SUPPRESSED PLATES

AGENTS

The title-page of the unwritten “Death in London”

SUPPRESSED PLATES

WOOD ENGRAVINGS, &c.

TOGETHER WITH OTHER CURIOSITIES GERMANE THERETO

BEING

AN ACCOUNT OF CERTAIN MATTERS

PECULIARLY ALLURING TO

THE COLLECTOR

BY

GEORGE SOMES LAYARD

LONDON

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1907

Published November 1907

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

TO

MY TWO BOYS

JOHN AND PETER

WHO

I SINCERELY HOPE, WILL NOT HAVE SO MANY

USELESS HOBBIES

AS

THEIR AFFECTIONATE

FATHER

• CONTENTS
  • 1. INTRODUCTORY … [1]
  • 2. “THE MARQUIS OF STEYNE” … [7]
  • 3. THE SUPPRESSED PORTRAIT OF DICKENS, “PICKWICK,” “THE BATTLE OF LIFE,” AND “GRIMALDI” … [26]
  • 4. DICKENS CANCELLED PLATES: “OLIVER TWIST,” “MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT,” “THE STRANGE GENTLEMAN,” “PICTURES FROM ITALY,” AND “SKETCHES BY BOZ” … [43]
  • 5. ON SOME FURTHER SUPPRESSED PLATES, ETCHINGS, AND WOOD ENGRAVINGS BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK … [59]
  • 6. HOGARTH’S “ENTHUSIASM DELINEATED,” “THE MAN OF TASTE,” AND “DON QUIXOTE” … [82]
  • 7. CANCELLED DESIGNS FOR “PUNCH” AND “ONCE a WEEK” BY CHARLES KEENE AND FREDERICK SANDYS … [127]
  • 8. MISCELLANEOUS … [149]
  • 9. THE SUPPRESSED OMAR KHAYYAM ETCHING … [179]
  • 10. ADAPTED OR PALIMPSEST PLATES … [192]
  • 11. ADAPTED OR PALIMPSEST PLATES (continued) … [226]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Printed Separately

The Title-page of the unwritten “Death in London” [▶] … Frontispiece

The Third Marquis of Hertford. (From the engraving by W. Holl, of the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence) [▶] … Between pages 20 and 21

The Fourth Marquis of Hertford. (From a photograph) [▶] … Between pages 20 and 21

The Third Marquis of Hertford when Lord Yarmouth. (From the coloured caricature by Richard Dighton) [▶] … Facing page 24

The suppressed portrait of Charles Dickens [▶] … Facing page 28

The “Pickwick” suppressed plate: “The Cricket Match.” (By R. W. Buss) [▶] … Facing page 30

The “Pickwick” suppressed plate: “Tupman and Rachel.” (By R. W. Buss) [▶] … Between pages 32 and 33

“Tupman and Rachel.” (By H. K. Browne) [▶] … Between pages 32 and 33

“The Last Song,” with the suppressed border (By George Cruikshank) [▶] … Facing page 40

The suppressed plate from “Oliver Twist” [▶] … Facing page 48

1. “The Fireside Scene”

2. “The Fireside Scene,” as worked upon by Cruikshank

The suppressed plate from “Sketches by Boz” [▶] … Facing page 56

“A Financial Survey of Cumberland or the Beggar’s Petition.” (From the only known uncoloured impression of the plate) [▶] … Between pages 64 and 65

“A Financial Survey of Cumberland or the Beggar’s Petition.” (From a coloured impression of the plate, with the figure of the valet oblit­er­at­ed with lamp-black) [▶] … Between pages 64 and 65

“Enthusiasm Delineated. (Humbly dedicated to his Grace the Arch Bishop of Canterbury by his Graces most obedient humble Servant Wm. Hogarth”) [▶] … Between pages 88 and 89

“Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism. A Medley” [▶] … Between pages 88 and 89

Portrait of Hogarth with his Dog Trump [▶] … Facing page 112

The plate reversed and in its last state, now en­ti­tled “The Bruiser” … Facing page 112

