a final parting from Mr. Ainsworth, on the sale of his magazine, that Cruikshank, “left in the lurch,” to use his own phrase, started his “Table-Book,” with Gilbert à Beckett as editor, and Bradbury and Evans as printers and publishers. The artist has put on record the manner in which he and the eminent Whitefriars firm came together:—

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“I will not go into the details of how I assisted this author (Ainsworth) with head and hand work in these novels, but I did my best to design and suggest; and my time was so much occupied in performing this duty, and also with some other matters, that I was not able to bring out my Omnibus as an annual, as I had intended to have done; but I now determined to bring it out again in monthly numbers; and as Bradbury and Evans (the fathers of the present firm) had printed that work for me, I went to their office to see what stock there was of the Omnibus on hand, and to make arrangements for the republishing of it; and when I mentioned this to my friend Bradbury, he said, ‘Ah, it is a pity that work was ever stopped; we should have been glad to have bought it of you, and will buy it now, if you would like to sell it.’ I replied that I did not wish to dispose of it, but if they would like to join me, I should be glad to have them as partners. ‘Agreed,’ said both Mr. Bradbury and Mr. Evans; and as these friends of mine were men of business, as well as gentlemen and men of honour, in this case there was a written agreement clearly and legally drawn out, and duly signed by both parties. But their engagements at that time were so many, that a considerable time elapsed before arrangements could be made for the republishing of the Omnibus; so they then suggested, as it was such a long time since my Omnibus had been on the road, that it would, perhaps, be better to start another vehicle of the same build, but under another name. To this I agreed; and thus originated ‘The Table Book,’ which was edited by my friends the late Gilbert à Becket and Mark Lemon.”

The “Table Book” includes two of Cruikshank’s most powerful and perfect etchings—viz., “The Triumph of Cupid” and “The Folly of Crime.” The fertility of imagination manifest in “The Triumph of Cupid” is amazing. The execution is that of an original master. No man who ever held an etching-needle has surpassed the truth and beauty and boldness of the touches by which hundreds of figures live, a happy tumultuous throng, in this octavo plate. The central figure is the artist, in slippers and embroidered dress-ing-gown, before his fire, smoking a handsome meerschaum pipe, gazing abstractedly into the fire; and upon the cloud of smoke from his lips, his dreams of the triumphs of Cupid rise till they fill the room.

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Cupid perches himself upon his foot, and toasts a heart at the fire; jumps upon the back of Old Time who bears the clock upon the mantelpiece; is enthroned in a triumphal car, with kings and princes, bishops and generals, lawyers and stock-jobbers, drummer-boys and jack-tars and sweeps, clown and harlequin, and even slippered pantaloon, and Chelsea pensioners upon wooden stumps, for his court. The car is drawn by subdued lions and leopards.

The blind beggar is waylaid by the little god, and brought to the ground. He has floored a dustman on his rounds. He makes the Great Mogul sue for mercy. He drags a little black page from under the armchair, and puts gyves upon his wrists. All is clearly and beautifully grouped, and frankly and boldly, and at the same time delicately, drawn. It is as precise and luminous as Durer. It is perfect etching, by one who knew the limits as well as all the capabilities of his exquisite art.

“The Folly of Crime” has been not extravagantly described by a writer in the London Quarterly Review (1873) as a very great work indeed. He says it is perhaps the artist’s highest effort: I should rather say it “is clearly and beautifully, and at the same time precise and luminous by one who knew the value of his exquisite art. He says it suggests an undeveloped power of the highest order—albeit the management of the direct and reflected lights is most admirable, and the skill throughout is consummate. “Without lingering over the framework of lesser groups, though these are sufficiently impressive,” says the reviewer, “let us go straight to the central picture. A murdered man lies stark in the shadow. The murderer springs forward to catch at, a bowl of pearls, snake-like and seemingly incandescent, that are borne swayingly before him on the head of a grinning fiend. The ground smiles at his feet. He falls, and, as he falls, the light from the pit leaps up, catching his bloody hand, and the fatal knife, and the long ears of his fool’s-cap, and gleaming in his despairing eyes; while all the air is filled with chattering and mowing demons, whose eyes and teeth also glitter white and cruel. And the horror of the man’s face is terrible.” The little morals framed around the central picture complete the awful story. The murderer lies—always wearing the fool’s-cap—in his bed, with a heavy weight upon his chest, snakes hissing in his ears, and the scales of justice held steady before his eyes. He is upon the treadmill. He crouches in a corner of the condemned cell. 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.

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George Cruikshank worked, as he reader knows, with great care and deliberation. He thought out his subject well before beginning to realize his conception. He made, to begin with, a careful design upon paper, trying doubtful points on the margin of the paper. 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 blacklead outline distinctly appearing upon the etching ground. And then the work was straightforward to the artist’s firm hand. The firmness and fineness of his touch are as conspicuous in his wood drawings as in his etchings.

“It was the custom of the artist,” according to his nephew, Percy Cruikshank, “before parting with his plates, to have India-paper proofs of the etchings, and this being ‘before letters’—that is, before the title was engraved on the plate—made them the more valuable. He also insisted on the engraver’s supplying him with a proof of his drawings on wood when completed. This, in time, formed a scarce and choice collection, of which he knew the value full well. The centralizing all that was Cruikshankian within himself was the end which crowned the work. The late Prince Consort being desirous of possessing a collection of George’s proofs, offered a considerable sum for them; but the artist, although pressed for money, not considering it sufficient, respectfully declined the proposal.”

To return to the “Table Book.” The miscellaneous etchings and drawings in this book are mostly arrows aimed at folly as it was flying at that time. The railway mania, clairvoyance, emigration, the fashions, furnished Cruikshank with inexhaustible humorous or grave material. His etching of Mr. John Ball in a Quandary, or the Anticipated Effects of the Railway Calls, is one of those wondrously filled drawings, in the composition of which he stands alone. John Bull is in his armchair, with a great railway bell clanging over his head. Hosts of pestilent demons cover him, and are stripping him. Some are hoisting his hat, some are bearing away his wig, others have perched ladders against his capacious paunch, and are dragging his money and his watch from his waistcoat pockets. The greedy imps are tugging his gloves from his hands, unfastening his neckcloth, and pulling his boots off. Liliputian lawyers, at hand, are demolishing a barrel of oysters, and leaving a plentiful supply of shells for their clients. Imps, driving a little locomotive, have attached it to Bull’s cash-box, and are making off with it; and in the distance the pictures are marked for sale. Then we have a few bits of Cruikshankian humour called “‘Heads of the Table,”—the final head being a capital study of an old gentleman who is entre deux vins, saying, “Well, we’ll just take another glass—and then—we’ll join the—the ladies.” Opposite this page is a drawing of a family, and also of their shoes.

I will now endeavour to afford the reader an idea of the man who created the extraordinary variety of artistic work of high excellence briefly described in the foregoing chapters. George Cruikshank was eminently a convivial man. He was born in a boisterous and coarse convivial time; when Lords and Commons boxed at Jackson’s; went to see monkeys set to fight terriers at Cribb’s; fought “Charleys” and turnpike-men; and drank hard and played high at Crockford’s. Their humble imitators were the associates of Robert and George Cruikshank. George’s associates were tavern frequenters for the most part: in those days taverns were used by many of the men who now frequent clubs. The portrait of him drawn by Maclise was Cruikshank in his earlier and humbler time, when he was in the hands of the caricature vendors. The writer in Fraser says: “Here we have the sketcher sketched; and, as is fit, he is sketched sketching. Here is George Cruikshank (see Frontispiece)—the George Cruikshank—seated upon the head of a barrel, catching inspiration from the scenes presented to him in a pot-house, and consigning the ideas of the moment to immortality on the crown of his hat....

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Of George Cruikshank the history is short. He stands too often and too well before the eyes of the public to render it necessary that we should say much about him; and we confess that of his earlier annals we know little or nothing.... The first of Cruikshank’s works known to us are his caricatures of George IV. and his friends. Tories as we were and are, and as we trust we still shall be, these comic picturings haunt our imagination. The poor old king in every attitude of ludicrous distress (the ‘Fat in the Fire’ was perfection); Copley (sketched, as we have been assured, merely from description, and yet a great likeness); Castlereagh (but even the professed caricaturist could not destroy the gentlemanly grace of that noble face and figure); the ‘Waterloo man,’ with his sword dropping into the scale against the pen; the various persons, jailors, jockeys, lawyers, and the rest, were first-rate. As Cruikshank himself says of Gillray, ‘He that did those things was a great man, sir,—a very great man, sir.’ To Cruikshank, however, they were productive of nothing but the fame of their cleverness and the odium of their politics; as Hone, for whom and his blockhead authors George’s talents floated the dire rubbish of the ‘House that Jack Built,’ and other witless productions, never paid him for what he had done. In all these stupid productions there were loud puffs at the power of the press. George never knew anything of it when in their hands but as a screw.* However, what he did, gave him fame and name.... Of course, George is, like all other men of undoubted genius, a most ill-used gentleman. As Mathews laments that the general obtuseness of the public will not recognise his talents for tragedy,—as Liston mourns over the delusion which applauds him in Sam Swipes and Paul Pry, and does not permit him to appear as the Damon or Strephon of a sighing opera,—so Cruikshank is shocked at the evil fate which consigns him to drawing sketches and caricatures, instead of letting him loose in his natural domain of epic or historical picture.

* According to a Reviewer of “Three Courses and a Dessert,”
in Fraser (June 1830), the whole sum received by
Cruikshank from Hone was £18; but this was not so.

Let him content himself; he can draw what will be held in honoured remembrance when ninety-nine out of every hundred of the great ‘masters’ of our ‘schools’ and a still larger proportion of all the R.A’s and A. RA.‘s that ever existed, or ever are doomed to exist, will be forgotten. The historical which we should cultivate is such as that which appears in his recently published ‘Sketch-Book,’ where, for example, the life of Bonaparte, whether as eagle soaring over the Alps, or eagle chained to a perch, is depicted in all its stages, from artillery lad on watch, through triumph, splendour, and flight to the little cock-hatted and round-paunched exile of St. Helena.”

Many years later Cruikshank had not quite given up his dream of the epic or historical picture; for the dream had been encouraged by the criticisms of some of the most thoughtful of his contemporaries, who set him on a level with Hogarth and Durer, and said that posterity would delight in him as one of our most venerated old masters.

But our present concern is with George Cruikshank as he lived, and moved, and impressed his friends. They all speak cordially of him. Poor Samuel Phillips, who was hearty in spirit, albeit he lived for many years at death’s door, says of him: “George is popular among his associates. His face is an index of his mind. There is nothing anomalous about him and his doings. His appearance, his illustrations, his speeches, are all alike—all picturesque, artistic, full of fun, feeling, geniality, and quaintness. His seriousness is grotesque, and his drollery is profound. He is the prince of caricaturists, and one of the best of men.”

In a whimsical account of an amateur strolling excursion, in which Cruikshank was one of the company (1847), supposed to be written by Mrs. Gamp, Dickens has vividly described the illustrator of ‘Oliver Twist’:—

“I do assure you, Mrs. Harris, when I stood in the railways office that morning, with my bundle on my arm, and one patten in my hand, you might have knocked me down with a feather, far less porkmangers which was a lumping against me, continual and sewere all round. I was drove about like a brute animal and almost worritted into fits, when a gentleman with a large shirt-collar, and a hook nose, and a eye like one of Mr. Sweedlepipes’s hawks, and long locks of hair, and wiskers that I wouldn’t have no lady as I was engaged to meet suddenly a turning round a corner, for any sum of money you could offer me, says, laughing, ‘Halloa, Mrs. Gamp, what are you up to?’

“I didn’t know him from a man (except by his clothes); but I says faintly, ‘If you’re a Christian man, show me where to get a second-cladge ticket for Manjester, and have me put in a carriage, or I shall drop.’ Which he kindly did, in a cheerful kind of way, skipping about in the strangest manner as ever I see, making all kinds of actions, and looking and vinking at me from under the brim of his hat (which was a good deal turned up), to that extent, that I should have thought he meant something but for being so flurried as not to have no thoughts at all until I was put in a carriage along with an individgle—the politest as ever I see—in a shepherd’s plaid suit with a long gold watch-guard hanging round his neck, and his hand a trembling through nervousness worse than an aspian leaf. Presently they fell into conversation.

“‘P’raps,’ he says,'if you’re not of the party, you don’t know who it was that assisted you into this carriage!’

“‘No, sir,’ I says, ‘I don’t indeed.’

“‘Why, ma’am,’ he says, a-wisperin, ‘that was George, ma’am.’

“‘What George, sir? I don’t know no George,’ says I.

‘"The great George, ma’am,’ says he. ‘The Crookshanks.’

“‘If you’ll believe me, Mrs. Harris, I turned my head, and see the werry man a-making pictures of me on his thumb nail, at the winder! While another of em—a tall slim, melancholly gent, with dark hair, and a bage vice—looks over his shoulder, with his head o’ one side as if he understood the subject, and cooly says, ‘I’ve draw’d her several times—in Punch,’ he says too I The owdacious wretch.’”

The melancholy gent with the “bage vice” was Leech.

In those days, and down to those days, Cruikshank was convivial—sometimes to excess. It was not for nothing that Maclise had drawn him seated upon a beer barrel.*

* His brother Robert drew his portrait as a young man, his
hair and whiskers uncombed, cross-legged, in a contemplative
mood, his dress in disorder, and called it “George in a
Brown study.” It was a picture of him in his days of
dissipation, when his sister-in-law would occasionally seize
and wash and comb him, while he laughed at the absurdity of
his position. He was very sensitive in later life about any
allusion to his appearance. When Mrs. Stowe, in her book of
London impressions, roughly described him as “an old man,
with a keen eye and grey hair,” he was deeply mortified, and
he addressed an expostulation to the papers. His portraits,
by himself, in oil, abounded in his studio. They were marked
with touches of chalk, giving a fresh curl to the whisker, a
fiercer flash to the eye, a more effective arrangement of
the hair; but not one was finished.

His fortunes threw him early among humble boon companions, at Grimaldi’s club and elsewhere, as we have seen; and his wild exuberant spirits and lively sense of humour made him king among them. Later, when Dickens knew him, he would fall away occasionally from his new and more dignified friends (who were not ascetics), and run a wild career for a night in his old haunts. Dickens used to describe one wonderful day—among others—he had passed with “the inimitable George.”

Dickens was living in Devonshire Place, and was just setting to work one morning in his library, when Cruikshank, unwashed and “smelling of tobacco, beer, and sawdust,” as Dickens described him, burst into the room. He said he had been up all night; was afraid to go home, and begged for some breakfast. While he was breakfasting, Dickens did his utmost to persuade him to go to bed. But George resolutely set his face against it.

He said he dared not even think of Islington. Seeing the state of affairs, Dickens closed his desk, and proposed to accompany his friend to face the domestic storm with him. But Cruikshank would only consent to a walk—the farther from Islington the better.

Dickens, under such circumstances, was an admirable friend. His cheery talk and wise counsel had great weight with Cruikshank; but each time he artfully turned the truant’s face east, he drew back with a—“No, no, Charley—not that way.”

And so they walked about the streets for hours, strolling in the course of the day into the famous aviary of the Pantheon in Oxford Street.* Here Cruikshank came suddenly face to face with one of Mrs. Cruikshank’s intimate friends. The scene which ensued, Dickens used to say, was one exquisitely farcical. And the manner in which he set forth the episodes of the long day in the streets, with Cruikshank’s droppings into various hostelries, and his final dejected departure homewards, utterly worn out, and having exhausted his faithful friend, was in his happiest vein.

* Dickens used to tell, with humorous details, how “George,”
On another occasion, was refused admittance because he was
plashed to the shoulders with mud.

“I remember him about 1846,” said Mr. W. H. Wills, another old friend. “He was then flirting with Temperance. I wanted him to dine at my house; but he excused himself, saying he should be led into temptation, and he had resolved to be a water-drinker thenceforth.” He did not go to dinner, but dropped in later—much excited; and when his host pushed the water-bottle towards him, he gently added brandy. The guests departed, leaving the hilarious George, with two others, to finish the evening; and when the trio got into the street, they found the old difficulty in restraining Cruikshank’s boisterous spirits. After trying in vain for something more than an hour to lead him home, they left him—climbing up a lamp-post!

The same friend hastens to tell me how generous this wild bon-vivant was, even in his more convivial moods:—

“The force of George Cruikshank’s character lay in the single-minded earnestness with which he carried out his objects. These throughout his life were numerous and always good. Zeal and energy glowed out of him upon whatever he undertook, whether saving a family from starvation (and there are instances in which he could only have done this at the risk of stinting himself), or rehearsing the character assigned to him in a private play, or commanding a regiment of volunteers, or advocating and advancing the temperance cause at every conceivable sacrifice of time and money. It was not until after his second marriage that he took to temperance. In his first wife’s lifetime he sacrificed to the jolly god rather oftener than occasionally; and surely no man drank with more fervour and enjoyment, nor carried his liquor so kindly, so merrily. Then was the time to hear him sing ‘Lord Bateman’ in character, and costume improvised from table-covers, table-napkins, and antimacassars—anything he could lay hands on—with the laughing help of his host. He was what Albert Smith called ‘great fun’ in this song at any time.

“Even when dependent upon his pencil and etching-needle for means of existence, if any good was to be done for a decayed brother artist or literary friend, George was only too ready (for his own prosperity) to throw down his tools, and stroll about the country with a theatrical company, or go anywhere to solicit subscriptions and make speeches, or to settle to his worktable again to make gratuitous sketches for bazaars and charities. When acting in Edinburgh, for Leigh Hunt’s benefit, with Charles Dickens and his brilliant dramatis personae, news came to him that a country editor, with a large family, whom he had often previously helped, was on the edge of ruin for the want of fifty pounds. ‘I must send it to the poor fellow,’ he said to Dickens, ‘immediately.’ ‘That would be very kind to him,’ answered Dickens, ‘but very unkind to yourself. By-the-bye, have you got fifty pounds in your pocket?’ ‘Oh dear, no,’ was Cruikshank’s reply, ‘but I want you to lend me the money to send to him—now—at once.’ Dickens’s rejoinder was not resort to his cheque book, but the remark that he knew George’s incapable friend would be as badly off as ever after the execution had been paid out of his house, even if the money was sent. ‘Then,’ he added, ‘you would deny yourself all sorts of things and be miserable till you paid me back. That I can’t stand, so I must decline.’”