The Cancelled Cartoon. (By Charles Keene) [▶] … Facing page 128

The Cancelled “Social.” (By Charles Keene) [▶] … Facing page 136

Suggestion by Joseph Crawhall for the Cancelled “Social” … Facing page 136

“The Painted Chamber.” (From Antiquities of West­min­ster, 1807) [▶] … Facing page 150

The suppressed portrait of “John Jorrocks, Esq., M.F.H., etc.” (By Henry Alken, the younger) [▶] … Facing page 160

The suppressed frontispiece for “Omar Khayyam.” (By Edwin Edwards) [▶] … Facing page 188

“L’Europe alarmée pour le Fils d’un Meunier.” (The plate in its first state) [▶] … Between pages 204 and 205

The plate in its second state, now entitled “La Cour de Paix solitaire, entre les Roses piquantes et les Lis” [▶] … Between pages 204 and 205

Queen Anne presiding over the House of Lords. (The plate in its first state) [▶] … Between pages 236 and 237

The plate in its second state, now representing George I. presiding over the House of Lords [▶] … Between pages 236 and 237

“The Races of the Europeans, with their Keys.” (The plate in its first state) [▶] … Between pages 238 and 239

“A Skit on Britain.” (The plate in its second state) [▶] … Between pages 238 and 239

The Headless Horseman. (The plate with the head burnished out) [▶] … Facing page 240

The plate with Cromwell’s head [▶] … Between pages 242 and 243

The plate with Charles I.’s head [▶] … Between pages 242 and 243

Undescribed palimpsest plate. (First state and second state) [▶] … Facing page 244

Undescribed palimpsest plate. (First state and second state) [▶] … Facing page 246

Printed in the Text

1. The Suppressed Portrait of the Marquis of Steyne [▶] … 15

2. The Battle of Life. “Leech’s Grave Mistake” [▶] … 35

3. Rose Maylie and Oliver at Agnes’s Tomb. (The substituted plate in two states) [▶] … 51

4. The Strange Gentleman [▶] … 55

5. “A Trifling Mistake”—Corrected— [▶] … 71

6. Philoprogenitiveness [▶] … 77

7. “Drop it!” [▶] … 79

8. Enlarged detail of Hogarth’s “Enthusiasm Delineated” [▶] … 85

9. The Chandelier in “Enthusiasm” [▶] … 95

The Chandelier in “Credulity” … 95

10. The Man of Taste [▶] … 105

11. Burlington Gate as it appeared prior to 1868 [▶] … 109

12. Don Quixote, No. 1.—The Innkeeper [▶] … 115

13. Don Quixote, No. 2.—The Funeral of Chrysostom [▶] … 117

14. Don Quixote, No. 3.—The Innkeeper’s Wife and Daughter [▶] … 119

15. Don Quixote, No. 4.—Don Quixote seizes the Barber’s Basin [▶] … 120

16. Don Quixote, No. 5.—Don Quixote releases the Galley Slaves [▶] … 122

17. Don Quixote, No. 6.—The First Interview [▶] … 123

18. Don Quixote, No. 7.—The Curate and the Barber [▶] … 125

19. Danaë in the Brazen Chamber [▶] … 143

20. Suppressed Illustration from The Vicar of Wakefield [▶] … 172

21. Het beest van Babel, etc. (The plate in its first state) [▶] … 218

22. Het beest van Babel, etc. (The plate in its second state) [▶] … 219

23. Aan der Meester Tonge-Slyper. (The plate in its first state) [▶] … 229

Aan der Meester Tonge-Slyper. (As adapted by the Anti-Jesuits) … 229

24. The Stature of a Great Man, or the English Colossus [▶] … 234

25. The Stature of a Great Man, or the Scotch Colossus [▶] … 235

26. Aan den Experten Hollandschen Hoofd-Smith. (The plate in its first state) [▶] … 245

27. Aan den Experten Hollandschen Hoofd-Smith. (As adapted by the Anti-Jesuits) [▶] … 245

28. An adapted Copperplate. (First state) [▶] … 247

29. An adapted Copperplate. (Second state) [▶] … 247

30. A History of the New Plot. (First state) [▶] … 249

31. A History of the New Plot. (Second state) [▶] … 249

SUPPRESSED PLATES, ETC.