On the day of his death, his old friend and fervent admirer repaid his kindness by sketching this loving portrait of him:—

“Only a few days ago there was extant—nay, it may be said, flourishing, in the midst of the life and bustle of the Great City, and to all seeming as lively and bustling as any citizen there—a hale, bright, active, elderly gentleman, whose age might, by the majority of cursory age-judges, have been set down as ‘a good sixty-five,’ but who was in reality closely verging upon ninety. A quarter of a century before his death he had looked—so those who knew him well loved to declare—much older than when he was past fourscore. Like the American lady mentioned by Dickens, he seemed to have grown old, ‘got over it,’ and become young again. He was slightly below the middle height, spare but solid of frame, somewhat long-armed and short-legged, as powerful and long-lived men are apt to be, and very broad in the chest. His head, scarcely bowed or blanched to the very last, was massive and well-shapen. He had a high forehead, blue-grey eyes full of a cheerful, sparkling light, penthouse brows, somewhat high cheek-bones, a prominent aquiline nose that Caesar would have liked to look upon, and a mouth cut in firm, sharp lines, and from whose corners grew an ambiguous pair of hirsute ornaments which were neither moustaches, nor whiskers, nor beard, but partook vaguely of the characteristics of all three. But, beyond these, there was curious and original individuality in his hair, which, after its fashion, marked him as typically as the well-known mèche marks the portraits of Napoleon L and M. Emile de Girardin. The elderly gentleman’s chevelure had dwindled down to a few thin locks, indigenous, it is to be feared, to his occiput, but which, by careful combing, and an artful contrivance—so rumour ran—of wire and ‘elastic,’ had been seduced over his temples and his parietal bone. Thus to the greater justice could point triumphantly to the fact that his sparse wisps of hair were still mellow brown in hue, and soft as silk in texture. His face was full of wrinkles; but the furrows seemed to have been ploughed more by hard work, sedulously and unwearyingly performed, than by the mere plodding footsteps of the dragging years. In his port and mien, indeed, until almost the very moment when the hand of the Grim Sergeant was laid upon his shoulder, there was but little of the feebleness and less of the caducity of age. Its garrulity he had; but his friends rejoiced in the good old man’s loquacity, recognizing, as they did, the undimmed clearness of his understanding and tenacity of his memory. Nor, with one singular exception, to which we shall subsequently allude, did that memory play him the woful tricks to which the very aged are so often subject. He could remember perfectly well trifling occurrences which happened in 1800, but he did not forget events of moment which had end he repudiated the imputation of baldness, and with happened in 1877. He was, to sum up, a light-hearted, merry, and, albeit a teetotaler, an essentially ‘jolly’ old gentleman, full physically of humorous action and impulsive gesticulation, imitatively illustrating the anecdotes he related; somewhat dogged in assertion and combative in argument; strong-rooted as the oldest of old oaks in old true British prejudices; decidedly eccentric, obstinate, and whimsical; but in every word and deed a God-fearing, queen-honouring, truth-loving, honest man.

“This was the famous George Cruikshank, caricaturist, social satirist and moralist, illustrator of books, engraver on steel and copper, draughtsman on wood, painter in oils and water-colours, the doughtiest champion, in his degree, of the temperance cause; and, albeit his ‘foaming bowl’ was for many years replenished only from the pump, the Prince of Good Fellows.”

The Prince of Good Fellows looked very much as his later friends remembered him, some five-and-thirty years ago, as I can well remember. The ingeniously arranged chevelure was within artful elastic bands drawn over the skull, when I was a boy. I was one of many youngsters who would creep round his chair clay pipe in his mouth (he always smoked a long clay pipe while he smoked at all) and his brandy-and-water before him, talking loudly and eagerly, gesticulating like a Frenchman, and turning now one ear and now the other, to catch the conversation of the company. 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. One day, when Cruikshank was
illustrating Scott, Mr. Lockhart called, and, remarking the
portrait, said drily, “I saw a man, very like that, in
Italy, executed for murder.” Some people would have been
offended, but Cruikshank was delighted. He affected the
brigand look.

In his social habits and relations, Cruikshank was a most modest, self-respecting man. He never courted great folk, he submitted to no form of patronage, and he never pretended to ape the manners and habits of the fashionable world. He lived the first half of his life in Pentonville,* and the second in Camden Town. He confined his acquaintance to congenial friends; and when these happened to be persons of rank and wealth, in its unfashionable neighbourhood. In this he set an example which many of his brother artists—his inferiors in genius—might have followed with advantage to their fame. He stood, at the end of his life, in strong contrast with the petits maîtres in the arts, who give themselves fashionable airs, decorate their houses extravagantly, and spend their too easily acquired gains in slavish imitations of Mayfair life. Cruikshank, in his Omnibus, reproved, in his own quaint way, a writer who had said that he was a collector of curiosities.

* Among the visitors to Amwell Street was the Baron de
Berenger, a remarkable adventurer and spectator. George
Cruikshank, when a young volunteer, had been intimate with
Charles Ransom of his corps, who as a print colourer at
Ackermann’s, and who, as a volunteer, was remarked as a good
shot. Being a well-mannered young fellow, he was patronized
by Mr. Hammerley the banker; and at this gentleman’s house
he met the Baroness de Berenger, a German widow. He married
her, and assumed the title of Baron de Berenger. Being a man
fond of athletics, he conceived the idea of turning Cremorae
Farm, Lord Cremome’s place at Chelsea, into a suburban
gymnasium and place for field sports. Cremorne Farm became
the Stadium, and flourished under the Baron’s management. He
rode out always attended by his four sons on horseback,
dressed in grey military tunics, and with swords at their
sides. This cavalcade occasionally clattered along Amwell
Street, Pentonville, to pay a business visit to Cruikshank,
who, with his brother, was illustrating with sporting
etchings the guide-book to the Stadium.

“No single symp—I was about to say that no single symptom of a curiosity, however insignificant, is visible in my dwelling, when by audible tokens I was (or rather am) rendered sensible of the existence of a pair of bellows. Well, in these it must be admitted that we do possess a curiosity. We call them ‘bellows,’ because, on a close inspection, they appear to bear a much stronger resemblance to ‘bellows’ than to any other species of domestic implement; but what in reality they are, the next annual meeting of the great Scientific Association must determine; or the public may decide for themselves, when admitted hereafter to view the precious deposit in the British Museum.” Then follows an amusing account of the old bellows, with a sketch of them. “The origin of the bellows I know not,” says their owner; “but a suspicion has seized me that they might have been employed in the Ark, had there been a kitchen fire there; and they may have assisted in raising a flame under the first tea-kettle put on to celebrate the laying of the first stone of the great wall of China.”

Cruikshank, moreover, took exception to the description of his person by the same writer. If careless about his house, he was vain of his person. The writer said: “In person, G. C. is about the middle height, and proportionbly made. His complexion is something between pale and clear; and his hair, which is tolerably ample, partakes of a lightish hue. His face is of the angular form, and his forehead has a ‘prominently receding shape.” Cruikshank closed with his antagonist:—

“As Hamlet said to the ghost, I’ll go no further! The indefinite complexion, and the hair ‘partaking’ of an opposite hue to the real one, may be borne; but I stand, not upon my head, but on my forehead! To a man who has once passed the Rubicon in having dared to publish his portrait, the exhibition of his mere profile can do no more injury than a petty larceny would after the perpetration of a highway robbery. But why be tempted to show, by an outline, that my forehead is innocent of a shape (the ‘prominently receding’ one) that never yet was visible in nature or in art? Let it pass, till it can be explained.

“‘He delights in a handsome pair of whiskers.’ Nero had one flower flung upon his tomb. ‘He has somewhat of a dandified appearance.’ Flowers soon fade, and are cut down; and this is the ‘unkindest cut of all.’ I, who, humbly co-operating with the press, have helped to give permanence to the name of dandy—I, who have all my life been breaking butterflies upon wheels in warring against dandyism and dandies—am at last discovered to be ‘somewhat’ of a dandy myself.

‘Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come!
Revenge yourselves’ as you may; but, dandies all,
I have not done with you yet.”

The “inimitable George,” however, was a dandy—in his way. Old-fashioned, tumbled, eccentric, his dress had a studied look. The strong individuality of the vivacious and active little man (for he was under the middle height) appeared to be preserved by attention to the elaboration of a costume unlike that of any of his neighbours. It was foppishness like that of the late Marquis of Lansdowne, whose buff and blue had become a fancy dress at the end of his life.

I cannot do better than conclude this description of the George Cruikshank of the first epoch, by an account of him, in 1840-42, written by his old friend W. L. Sammons, who is now a Temperance light at the Cape, but who has a vivid recollection of his friend in days when they met over a mug of ale. It comes to me from Cape Town. The scene opens in Amwell Street, Pentonville:—“The same evening a friend or two dropped in—Douglas Jerrold and, I think, Laman Blanchard, the editor of Cruikshank’s Omnibus,—and the former Mrs. Cruikshank was present and presided, and threw a charm over the tea and supper tables; and I saw and revelled, as it were, through all the gems, both ancient and modern, signed “G. Ck.,” in the Royal workshop, and lingered over that famous notorious Screen in it, covered by him with texts of thought for present and future use, in the shape of “Odd People and Things”—queer “head and tail pieces”—strange “monstrosities of Fashions” for the day—noses, dresses, and phizes of all dimensions and shades, ready for adaptation according to the age and epoch required. George Cruikshank was particularly busy on this day, because of “The Miser’s Daughter,” by Ainsworth, that he was illustrating for Bentley’s Miscellany, and he assured me if not finished by such an hour and such a day he should forfeit fifty pounds; and yet he risked the uncertainty to show hospitality to his friends.

“During this visit to London, dear George took me the round of several of the theatres and gardens—Old Vauxhall, that we had seen as boys, when unknown to each other, being closed, and the great “M. C.”

Simpson dead; and I could not fail to perceive how he was petted and respected by all, lessees, managers, and actors, and readily ushered into any quarter that caprice, pleasure, or professional duties required, whether pit-boxes, or gallery; but the “dress circle” was less to his taste than others, because there life was fossilised, artificial, and restrained, and dress mere tinsel; and no dialogue suitable for his reports, or action worthy of his crayons. This may account, perhaps, for that ‘absence of beauty’ that is said to pervade his works; because beauty per se is apt to give itself airs and become unseemly and ungraceful; and George Cruikshank’s high and stern mission was in ‘the highways and hedges,’ and to reclaim by a moral and pictorial force the repelling, the vicious, and the vile.

“But I confess to feeling a little disturbed, when at his side, at seeing so many long necks and bright eyes and glasses turned upon him from all directions, and to perceive the whispering and commotion in consequence. Here G. C.‘s thumb-nails often served as ample Space for a photo.

“As a thing of beauty is said to be a joy for ever, so at the period above stated we had our glorious days together, and may be figuratively described as ‘being in clover and sleeping in lavender’; for kind George devoted many hours in taking me to some of his favourite, and it may be added, requisite haunts, where he gathered his Fame for his simple wants, without i hoarding. One morning he led me to the burial-ground of St. James’s Chapel, Pentonville, near his house, and pointed out the graves of Thomas Dibdin, son of the great sea-songster, and of his old and ‘mutual friend,’ Joey Grimaldi, whose mortal coils are laid near each other; and I wish I could remember so as to record the tender and sympathetic little oration he then delivered.

“At night Sadler’s Wells was the scene of action, but poor Joey being absent,

‘Greece was living Greece no more,’

and all things were changed since our boyhood Friend Cruikshank reminded me of that passage (in Dickens’s ‘Life of the King of Clowns’) that he illustrated in two vols., where Joey and his much better-half, one evening, disputing about precedency, resolved upon taking poison to end all contention, and to settle their differences of opinion for ever. But not taking enough, and forgetting the oft-quoted maxim, now travestied,

‘Drink deep, or taste not any poisonous thing,’

the feeble dose merely kept them awake and talkative, and lying in the same room, with a slight partition between them, sensations became unpleasant, and so they held a colloquy in their fears as follows: ‘Joey, are you dead?’ ‘No, Mary,—are you?’ ‘No.’ And then they altered their minds, and felt disposed to live a little longer, arose, had a good supper and something warm and comfortable as a sedative and antidote, and then jogged on a little more in unison.

“On passing through the Queen’s Bench with him, I called his attention to the prison window, behind the bars of which stood a miserable inmate with a black box before him, on which was written, ‘Remember the poor debtors.’ George smiled, and said, ‘Yes, but think of the poor creditors.’ And this scene I find recorded by him, and his own remarks, on a small placard at the top of the picture ‘Remember the poor creditors.’ But what numbers of similar Hogarthian hints he has left behind him!

Shortly afterwards Cruikshank paid his friend a visit at Bath:—

“‘The Bottle Conjurer’ and smasher of it, and part destroyer of his contents—I mean George Cruikshank—arrived safely at the city of King Bladud and the throne of Beau Nash; and he commanded me with a willing assent to become a second ‘Anstey,’ or little ‘Bath Guide,’ to ferret all quarters with him—West to East and High to Low—having a monthly serial still on hand that required certain characters for illustration (perhaps ‘Jack Sheppard’ or the ‘Tower of London,’ after the Omnibus had ceased running). Friend George began with the upper crust, as nearest ‘home’ and Lansdown; and leaving his card the day before at William Beckford’s mansion in the Crescent, went with me where I had been several times before. Possibly at the foot of Table Mountain it may not be known that this William Beckford was an esquire and a somebody in England, the owner and builder of Fonthill Abbey, inheritor but not enjoyer of immense wealth, and the celebrated author of ‘Vathek’ and the ‘Halls of Eblis,’ before which, in point of imagination, Byron, or somebody else, said ‘Rasselas’ must bow.”

Mr. Beckford, notwithstanding original gifts, and the accident of riches, was a shy and eccentric bird that flew from every one, and nobody must approach; and so, when we got there, and were passing along a corridor, door suddenly in our faces, the apology being, ‘he saw Mr. Beckford coming, and it was more than he dare hazard for any one to notice him.’ And yet he left a gracious message in the hands of his house-steward, Mr. F-, who himself kept a stylish establishment and carriage, ‘to show Mr. Cruikshank all he desired;’ and even added, ‘that if Mr. Cruikshank knew how much he (Mr. B.) valued his earlier sketches, he would not have refused some of them when once solicited.’ I asked ‘G. C.’ the cause of this, and he remarked, ‘at that time he parted with few of his originals;’ and when we left Lansdown Crescent, he commented warmly on the treat and pleasure he had derived, and as a red-letter day in his biography. ‘From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step,’ and so we soon threaded the externals of Royal a black dwarf—or rather a nutmeg shade—banged a Anstey’s “New Bath Guide.”

Crescents and Circuses, Pulteney and Milsom Streets, and Queen Squares, and odd holes, lanes,’ and corners, until reaching Avon Street, where ‘the power of sinking could no further go,’ nor the Pig and Whistle meet with a more picturesque if degraded aspect In this latter neighbourhood it was requisite for professional purposes and home orders that George Cruikshank should have a nightly sojourn, if not revel; and so a suitable tavern was chosen that had a skittle-alley attached, that except in name or position might form a capital match for that Lion in the Wood in Wilderness Lane, that he mentions in ‘My Portrait,’ at the commencement of bis Omnibus. Whilst we were there as lookers-on only, and sipping ‘half-and-half’ out of the same pewter ‘between the acts,’ if they may be so called, or during the ‘intervals,’ at this Beggars’ Opera, friend Cruikshank amused himself by chalking one scene on the wall, and all eyes were soon upon it, for it was lifelike and spirited. Oh that I could have removed that wonderful cartoon from its surface, or preserved a copy! it would now realize the value of many ordinary frescoes and presumed originals—and more than drunken Morland’s ‘Goat-in-Boots’ signboard. But leaving Bath for Cape Town three months afterwards, the mind was absorbed in other matters, and both places and scenes forgotten at the time, but now stand out in bold relief and vividly.”

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This was George Cruikshank only a few years before he gave himself wholly up to the cause of Temperance.

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EPOCH II. 1848—1878.

CHAPTER I. AT GILLRAY’s GRAVE.

No great stretch of the imagination is needed to conjure up an interesting picture in the corner of the graveyard of St. James’s, Piccadilly, in that momentous June when the forces of France and the Allies were gathering hastily for the field of Waterloo. It was on the first of the month. From the famous print-shop of Mistress Humphrey in St. James’s Street, before which hosts of laughing men and women had been wont to linger, a coffin was home, containing the mortal part of the “Juvenal of caricature” as he had been called—of the hapless man of genius, who had lain, with short flashes of sanity, full six years with mind unstrung—a dreadful shadow over the mirthful shop. Behind followed the good Mistress Humphrey and her faithful Betty, her maid; probably stout Mortimer the picture dealer, possibly Mr. Gifford. Let us think of Landseer and James Stanley and others to whom poor Gillray had been known in his bright days, standing by the open grave near the Rectory House, within full sound of the hum of Piccadilly. And at hand we shall note a slim young man, with eager, piercing eyes, a hook nose, with fall whiskers trimmed to the corners of his mouth; a young man with incessant spasmodic action. His eyes start and his mouth works, as, the service ended, he gazes into the yawning grave. To his neighbour he says, under his breath, “A great man, sir—a very great man.”

With a bow to weeping Mistress Humphrey he retires. The good soul, who has now done her last duty to the poor madman with whom she has borne patiently and gratefully so long, is pleased to note that Mr. Cruikshank had not forgotten to pay his last tribute of respect and gratitude to his master. Mrs. Humphrey, no doubt, regarded the young man whom she had employed to finish Gillray’s work when he first fell ill, and who had since managed to keep the crowds laughing before her windows, as a very poor substitute for the dead genius. And in those days Cruikshank himself was still very modest, and was proud to be accounted strong enough to hold the pencil and the needle of the stricken Gillray.

Upon a sensitive, imaginative, observant man like George Cruikshank, the life of him whom he owned in his early days as his master, with its awful close, must have made a deep impression. Men said that Gillray had wrecked his career through frequenting low company, and by intemperate habits. Cruikshank knew something of this, had seen much of such company, and was in close companionship with tipplers. Gillray was not the first man of mark whom he had watched from tavern to tavern, and so on to poverty and death. Almost his earliest recollections were of drinking bouts, and their debasing consequences. His boyish sight had been offended at his father’s house with the spectacle of drunken men rolled up in carpets, upon whose blank and soddened faces the morning sun was shining.* He had been saddened as a son by his father’s example, and inexpressibly shocked by the manner of his death. It appears that Isaac Cruikshank, who was a heavy whisky drinker, laid a bet with a boon companion that he would drink more tumblers than his friend without falling under the table. He won his wager, but his excess brought upon him the illness of which he died, about his fifty-fifth year. **

* “At a meeting held at Manchester, this great artist gave
an address on Temperance; in the course of which, referring
to the early days of his life, and to the drinking habits
which existed at that period, he said he recollected
gentlemen coming to dine occasionally at his father’s house,
and he was often surprised on coming downstairs of a morning
to find some of them rolled up in the carpet in an
extraordinary manner. His own father took too much drink,
and shortened his life by it. He shortened his life by the
fashion of the day, and left him (the speaker)
uneducated.... He had watched the effects of drink ever
since he had begun to reflect, both among the higher and
lower orders.”—Poor Richards Almanac, 1876.
** This story was told to the Rev. Dr. Rogers by George
Cruikshank.