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY

NO one who has the itch for book-collecting will deny that suppressed book illus­tra­tions are, what the forbidden fruit was to our mother Eve, irresistible. Whether such appetite represents the very proper ambition to have at his elbow the earliest states of beautiful or interesting books, of which the subsequently suppressed plate or wood engraving is in general a sort of guarantee, or the less defensible desire to possess what our neighbour does not, must be settled by the conscience of each. The fact remains that such rarities are peculiarly alluring to those whom Wotton calls “the lickerish chapmen of all such ware.” {2}

There are, of course, ridiculous[1] people who value such books as the first issue of the first edition of Dickens’s American Notes just because there is a mistake in the pagination; or a first edition of Disraeli’s Lothair because the prototype of “Monsignor Catesby” is divulged by misprinting the name “Capel”; or Poems by Robert Burns, first Edinburgh Edition, because in the list of subscribers “The Duke of Roxborough” appears as “The Duke of Boxborough”; or Barker’s “Breeches” Bible of 1594, because on the title-page of the New Testament the figures are transposed to 1495; or the first edition in French of Washington Irving’s Sketch Book, because the translator, maltreating the author’s name, has declared the book to be “traduit de l’Anglais de M. Irwin Washington,” and in the dedication has labelled Sir Walter Scott, Barronnet; or indeed a book of my own, in which I described as “since dead” a gifted and genial gentleman who I am glad to think still gives the lie to my inexcusable carelessness. {3}

But it is not because of such errors that a true book-lover desires to own editiones principes of famous works. That ambition is legitimate enough, but its legitimate reason is otherwhere to seek.

In the case of such a book as Rogers’s Italy, with the Turner engravings, the matter is very dif­fer­ent. Here the fact that the plates on pp. 88 and 91 are trans­posed is a guaran­tee that the im­pres­sions of the extra­or­di­narily del­i­cate en­grav­ings are of the utmost bril­liancy, for the error was dis­cov­ered before many im­pres­sions had been taken. The same applies, though in lesser degree, to such a book as Mr. Austin Dobson’s Ballad of Beau Brocade, il­lus­trat­ed by Mr. Hugh Thomson, in the earliest edition of which certain of the illus­tra­tions are also misplaced.[2] There is reason in wishing to possess these. See what Ruskin himself has said of the omission of the two engravings which had appeared in the first edition of The Two Paths. He writes in the preface to the 1878 reissue:

[1] I am quite aware that “ridiculous” is a dangerous stone to throw, when one lives in a glass house oneself.

[2] Compare also the early issues of the first edition of Ainsworth’s Tower of London, in which the plates at pp. 28 and 45 vary from those in the later issues.

{4}

“I own to a very enjoyable pride in making the first editions of my books valuable to their possessors, who found out, before other people, that these writings and drawings were good for something . . . and the two lovely engravings by Messrs. Cuff and Armytage will, I hope, render the old volume more or less classical among collectors.” From this we gather that “the Professor” was of the right kidney.

It is hardly necessary to say that it is not my intention to make this book a devil’s directory to illus­tra­tions which have been suppressed because of indecency, and are referred to in the catalogues of second-hand booksellers, whose cupidity is stronger than their self-respect, as “facetiæ” or “very curious.” Indeed, this book would itself in that case also very properly be put on the index expurgatorius of every decent person. My purpose is to gather together, correct and amplify the floating details concerning a legitimate class of rarities, and to put the collector on his guard, where necessary, against imposition.

By its very nature this treatise cannot be complete, but I have included most of the {5} examples of any importance which, during many years of bibliomania, have come under my observation. To these I have added certain re-engraved or palimpsest plates, which are germane to the subject.

As to these last I find amongst my papers a curious note from the pen of R. H. Cromek, the engraver, who flourished at the end of the eighteenth century.