Such experiences, albeit they led Cruikshank to reflect seriously on the evils of excessive drinking, did not, as we have seen, at once turn him from the bottle. Mr. Paget remarked in Blackwood that Cruikshank was a severe anatomist of the vice long before any idea of his celebrated “Bottle” could have crossed his mind. In his “Sunday in London,” published in 1833, he depicted the drunkard paying his week’s score. In one of his Temperance speeches he said: “I am ashamed to say that for many years I went on following the ordinary custom of drinking, till I fell into pecuniary difficulties. I had some money at a banker’s; he fell into difficulties, took to drinking brandy-and-water, and ended by blowing out his brains.

I lost my money, and in my distress applied to friends who aided me for a time, but they themselves fell into difficulties, and I was forced to extricate myself by the most extraordinary exertions. In this strait I thought, The best thing I can do is to take to water; but still I went on for some time before I quite weaned myself from my own drinking habits. I went to take luncheon with my friend Dickens (who, I am sorry to say, is not a teetotaler); he asked me to take wine, but I told him I had taken to water, for, in my opinion, a man had better take a glass of prussic acid than fall into the other habit of taking brandy-and-water; and I am happy to say that Charles Dickens quite agreed with me, that a mam had better wipe himself out at once, than extinguish himself by degrees by the soul-degrading and body-destroying enemy.”

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Immediately after the death of Gillray, we find evidence of the twinges of conscience which Cruikshank felt, even while he continued to fall, at intervals, into wild excesses. These were followed by dark passages of remorse, and by resolutions which were again and again broken. The fate of the men—and that of Gillray especially—whom he had seen fall victims to what he was pleased to call the fashionable vice, would rise before him. But, in an impulsive, convivial moment, his own sad experiences of time wasted and opportunities gone, and of the friends he had lost, were often forgotten; and he found himself, as of old, wending his way home, in the small hours, covered with a sense of disgrace. Cruikshank was no better, and no worse, than his contemporaries. A letter in Procter’s * neat hand lies before me. It is dated from Gray’s Inn Square, March 13th, 1839; and he says:

“I shall be very happy to be one of the number to dine with Macready. But, remember, I cannot be one of those who will doubtless be found under the table at four a.m. (as I understand was the case upon a late occasion).”

* Barry Cornwall.

If, however, Cruikshank was not early a convert to the practice of temperance, he was, as I have remarked, a preacher betimes.

His “Introduction to the Gout” (1818) is in his best vein. A toper is seated over his pot, and holding a peach upon his fork, with which he is about to cool his mouth. An imp—one Gout—approaches from the fireplace, and with the tongs is about to drop a red coal on the great-toe of Toper. Another drawing (a lithograph) of this date is suggestive. It is called “Deadly Lively.” Death has stepped in, surprising a man and two women, who are drinking in a kitchen, before a blazing fire. Death is filling the man’s glass; the old woman is falling from her seat, and the young man is tumbling drunk under the table. Presently (in the same year) the artist is in a gayer mood as a satirist. The picture is called “Tit-Bits.” An Irishwoman, overcome by beer, has fallen into a deep sleep under a tree. Her slumbers give a yokel an opportunity of stealing one of her chickens, while a cur licks the tarts in her basket.* Then we have “The Three Bottle Divine,” no rara avis in those days. It is the head of a heavy, coarse-featured man, in sporting guise, his face garnished with carbuncles and large spectacles.

So far back as 1836, Cruikshank gave the public a foretaste of “The Bottle” in a vignette to a music title. Two individuals are represented—one old and spectacled, the other young and with an eyeglass,—examining with horror the contents of a spirit bottle, which is filled with malignant imps emblematical of alcohol as “doctored by publicans,” and sold for “Old Tom,” etc. The cork has turned devil, and throws up his arms in delight at the work of his imps.

* The foregoing were drawn by Cruikshank from Captain Hehl’s
designs.

“Gin” remarks Mr. Thackeray, years before Cruikshank had become a Temperance advocate, or in the least degree an abstainer; “gin has furnished many subjects to Mr. Cruikshank, who labours in his own sound and hearty way to teach his countrymen the dangers of that drink. In the ‘Sketch-book’ is a plate upon the subject, remarkable for fancy and beauty of design; it is called the ‘Gin Juggernaut,’ and represents a hideous moving palace, with a reeking still as the roof, and vast gin-barrels for wheels, under which unhappy millions are crushed to death. An immense black cloud of desolation covers over the country through which the gin monster had passed, dimly looming through the darkness, whereof you see an agreeable prospect of gibbets with men dangling, burnt houses, etc. The vast cloud comes sweeping on in the wake of this horrible body-crusher; and you see, by way of contrast, a distant, smiling, sunshiny tract of old English country, where gin as yet is not known. The allegory is as good, as earnest, and as fanciful as one of John Bunyan’s, and we have often fancied there was a similarity between the men.”

The similarity, if you look deeply into the two imaginations, is strong and striking, as it is between the genius of Doré in its grotesque and moral moods, and that of Cruikshank. Compare Doré’s “Wandering Jew,” his “Rabelais,” his “Contes Drolatiques,” with Cruikshank’s work about 1826, and even later, and you cannot fail to discover the strong affinity between the two great artists. Doré knew nothing of Cruikshank’s work in his early time, and Cruikshank had never heard Doré’s name when, in 1854, I brought over to England the blocks of his “Wandering Jew.” **

** I introduced George Cruikshank to Gustave Doré in the
Doré Gallery in Bond Street. Doré looked wonderingly at the
vivacious, wild old man as he went through a pantomime in
default of French, to express his admiration of the pictures
the gallery.

In his illustrations to “Sketches by Boz,” Cruikshank first approached intemperance from that point of view in which he treated it afterwards in “The Bottle.” His view of the gin-shop comprehends a complete story.

“We have sketched this subject, says Dickens, “very slightly, not only because our limits compel us to do so, but because, if it were pursued further, it would be painful and repulsive. Well-disposed gentlemen and charitable ladies would alike turn with coldness and disgust from a description of the drunken besotted men and wretched, broken-down, miserable women, who form no inconsiderable portion of the frequenters of these haunts; forgetting, in the pleasant consciousness of their own high rectitude, the poverty of the one and the temptation of the other. Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but poverty is a greater; and until you can cure it, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery with the pittance which, divided among his family, would just furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour If-Temperance Societies could suggest an antidote against hunger and distress, or establish dispensaries for the gratuitous distribution of bottles of Lethe-water, gin palaces would be numbered among the things that were. Until then, their decrease may be despaired of.” Dickens here glanced, and only carelessly, at the surface of the great question. This poverty which he deplored was the result of the drink. The Lethe-water would be unnecessary if the gin-and-water were stopped. Poverty, dirt, hunger, promote the publican’s trade; but this trade breeds the misery on which it thrives. The quartern which the father drinks, helps to raise a customer in his son, for the trade of the publican’s son. More than ten years elapsed before this view of the Temperance question was destined to have complete sway and mastery over the genius of Dickens’s illustrator; but already he saw deeper into it, because he looked more earnestly into it than the writer, who had not yet done with the comedy element of drunkenness.

In 1841, Cruikshank drew for Bentley’s Miscellany an “allegorical representation of the infatuation of the mob for ardent spirits, and the drunkenness occasioned by an election, from a design by T. L. F.” * In 1846, he illustrated Our Own Times, and in the London Penetralia we find him moralizing with his etching-needle, in the ragged school of Chick Lane, Smithfield, and satirising, under the head of “A Tremendous Sacrifice,” the slop-sellers who live in luxury on the work of poor seamstresses.

* “In the centre of the composition is the pedestal of an
altar, ornamented with a bas-relief of Britannia, on which
is resting a barrel of liquor, inscribed, ‘Ruin Members and
Co.—Poverty—Treadmill—Botany Bay,’ the tap running for
the gratification of an assemblage of drunken wretches, who
eagerly endeavour to get their favourite beverage, excepting
those who are helplessly drunk or fighting.”—Reid’s
Descriptive Catalogue.

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Cruikshank was now inclining strongly to the work to which he was destined to give the last thirty years of his life. And in 1847 he gave himself up heart and soul to the preaching, by example as well as by tongue and etching-needle, the moral which had haunted him so long, that had left him no rest till he grappled with and conquered it, since he had watched the eclipse of Gillray’s genius, and seen his own father hurried, by a boastful toper’s bet, to his premature grave.

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CHAPTER II. THE BOTTLE.

We have seen that many years before the Temperance question fastened itself upon Cruikshank’s mind, never to be blotted out again for a single day, he had marked and satirized the effects of drunkenness in the desolate home, the workhouse, and the gaol. His “Gin Shop,” where Death sets a trap for a party of topers, the “Ale-house,” and the “Pillars of the Gin Shop,” were drawn some fifteen years before he added to the preaching of his needle and his pencil, the force of his personal example.

In 1836, as the reader has already learned, the germ of “The Bottle” appeared in a lithographed vignette to a music title, “The Dream of the Bottle,” and was published by poor old A. Schloss, proprietor of “lie Bijou Almanac,” a little annual that was issued with a magnifying glass.* Schloss was a well-known figure in London years afterwards, first as Staudigl’s secretary, and afterwards as an employé at the office of Dickens’s “Household Words.” Then again, in “Sunday in London,” Cruikshank drew a Temperance moral from “The Pay Table.” A publican is pointing out a workman’s score for the foreman to deduct from his week’s wages—with the lean and hungry wife and children at hand. In the same series we find “The Sunday Market”—a butcher’s shop between two public-houses, where the food money is spent.