“One of these vendors,” he writes (publishers of Family Bibles), “lately called to consult me professionally about an engraving he brought with him. It represented Mons. Buffon seated, contemplating various groups of animals surrounding him. He merely wished, he said, to be informed whether, by engaging my services to unclothe the naturalist, and giving him a rather more resolute look, the plate could not, at a trifling expense, be made to do duty for ‘Daniel in the lions’ den’”!

That would be a palimpsest well worth possessing, if ever it were carried into effect. It would be as fascinating an object of contemplation as the Stothard designs for Clarissa Harlowe, {6} which the same authority informs us were later used to il­lus­trate the Scriptures! But the history of the cliché, pure and simple, has yet to be written. Our concern is with higher game than that.

CHAPTER II “THE MARQUIS OF STEYNE”

PERHAPS the most celebrated of sup­pressed book il­lus­tra­tions is the wood-engraved por­trait of the “Marquis of Steyne,” drawn by Thackeray as an illus­tra­tion to Vanity Fair, for which, if we are to believe the state­ment of a well-known book­seller’s cat­a­logue, “libel­lous pro­ceed­ings (sic) were threatened on account of its strik­ing like­ness to a mem­ber of the aris­to­cracy.” With the accuracy of this state­ment I shall deal in due course.

Before, however, proceeding to the con­sid­er­ation of the suppressed illus­tra­tion itself, it will be as well to pause for a moment to consider what antecedent probability there was that Thackeray would pillory a well-known roué of the period in terms that would make the likeness undoubted and undeniable. And in pointing out what the great {8} novelist’s practice was in this respect I would guard myself against the charge of presuming to censure one who is not here to answer for himself, and whose nobility of character was sufficient guarantee of good faith and honourable intention. Let it always be remembered that, if Thackeray flagellated others, he never hesitated to taste the quality of his own whip first. Even in his book illus­tra­tions, as I have pointed out elsewhere, he was as unsparing of his own feelings as he was in his writings. And, in using himself as a whipping-boy for our sins, he probably believed that he was making himself as despicable as a Rousseau. Hence he came to the like treatment of other real personages not with unclean hands.

Some of us may have seen, though very few of us can possess, a very rare pamphlet, which was sold for as much as £39 on one of its infrequent appearances in the auction-rooms, entitled Mr. Thackeray, Mr. Yates, and the Garrick Club. In it was published a never-sent reply to a letter written by Thackeray remonstrating with Yates on the contents of a “pen-and-ink” sketch published by the latter in No. 6 of a periodical called Town {9} Talk, which resulted in Yates’s expulsion from the Garrick Club.

In this unsent letter he charged Thackeray with having unjustifiably introduced portraits both in his letterpress and illus­tra­tions. Mr. Stephen Price appeared as Captain Shindy in the Book of Snobs. In the same book Thackeray drew on a wood block what was practically a portrait of Wyndham Smith, a fellow-clubman. This appeared amongst “Sporting Snobs,” Mr. Smith being a well-known sporting man. In Pendennis he made a sketch of a former member of the Garrick Club, Captain Granby Calcraft, under the name of Captain Granby Tiptoff. In the same book, under the transparent guise of the unforgettable Foker, he reproduced every characteristic, both in language, manner, and gesture, of Mr. Andrew Arcedeckne, and even went so far as to give an unmistakable portrait of him, to that gentleman’s great annoyance.

Besides the examples given by Yates, who was himself recognisable as George Garbage in The Virginians, we know, too, that in the same novel Theodore Hook appeared as Wagg, just as he did {10} as Stanislaus Hoax in Disraeli’s Vivian Grey, and that Alfred Bunn was the prototype of Mr. Dolphin. Archdeacon Allen was the original of Dobbin, Lady Langford of Lady Kew; and last, but not least, we have lately learned from Mrs. Ritchie that the inimitable Becky had undoubtedly her incarnation.

So we see that the antecedent improbability is as the snakes in Iceland; for the above examples, which no doubt could be largely added to, prove that Thackeray did not hesitate to draw direct from the model when it suited his purpose.

So far so good. Let us now proceed to inquire into the identity of the “Marquis of Steyne.”

That his prototype was a Marquis of Hertford is axiomatic with all those who have ever taken any interest in the subject; but when we come to inquire which marquis we find that opinions are astonishingly at variance. It would seem almost as though any Marquis of Hertford would serve, whereas in point of fact the portrait would be the grossest libel upon each of that noble line save one; and so incidentally we shall, by making the matter clear, rescue from calumny an honourable {11} race, which has hitherto through heedlessness been tarred with the same brush as its least honourable rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

To show that this is not a reckless charge of inaccuracy, I quote from four letters in my possession written by four persons most likely to have special knowledge upon the subject.

The first, which is from a well-known printseller, informs me “that the Marquis of Steyne in Vanity Fair was Francis, second Marquis of Hertford, who died in 1822.”

The second, which is from one more intimately acquainted with the family than any other living person, says, “Unquestionably Francis, third Marquis of Hertford, the intimate friend of George IV., was the prototype of the Marquis of Steyne in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.”

The third letter, which is from a well-known London editor, in general the best-informed man I have ever met, says, “It was the fourth Lord, who died in 1870.”

The last of the four letters supports this view and says: “It was the fourth, not the third, Marquis of Hertford who was supposed to be the prototype {12} of Thackeray’s Marquis of Steyne. . . . He was Richard Seymour Conway, who was born in 1800 and died in 1870.”[3]

Now, considering that these are the only opinions for which I have asked, and that they are so curiously divergent, it will, I think, be clear that it is time an authoritative declaration were forthcoming, based upon independent inquiries.

It may as well, then, be stated once for all that no one who has taken the trouble to investigate the lives of the three marquises above mentioned can hesitate for a moment in identifying the “Marquis of Steyne” with the third Marquis of Hertford. To those who are curious to know very full particulars about these noblemen I would recommend the perusal of an interesting article entitled “Two Marquises” in Lippincott’s Magazine for February 1874. Nor should they fail to read Disraeli’s Coningsby, and compare “Lord Monmouth” and his creature “Rigby,” whose prototypes were the same Marquis of Hertford and his creature Croker, with the {13} “Marquis of Steyne” and his managing man “Wenham.”

And, whilst we are identifying the third Marquis in Coningsby and Vanity Fair, reference may be made to another most unflattering portrait of that notorious nobleman in a book published anonymously in 1844, which was immediately suppressed, but is now not infrequently to be found in second-hand book catalogues. The book was (I believe) written by John Mills, and had ten clever etched plates by George Standfast (probably a nom de plume). Copies in the parts as published are excessively rare. The title of the book is D’Horsay; or the Follies of the Day, by a Man of Fashion.[4] It dealt with the escapades, vices, and adventures of well-known men of the day under the following transparent pseudonyms: Count d’Horsay, the Marquis of Hereford, the Earl of Chesterlane, Mr. Pelham, General Reel, Lord George Bentick, Mr. George Robbins, auctioneer, the Earl of Raspberry Hill, Benjamin D——i, Lord Hunting-Castle, and others. The {14} account of the “closing scene in the life of the greatest debauchee the world has ever seen, the Marquis of Hereford,” is too horrible to repeat.

[3] As I write, a great daily newspaper informs the world that it was the first Marquis.

[4] This scurrilous and poorly written book has lately been thought worthy of resurrection and repub­li­ca­tion.

So much for the identity of the “Marquis of Steyne” as described in Thackeray’s letterpress, which need not be dwelt upon here at greater length, seeing that the immediate object of this chapter is to deal with the accompanying engraving and its history. And in proceeding to this examination it should not be forgotten, in fairness to the novelist, that Thackeray has explained that his characters were made up of little bits of various persons. This is no doubt true enough. At the same time, we cannot but be aware that, although the details may have been gathered, the outline has been drawn direct from the life.