But “The Bottle” was Cruikshank’s diploma work, as L. E. L., who edited it, says in her dedication of the number for 1837 to Queen Adelaide. It was bound in vellum and gold; illustrated with tiny portraits of Pastor, Malibran, and others, enriched by fairy pages of music, and enclosed in a blue velvet or morocco case, with a magnifying glass for the reader’s use. In that for 1839, poor L. E. L. bade her farewell to England.

It was a pictorial Temperance drama—so essentially dramatic indeed, that on its first appearance it immediately found its way to the stage. *

* It was published by the late David Bogue, of Fleet Street.

The story of The Bottle is unfolded in eight designs executed in glyphography—a process by which it was possible to execute the immense number of copies which the publisher anticipated, and with good reason, would be required by the public, but which is ungrateful and unfaithful to the touch of the artist.

In the first plate we have a cosy family party. The open cupboard is well supplied. The children are playing by the hearth; a kitten is toying with the cat’s tail upon the rug; the mantelpiece is loaded with pretty ornaments; there is a picture of a village church against the wall; at the table the husband and wife are seated at dinner, and he is handing her a glass, which she coyly refuses. Under the plate we read: “The bottle is brought out for the first time: the husband induces his wife ‘just to take a drop.’” The interest deepens apace. The effect of the first drop is seen in Plate 2. The sottish husband, with a pipe hanging from his mouth, his kerchief awry, his clothes in disorder, sits drowsy with drink, his children looking fearingly at him, while the wife is giving a bundle of clothes to the servant girl, to pawn, “to supply the bottle.” The starved cat is licking an empty platter upon the table; the cupboard door ajar discloses empty shelves. In the next plate “an execution sweeps off the greater part of the furniture,” but the drunken man and wife huddle themselves before the fire, and “comfort themselves with the bottle.” There are Hogarthian touches, developing the story throughout the series. In this plate the china cottage upon the mantelpiece is broken, and the husband’s battered hat upon a peg is the only ornament to the bare walls. From the empty house the family repair to the streets to beg, “and by this means they still supply the bottle.” In the fifth plate, “cold, want, and misery” have destroyed their youngest child, and still “they console themselves with the bottle.” A little open coffin is in the room, and while the eldest girl weeps over it, the father and mother drink, and weep also. A broken toy dog is upon the mantelpiece near a candle, with a bottle for a candlestick. An old shawl is fastened before the window with a fork. There are only a few sticks in the fire. In the next scene the husband has his wife by the throat; and his children and neighbours intervene.

“Fearful quarrels and brutal violence,” says the artist-preacher, “are the natural consequences of the frequent use of the bottle.” Murder is the next scene. The wife lies dead, with the doctor leaning over her, and all the horrible commères who gather round death in the dark, byways of great cities, are staring and talking. The murderer is in the clutches of the police; the boy looks on aghast, holding his chin, and trembling in his rags; the bottle, which has done the deed, is shivered upon the floor and the fragments lie near a broken pipe, a ragged slipper and a battered hat. The final scene is a mad-house. “The bottle has done its work; it has destroyed the infant and the mother, the boy and the girl left destitute and thrown on the streets, and has left the father a hopeless maniac.” The figure of the madman before the caged fire is a very powerful bit of realism.

The moral of “The Bottle” was enforced by the poetic genius, Charles Mackay. His “Gin-Fiend” sang to the scratching of Cruikshank’s needle—

“There watch’d another by the hearth,
With sullen face and thin;
She utter’d words of scorn and hate,
To one that stagger’d in.
Long had she watch’d; and when he came,
His thoughts were bent on blood;
He could not brook her taunting look,
And he slew her where she stood.
‘And it’s hip I’ said the Gin-Fiend, ‘hip, hurrah!
My right good friend is he;
He hath slain his wife, he hath given his life,
And all for the love of me!’”

Regarded as a sample of Cruikshank’s art power, these plates are far below the level of his best. We do not perceive here the master-craftsman. His dramatic force is evident in every plate. He tells his story with the fulness and intensity which are in all his pictorial narratives; but the drawing is without grace, and the types, with the exception of the husband, are wanting in that strong individuality he generally realized.

In a letter to Mr. Forster (September 2nd, 1847), Mr. Dickens describes the impression “The Bottle” made on him:—

“At Canterbury yesterday, I bought George Cruikshank’s ‘Bottle.’ I think it very powerful indeed: the two last plates most admirable, except that the boy and girl in the very last are too young, and the girl more like a circus-phenomenon than that no-phenomenon she is intended to represent. I question, however, whether anybody else living could have done it so well. There is a woman in the last plate but one, garrulous about the murder, with a child in her arms, that is as good as Hogarth. Also the man who is stooping down, looking at the body. The philosophy of the thing, as a great lesson, I think all wrong; because, to be striking, and original too, the drinking should have begun in sorrow, or poverty, or ignorance—the three things in which, in its awful aspect, it does begin. The design would thus have been a double-handed sword—but too ‘radical’ for good old George, I suppose.”

And yet such calamities as that which “old George” has drawn happen every day; beginning not in sorrow, or poverty, or ignorance, but in little yieldings to temptation, in apparently trivial and accidental excesses. What constitutes intemperance? According to Dr. Alfred Carpenter, any consumption of alcohol sufficient to furnish the blood with one part of alcohol in five hundred of blood, is dangerous to health, and therefore is an act of intemperance. A more moderate indulgence, he says, is not yet proved to be deleterious. The late Dr. Anstie put temperance in a different way. An average man or woman cannot, according to him, take more than a couple of glasses of sherry daily without injury. Dr. Carpenter has denounced the habitual use of stimulants, even in a very diluted form, to enable the drinker to do more work than he could get through without them, as unquestionably injurious—and therefore an act of intemperance. There is not a middle-aged man of education who has not come across the wrecks of lives where the ruin was a gradual giving way to-the temptation of stimulants.

The police courts unfold daily stories of clerks and others, holding positions of honour and of trust, who have first staggered out of the straight path under the influence of drink. Cruikshank’s beginning of his drama is only too true to life; and I think he would have made a mistake, that he would have weakened the tremendous force of his moral, if he had put the excuse of sorrow, or poverty, or ignorance into his opening scene. As his story, stands, it teaches humble and happy households, in a rough text which all who run may read, to have a care whenever the bottle appears on the scene; and to lose no opportunity of impressing, upon the children the danger, of putting; the enemy near, their mouths, who may steal away, not their brains only, but their heart and soul.

“Coarsely designed and coarsely executed, yet very suggestive, very full of that story-teller’s power which was so much Hogarth’s and his own,” as Mr. Frederick Wedmore remarks, “Cruikshank’s ‘Bottle,’ and the ‘Drunkard’s Children,’ which immediately followed it, albeit executed when the finer qualities of his genius were suffering decay, must always be welcomed as admirable contributions to the matériel of Temperance advocacy.” Cruikshank used to relate how, when his “Bottle” was finished, and he was anxious to secure for this first Temperance sermon the widest possible publicity, he carried the plates to Mr. William Cash, then chairman of the National Temperance Society, for his approval, and the support of his powerful Association. Mr. Cash, although a Quaker, was a gentleman with a very sharp, humorous manner. Having attentively examined the series, he turned upon the artist, and asked him how he himself could ever have anything to do with using “The Bottle,” which, by his own showing, was the means of such dreadful evil? Cruikshank, in his own forcible way, described how he was “completely staggered” by this point-blank question. He said, when he had left Mr. Cash, he could not rid himself of the impression that had been made upon him. After a struggle, he did not get rid of it, but acted upon it, by resolving to give his example as well as his art to the total abstainers.

He was immediately rewarded by the extraordinary success which “The Bottle” achieved. It was sold by tens of thousands, and was the talk of the day. If it has not directly led to a tangible result, as Hogarth’s “Harlot’s Progress” is said to have led to the foundation of the Magdalen Hospital, it and the “Drunkard’s Children,” a poor sequel (but then sequels are always poor), have had the effect of powerful, popular, and permanent sermons against the monster evil of our time.

Not the least of the artist’s rewards was the tribute to his genius it inspired in Mr. Matthew Arnold, who wrote:—

TO G. CRUIKSHANK,
ON SEEING, IN THE COUNTRY, HIS PICTURE OF “THE BOTTLE.”
“Artist, whose hand, with horror wing’d hath torn
From the rank life of towns this leaf! and flung
The prodigy of full-blown crime among
Valleys and men to middle fortune born,
Not innocent, indeed, yet not forlorn—
Say, what shall calm us when such guests intrude
Like comets on the heavenly solitude?
Shall breathless glades, cheer’d by shy Dian’s horn,
Cold-bubbling springs, or caves?—Not so!
The soul Breasts her own griefs, and, urged too fiercely, says—
‘Why tremble? True, the nobleness of man
May be effaced; man can control
To pain, to death, the bent of his own days.
Know thou the worst!
So much, not more, he can. ‘”

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CHAPTER III. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK AS A TEETOTALER.