The Suppressed Portrait of the Marquis of Steyne

Vanity Fair was issued originally in monthly parts. Its first title was Vanity Fair: Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society. Its first number was dated “January 1847,” and had “illus­tra­tions on steel and wood by the Author.” On p. 336 of the earliest issue of this first edition appeared the wood engraving of the Marquis of Steyne, wanting which a first edition is, to the {15} biblio­maniac, Hamlet with Hamlet left out. In the later issues, the engraving (which I here reproduce) was omitted, as also was the “rustic type” in which the title appeared on the first page.[5] The publishers were Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, {16} as was natural, Thackeray being at this time on the staff of Punch. In later editions of the novel, published by Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., the engraving reappears—viz. on p. 22 of vol. ii. in the standard edition, and on p. 158, vol. ii., of the twenty-six-volume edition.[6]

[5] To the rabid bibliophile I here present another variation, which has hitherto escaped the bookseller. In the first edition, on p. 453, will be found the misprint “Mr.” (for “Sir”) Pitt and Lady Jane Crawley.

[6] It does not appear amongst the illus­tra­tions to the biographical edition, which are restricted to the full-page plates.

What was the reason for its sudden removal immediately after pub­li­ca­tion? As I have said above, it is commonly stated to have been in consequence of a threatened action for libel, of course on account of the undoubted likeness of the “Marquis of Steyne” to the third Marquis of Hertford. But how does this tally with facts? Lord Hertford had died in 1842, whilst the first number of Vanity Fair did not appear until 1847. Now every lawyer knows that you cannot libel a dead man. This was made clear some few years ago (I think) in the case of the Duke of Vallombrosa against a well-known English journalist. Therefore it is quite certain that, although legal proceedings might have been threatened, they would certainly have collapsed. {17} Further than that, those who knew the fourth Marquis are aware that he was the last man in the world to embark upon a lawsuit or court publicity in any way. And if any doubt upon the matter should still remain, I am able to state positively that no trace is to be discovered amongst the Hertford family papers of any action threatened or brought against Thackeray on any grounds whatsoever. I think, then, that we may dismiss once for all this aspect of the case.

At the same time it is not impossible that some hint may have reached the novelist’s ears that the illus­tra­tion gave pain to persons then living, and that he promptly had it removed. But against this view there is a very strong presumption. If we turn the leaves of our original issue of Vanity Fair, we shall, on p. 421, find another wood engraving, and opposite p. 458 a full-page steel engraving, “The Triumph of Clytemnestra,” both containing portraits of “The Marquis of Steyne.” Now, considering that that nobleman’s august features are as recognisable in these as in the suppressed engraving, it seems unreasonable to suppose that the one would have been removed {18} without the others, in consequence of family rep­re­sen­ta­tions.

Possibly the real truth of the matter is a very much simpler one. It may have been either that Thackeray was himself disgusted with the brutal frankness of the picture when he saw it printed, and insisted on its removal, or that the block met with some accident. Indeed, I am inclined to think, judging from my memory of the subject, that the idea of an action for libel is one that has only found expression in more modern booksellers’ catalogues. If I am not mistaken, the older booksellers used to speak of the engraving not as “suppressed,” but as “extremely rare,” and that it was supposed to have disappeared from later issues because it was broken before many impressions were taken. Of course, a threatened action for libel, on account of its striking likeness to a member of the aristocracy, added piquancy to the affair, and so redounded to the benefit of the vendor of the earliest issue of a first edition; and the identification of Lord Steyne’s prototype, in the letterpress, gave colour to the idea. Once set going, we may be certain that {19} the legend would not be allowed to lapse for lack of advertisement. To adapt what Dr. Johnson said of the “Countess,” “Sir,” said he to Boswell, “in the case of a (marquis) the imagination is more excited.”

The accompanying portraits of the third and fourth Marquises of Hertford give the reader an opportunity of forming his own opinion in the matter of identity. That of the third Marquis is from the engraving by William Holl of the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and certainly seems to suggest, in the prime of life, the features and expression which Thackeray has portrayed in old age. The bald head, and the arrangement of the whiskers—which are allowed to approach the corners of the mouth—are incontestable points of resemblance; and if the old voluptuary is somewhat more battered than Lawrence’s rather spruce model, we must remember that his portrait was painted by the courtly President of the Royal Academy many years before the period of life at which he is introduced to us by the novelist. Certainly he is not an attractive object; and I was amused to receive a letter from a member of the family to whom I first showed the wood {20} engraving in which these words occur: “I find we have no portrait whatever of the Lord Hertford in question, and am not surprised at it if he at all resembled that of the Marquis in Vanity Fair!”[7]

As regards the fourth Marquis, it is a curious fact that, not­with­stand­ing his vast wealth, and his tastes as an artist and connoisseur, no painted or engraved portrait of him is known. The photograph here reproduced is the only counterfeit presentment extant, and is enough, if further evidence were needed, to dispose for ever of the idea that he was the prototype of the Marquis of Steyne. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that it is to him, through Sir Richard and Lady Wallace, that the nation owes a debt of gratitude for the splendid collection now housed in perpetuity in Hertford House.[8]

[7] This is the description of the Marquis in Coningsby: “Lord Monmouth was in height above the middle size, but somewhat portly and corpulent; his countenance was strongly marked: sagacity on the brow, sensuality in the mouth and jaw; his head was bald, but there were remains of the rich brown hair on which he once prided himself. His large, deep blue eye, madid, and yet piercing, showed that the secretions of his brain were apportioned half to voluptuousness, half to common sense.” This might well pass as a description of the Thackeray drawing.

[8] Just before Lady Wallace’s death, an examination of the Hertford House library failed to discover a first edition of Vanity Fair, in which I fancied some note might possibly have been found. This was probably due to the fact that a large number of the Hertford books were destroyed in the Pantechnicon fire.

The Third Marquis of Hertford.(From the engraving by W. Holl, of the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence)

The Fourth Marquis of Hertford. (From a photograph)

{21}

It will be noticed that in this photograph Lord Hertford wears his Star of the Order of the Garter, to obtain which he made the “tremendous sacrifice” of which an amusing account is given in the Lippincott article mentioned above. Of him the Speaker wrote at the time of his death:

Living in Paris a quiet and rather solitary life—in habits more a Frenchman than an Englishman; in tastes an artist and a connoisseur; in purse and opportunity unlimited by any niggard need of self-control—the fourth Marquis of Hertford busied himself in gathering together from the treasure-houses of Europe innumerable precious specimens of the painter’s, the goldsmith’s, and the cabinetmaker’s art. Year after year, with tranquil perseverance, he heaped up on every side of him all the beautiful objects on which he could lay hands—pictures, miniatures, furniture, enamels, china and plate, bronzes, and coats of armour—until his storehouses were full to overflowing of treasures which, except for the pleasure of procuring them, he could hardly ever have enjoyed. In this congenial task he was assisted by a young Englishman, the secret of whose connection with the Hertford family, if any such there was, the public has never penetrated yet. To this young Englishman, who was well known and liked in Parisian society in the tawdry splendour of the Second Empire, and whose active generosity {22} won him wide esteem in that desolated capital amid the terrible events of the winter of 1870–71, Lord Hertford bequeathed the wonderful possessions which he had accumulated in a lifetime of discriminating labour. When the Franco-German War and the Commune were over, Richard Wallace brought his spoils safely home, and exhibited them for a time at the Bethnal Green Museum while he built the great galleries to hold them in Manchester Square. But even here they were not destined to bring much happiness to their possessor. After a short time Sir Richard Wallace was left heirless—like Lord Hertford—by a cruel stroke of fate; and now, by his widow’s gift, the splendid inheritance, which has passed so quickly from the keeping of the hands that laid it up, goes to enrich a public which will not be ungrateful for the donor’s rare munificence, or unmindful of the sad and curious story it recalls.[9]

[9] A footnote on p. 229, vol. iv. of G. E. C.’s Complete Peerage says: “[The fourth Marquis] is said never to have been in England. He left his Irish estates (worth £50,000 a year) and most of his personalty (which included the well-known Hertford collection of pictures) to Sir Richard Wallace, Bart. (so cr. 1866), who is supposed to have been an illegit. son, either of himself (when aged 18), or of his father, or even (not improbably) of his mother; which Richard (b. in London, 26th July 1818) d. s.p. at Paris, 20th July 1890, in his 72nd year, and was bur. in the family vault at Père-la-Chaise. Sir Richard’s ‘art treasures’ (derived as above stated) were valued at his death in 1890 at above two millions.”