George Cruikshank was an enthusiast in all things to which he gave his mind. He did nothing in a halfhearted way. Whether preparing to address a great Exeter Hall audience on the evils of drunkenness, or marching at the head of his riflemen, or arraying himself in a table-cover to enact the part of Lord Bateman; in small things as in great, he was ever at fever-heat. He would have made a good actor, had he not been incapable of a moment’s repose; he would have been an admirable Temperance advocate, had it been in him to give himself pause in order to think over the heads of his discourse; he would have been a good volunteer officer, had it been possible for him to sit quiet in his saddle. But he seemed to be troubled with an excess of life. Life at fever-heat is the dominant characteristic of all his work. The “quiet spaces” in his etchings are rare.

Having been converted by his own “Bottle” to total abstinence from fermented liquors, he could be nothing less than an earnest and a vehement worker in the cause. He threw himself heart and soul into it; and during the thirty remaining years of his life his zeal never slackened, and he had never made sacrifices enough in it. His impulsive advocacy often took ludicrous forms. He sometimes offended people by his denunciations of even the most moderate drinkers, but he never made an enemy by his gaucherie or his downright phrases imported into quiet circles, because the parity of his motive and the well-known impetuosity of his nature excused him. I can remember, in the first year of his total abstinence, meeting him at a ball given in Fitzroy Square, by Mr. Joshua Mayhew, the father of Horace and the Brothers Mayhew. He danced and was light-hearted with the youngest; but when at supper the wine began to circulate, he stole round to the head of the table, and, laying his hand upon the shoulder of the venerable host (who was a very haughty and quick-tempered old gentleman), said, in a deep, warning voice, “Sir, you are a dangerous man.” Mr. Mayhew had a glass of wine in his hand, and was about to drink a toast to the health of one of his sons, when Cruikshank’s hand fell upon his shoulder. “I look upon every wine-drinker,” Cruikshank added firmly, “as a dangerous man, sir.” The company, knowing the hot temper of their host, expected an explosion of rage; but it was staunched by Horace Mayhew, who burst into a hearty laugh, and told his father to go on, for “it was only dear old George.”

In the same way, when dining at the Mansion House, Cruikshank, at the passing of the loving-cup, would go through an extraordinary pantomime before all the company, expressive of his horror of strong drinks. He would shake his hand angrily at the Lord Mayor, and raise his arms with horror while his neighbour quaffed of the cup. The company humoured the eccentric old gentleman; for, in their hearts, they could not but respect his downright earnestness. He lost no opportunity. Returning home at the head of his volunteer corps, he showed his jaded officers, who had freely taken beer, how fresh he was—on two oranges.

“Ah! you may laugh,” he would say, when his friends bantered him about his aggressive protests in society; “you may laugh, but I can tell you this——the presence of the old jackdaw checked the drinking, if didn’t stop it, and I am very grateful to feel sure of that.” * As Mr. Sala has observed, “the veteran sticks bravely to his text.” And well he might, for his temperance renewed his youth. “He neither smoked tobacco nor drank fermented liquors in his old age; but he was a hearty eater, an early riser, and a vigorous walker and his reward was that which, according to Gray, is only felt by boys at school—a perpetual ‘sunshine of the breast.’” He was fond of showing this vigour renewed by temperance, at every possible opportunity; for he very wisely regarded it as his most forcible argument. It enabled him, in his old age, to capture a burglar on his own premises. The story runs that when he was following the burglar to the station, with the police, he drew him under a lamp, and told him that he could see drink had brought him to this—adding that he himself drank nothing but water. “I wish I’d ha’ known that,” said the ruffian, “I’d ha’ broken your head for you.” Cruikshank delighted to show an audience how he could hold a tumbler full of water steady upon the palm of his outstretched hand. At eighty, he was seen in costume at a fancy dress ball at Willis’s Rooms, joining heartily in the dance, and letting everybody know that it was “water that did it.”

* Grace Stebbing’s article on Cruikshank in the Graphic.

It was very difficult to obtain from him the toleration of tobacco smoke in his company; for, after he had given up alcoholic stimulants, he threw away his pipe. He would say to a man of letters whom he favoured, laying his hand upon his arm, and turning those fierce eyes of his full upon him, “I want you to give up drinking and smoking, and you tell me that if you don’t smoke you can’t write. Now, I’ll meet you half-way. Give up the drink, and you may smoke—-just a little.” But, as a rule, he was as stern in the matter of tobacco as in that of beer or gin. One evening M. Legros, the distinguished French artist, lighted a cigarette in his hall as he was leaving Mornington Place. “To that vice,” said “the inimitable George” in his deepest tone, “I was a slave for many years, but now I am a free man.”

To it also, it must be added, he owed one of his most imaginative and delightful etchings,—“The Triumph, of Cupid,”—published in his “Table Book.”

His earnestness was extravagantly expressed in all things. As a furious anti-Papist, he would draw aside and shake his coat when Sisters of Charity or a Catholic priest passed him. “Do you see that fellow in front?” he suddenly asked a friend with whom he was walking. It was a workman quietly enjoying his pipe. “Do you know what I would do to him if I were a man of fortune? I’d kick him! To think that any man should be fool enough to place a tube between his lips, and go puff, puff, puff!” This was his “counter blast.” And he glared at the workman as he passed on. He had himself been an inveterate smoker for more than forty years!

On another occasion he drew sharply up before the windows of his old wine merchant, and called out, “Give me back my thousand pounds!”

When the Crystal Palace was opened at Sydenham, Cruikshank, in his rage that it had not been made a Temperance palace, drew some extravagant drawings of the opening ceremony for Messrs. Cassell, one of which represented the Archbishop of Canterbury bestowing his blessing upon a public-house.

Dining one day at Grampian Lodge, Forest Sill, with his friend Dr. Rogers, he suddenly began to tell the company that he had had a vision the night before. Then he related it with much gesticulation, and with dramatic effect.

He had seen two devils in council. One had said, “England is moral, prosperous, happy—this will never do. How can we put an end to it? Her crops are splendid; look, for instance, at her barley, her-” The second devil interrupted: “I have an idea. Her barley, which makes such splendid food, let us teach them to soak it, to sour it, to make it ferment; in short, to turn it into a tempting poison.”

“Agreed!” cried the first devil.

“Why,” the second devil continued, “we will actually make them drink it of their own accord; they shall lift the poison to their own lips with their own hands.”

“Ha! ha!” shouted the first devil; “and then of course, there will be murder, robbery, violence, and misery all over the land.”

“The devils have had their way,” the old man added his keen eyes glancing round the table to mark the effect of his vision.

He was indeed, as a writer called him, a “muscular teetotaler.”

“In his time,” a Temperance writer * records to his honour, “he must have attended thousands of temperance meetings, and at these few men were more welcome.

* The Temperance Record, February 7th, 1878.

The style of his advocacy was peculiar, he passed from grave to gay with facility, but he never lost sight of the great object he had in view. He seemed for years, to be deeply impressed at the numerous murders that were taking place, all of them, or nearly so, being in the last instance, if not in the first, attributable to drink. He used to exclaim, with deep fervour, ‘Can nothing be done to stop these dreadful murders?’ The clear remedy of total abstinence from that drink which was their inciting cause then came naturally from his lips; but though individuals responded to his appeal, the general mass of the public remained unmoved. Sometimes he would suggest a deputation to the House of Lords. But though this idea was not acted upon, yet he lived to see that august assembly collect evidence well fitted to be of service to them, and also to the public at large. Mr. Cruikshank’s powers of mimicry were also very great, and often has he convulsed his audience with his inimitable acting; but, at the same time, there was no mistaking his deep earnestness, and the sincerity with which he expressed the convictions of his heart.

He did his utmost, when the teetotalers had failed at the Crystal Palace, to establish a teetotal palace in the old Surrey Zoological Gardens; and he was drawn in state from the Hampstead Road to Walworth, in a carriage and four, to open a bazaar in aid of the scheme. He even prepared a design for the building. But although many went to cheer the honest, earnest old man, few remained to invest, and the design fell to the ground. It may have been some consolation to him and to his Temperance friends to mark, afterwards, the services which the Crystal Palace was destined to render to the cause of Temperance, for a drunkard has hardly ever been seen under its shining roof.

Cruikshank could never convert his mother to his views. She lived with him during the latter years of her life, and died under his roof, in the care of a most reverent and attentive son.. She had always been a careful, sober body, and would not be coerced, because her son could not take his beer or toddy without committing excesses. She had been a handsome woman in her days, a grandson records, and it was picturesque to see the lame old lady, leaning upon her crutch, and wrapped in a plaid,—with her shrivelled features and wild grey hair,—raise her withered arm, and with the old fire declare that she would not surrender her principles. A glass of beer with dinner, and a little toddy at bedtime, she had always taken, and she took them to the end, and George had to submit.

Addressing, on one occasion, a Temperance oration to a Bristol audience, he appealed to his female hearers not to believe that “nourishing stout” was necessary to nursing-mothers; and he pointed to himself as a melancholy example, saying, “My mother first lifted the poisoned chalice to my lips.” His aged mother read this in the morning paper. Her wrath was violent. “What!” she cried, “am I to be told publicly, at eighty years of age, that I, who always begged and prayed him to be sober, taught him to drink?” Her son did not return home for several days; but he heard of his speech in no uncertain tones when he presented himself to the old lady, who had, in his youth, often physically chastised him for his excesses.

Perhaps the best specimen of his manner of laying his subject before an audience is the speech which he delivered at the Grand Demonstration of the National Temperance League, in the Guildhall, on the 19th of November, 1864. It wants his by-play, his dramatic delivery, his grotesque movements, and then the solemn sounds of his voice, to be completely understood; but it is sufficiently original and suggestive as reported:—

“My Lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,—-My worthy friend the doctor has given you a very excellent discourse upon his own profession. It So happens that as I was coming to this meeting I met with a gentleman who had just been to consult his medical man; and finding I was coming to this meeting, he laughed at all idea of abstaining from intoxicating drinks. He told me he had been to see a very eminent member of the medical profession. I asked him what was the result.

“He said the physician told him he wanted a stimulant and prescribed one. I said, ‘What did you give him:’

“He replied, ‘Of course, I gave him the usual fee—a guinea.’ I said, ‘I can show you how to save that guinea in future. If you will give me half of it. I will give it to some good charity, and the other half you may keep in your pocket.’ He said, ‘How is that?’ I said, ‘Instead of going to the physician, go to the publican, and tell him what is the matter with you, and he will prescribe the same thing; and if the landlord is not in, say the same to the potboy, and he will do as well. Rely upon it, they will prescribe exactly the same thing as the doctor, and the effects will be the same. Now, I must say one word, if you please, to defend a very eminent prince who has been mentioned here to-night. I am sorry to say it happened to be my fate to hold up to ridicule the Prince Regent—very often indeed; but he was not such a bad man as he is represented to be. It must be recollected that if he committed excess in the way of drinking, it was then the fashion for all the eminent persons to get drunk. No man was considered a liberal man—no man was considered a gentleman, in fact, unless he made his companions drunk; and therefore, with all due respect to my friend Mr. Scott, who mentioned the circumstance, it must be recollected that about half a century back it was the fashion—it is a fearful thing, but it was the fashion—of gentry to get drunk; therefore we ought to make allowances. But now, my Lord Mayor, to come to this very serious question. This hall is the place where the great City feasts are held, and the question is, is it possible that there can be any grand entertainment given without mixing up with it the intoxicating cup? What will be said? It is very well for you, my lord, who are almost an abstainer yourself—very well for you—but what will be said of another Lord Mayor who comes here and gives a dinner without wine and beer? What will be said of him? He will be called a shabby fellow; and the question is, whether the guests will not all be melancholy. It will, perhaps, be somewhat in this style: ‘Have a little more soup?’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘More fish?’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘Bit of fowl?’ ‘No.’ ‘Venison?’ ‘No.’ ‘What, can’t you eat any more?’ ‘No, I don’t like it: I want something to drink.’ There is the serious thing: what is to be done? There is one way of settling that question. It is supposed that there can be no sociality, no comfort, no enjoyment, without intoxicating drinks. Now, I recommend the next Lord Mayor who may succeed our honoured chairman, if he be in favour of the moderate use of these delightful drinks, to be so good as to ask the present company to come to dinner. Wouldn’t you enjoy yourselves? And then, when we have had enough to eat, and want something to drink, here you are (holding up a glass of water)—Mr. Chairman, your very good health! Ladies and gentlemen, your good health! (drinking the toast.) We should have a jolly time of it. (Loud and long-continued cheering.) Mr. Morley says we will take the sherbet without the punch. That is the way in which these things are looked at; but supposing that it is impossible that any social enjoyment can be had without the use of these stimulants, let us take another view of the question. I have had the honour of dining here, and I have enjoyed myself very much, not only in the time when I used to take wine myself—because I recollect there was such a time as that—but when I have been a teetotaler I have been, here, and enjoyed my dinner very much indeed, without any of these drinks. But supposing we had this hall upon the occasion of the Lord Mayor’s feast with the most elegant people in the world (for I believe of all the people in the world the British people are the best looking and the best dressed): imagine the scene! The tables are set out in the most splendid manner; everything looks grand and happy; but what is going on outside? Ay! my friends, the most splendid monument in the world where this drink is used in moderation as it is in this country, may in the inside be a splendid monument of good order, taste, and sobriety, but at the outside there is filth and dirt and crime through drink. I say, suppose these social meetings cannot be enjoyed without these drinks, let us look at the outside. Now, there are a certain number of circumstances or acts committed in society, which are always injurious, not only to the individual himself, but also to society at large. Now, I do not mean to say that every teetotaler is an honest man. There may be some dishonest fellows amongst them. I have heard of two in the last thirty years. This reminds me, by-the-bye, of a teetotal turnkey at Coldbath Fields. There were two youths brought into the prison, who were teetotalers, and the other turnkeys jeered the teetotal turnkey upon it. He said, ‘It is true that there are two teetotalers here, but they are here only for begging, whereas you have about fifteen hundred brought in who drink, and they are most of them committed for stealing.’ There are a number of besetting sins connected with drinking, such as robberies, brutal assaults, garotting, house-breaking, suicide, and murder. By-the-bye, speaking of murder, there has been a very strong feeling existing for many years, and still increasing, against the punishment of death. I think it is a very horrible thing indeed to hang anybody; but, my friends, do not forget that it is a still more horrible thing for one to be murdered. Do not let us forget that. There was a young man in the country a little while ago hanged for murder—quite a young man. It was a sad thing indeed, no doubt, to see this poor fellow gibbeted; but what was he hanged for? He had been drinking on the Saturday night, and he murdered a young woman as she was going to church on the Sunday morning. Do not forget that these horrible, detestable, damnable crimes are committed under the influence of drink. We will talk about doing away with the punishment of death after we have stopped murders. I had the honour of speaking in the Mansion House when Mr. Charles Pearson, the City solicitor, brought on the question about the convicts; and I told the Lord Mayor then, that if we could do away with intoxicating liquors altogether, we might wheel out that dreadful instrument the gibbet into the Old Bailey, and make a bonfire of it. I believe you will find, if you go into the question, that there is hardly a murder committed in this country out of a hundred—I may say out of a thousand—not ten out of ten thousand—but drink has something to do with it. Remove the drink, and you will stop murder. But there is a gentleman who ought to have been speaking instead of myself, and therefore I will not detain you much longer; but I will say this, my friends, and call your attention to it especially, that the teetotal question has now been before the world for about thirty years, and during that short time I challenge any one to point out any teetotaler who has been committed for a brutal assault upon his wife, or for garotting, or picking pockets, or house robbery, or murder. I challenge the world to produce one single case wherein any real teetotaler has been convicted of one of those crimes. Then, if this be so, what have we to do but to spread this Temperance movement throughout the length and breadth of the land? and then we should stop, if not all crimes, if not all offences, still the great majority of them; and that is what we are aiming at. And recollect this, my friends, that we are not a society formed merely for the purpose of reclaiming the drunkard. It is a very good thing to do so, and I am sorry to say that my time is so occupied that I am almost in despair. I have six most dreadful cases in hand at the present moment There is nobody to assist them. I could not go to the brewer or distiller, and ask them to give me funds for the support of these people whom they have rained; and why not? Because there is blood upon the money. I would not have it. But I had to-day a letter imploring me for help from the nephew of an old friend of my father. What am I to do? I have a lady in the country at this moment, the wife of a barrister, who is starving for want of help, and whose husband has been ruined by drinking. My time is occupied, and my friends are gone, and I am called upon for all I can afford. But, my friends, if you do away with these drinks, you do away with these cases. But it is utterly impossible to go into the evils arising out of these drinks in the time I have to speak—they are so extensive; all I have to say is, ‘Go on and prosper!’ and prosper we shall. I cannot sit down without saying that I look upon this meeting to-night to be one of the grandest movements that this cause has ever had. I say it from my heart, and think that those gentlemen who have assisted in getting up this meeting deserve our best thanks.”

The idea of a temperance Lord Mayor’s Banquet suggests, no doubt, many vastly amusing incidents and episodes to the mind of the comic writer, but honest-hearted George Cruikshank could not, and would not, in his latter dav, see any element of fun in drunkenness, and he was quite in earnest in recommending the next Lord Mayor to fill his loving-cup with pump water. *

* Since Cruikshank delivered the above speech, a Temperance
banquet has been held at the Mansion House.

The account he gave, moreover, of his trouble about the many people who were seeking his assistance, was true of his experience year after year. His doors were besieged. He was waylaid by petitioners for his known bounty (the recklessness of which, as we have seen, Dickens reproved) whenever he went abroad. A poor man himself, for ever in money troubles, even to the end of his laborious life, his heart lay always open to a tale of distress. He was never without “cases” on hand.

It has been remarked of his Temperance days, by one of his friendliest critics, that his style suffered from the contraction of his ideas and sympathies, “and it cannot be questioned that with the general public his reputation declined in proportion to the increase of his popularity among the teetotalers.” He lost heavily, in a pecuniary sense, by his Temperance advocacy. Publishers ceased to employ him. He remarked that, for the last ten years of his life, he was without commissions. He had refused none, he would say. He was willing to work, and he held that his powers were unimpaired.

Temperance preacher; to them the inimitable George, the illustrator of Boz, the kindly satirist, the creator of “Points of Humour,” the illustrator of Grimm, was dead.

And, firmly believing this, the brave old man held on in the rigid course of duty he had laid down for himself. He had seen all the horrors which lie behind drunkenness; in his early time he had himself been a tavern hero; and he had dedicated the remainder of his life to the work of warning the rising generation out of the path in which he himself had stumbled.

“I come forth,” he said, in one of his earliest temperance harangues, “to set by my humble example the opinion of this unthinking world at defiance.”

The Life of George Cruikshank in Two Epochs, Vol. 2. (of 2)

THE LIFEofGEORGE CRUIKSHANK

By BLANCHARD JERROLD

Illustrations by GEORGE CRUIKSHANK

In Two Volumes—Volume Two1882

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