To return again to the suppressed wood engraving itself, it is curious to notice that old “Lady Kew” of The Newcomes was sister to Lord Steyne. Now the name “Kew” at once suggests {23} to those conversant with the early doings of the century the nickname of the notorious Duke of Queensberry, known to all and sundry as “Old Q,” and sets us considering why the name should suggest itself to Thackeray in connection with Lord Hertford. And what do we find?

When the third Marquis was but twenty-one, he married a young lady named Marie Fagniani. She was believed to be the daughter of the Duke of Queensberry and an opera dancer of that name. Nothing would be more natural, therefore, than that Thackeray, having saturated himself with the surroundings of the prototypes of his characters, should, probably half unconsciously, have seized upon a capital name suggested to him in the course of preparing for his novel, and so adapted it to his requirements. This suggestion I only make for what it is worth. It may, of course, merely be that a search through the suburban directory suggested the name, as was no doubt the case in apportioning to her ladyship’s husband his second title of Lord Walham. At any rate, the coincidence seems worth recording.

In conclusion, there can be no possible doubt {24} that so far as Thackeray’s letterpress is concerned, the prototype of the Marquis of Steyne (Lord of the Powder Closet, etc. etc.) was Francis Charles Seymour Conway (third Marquis of Hertford) of his branch; Earl of Hertford and Yarmouth, Viscount Beauchamp, Baron Conway, and Baron of Ragley in England; and Baron Conway and Kilultagh in the peerage of Ireland; and as regards the suppressed wood engraving, there will, I think, be little question that Thackeray the artist dotted his i’s by an intentional rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the noble lord’s not altogether attractive features.

The Third Marquis of Hertford when Lord Yarmouth.(From the coloured caricature by Richard Dighton)

It is, however, only fair to state that Lord Hertford was probably by no means the unmitigated scoundrel that those familiar with the “Marquis of Steyne” might be led to suppose. That he participated in all the amusements and most of the follies of a notorious society there can be little doubt. At the same time, we have it on record (in the somewhat pompous diction of the period) that he was extensively read in ancient and modern literature, that his judgment was remarkable for its solidity and sagacity, and that his {25} conversation was enlivened by much of that refined and quaint pleasantry which dis­tin­guished his near relative, Horace Walpole. He was a dis­tin­guished patron of all the arts; and those who were more intimately acquainted with his private life gave him the still higher praise of being a warm, generous, and unalterable friend. “It is but justice to add,” to quote the final words of the notice referred to, “that the writer has accidentally become acquainted with instances of his Lordship’s benevolence, the liberality of which was equalled only by the delicacy with which it was conferred, and the scrupulous care with which he endeavoured to conceal it.”

The caricature portrait of the third Marquis here reproduced was etched, as will be seen, by Richard Dighton in 1818, when this Marquis’s father was alive, and he was only the Earl of Yarmouth. The watermark on the paper is 1826, which explains the inscription “Marquis of Hertford,” evidently a later addition—an ex post facto puzzle which proved insoluble until it occurred to me to hold the portrait up to the light.

CHAPTER III THE SUP­PRESSED POR­TRAIT OF DICKENS, “PICK­WICK,” “THE BAT­TLE OF LIFE,” AND GRI­MAL­DI

HAVING dealt in the last chapter with the sup­pres­sion of the well-known Thackeray wood-cut of the “Marquis of Steyne,” we naturally turn next in order to the other great Victorian novelist, Charles Dickens. Much, of course, has been written about the Buss plates in Pickwick, and much about the “Fireside Scene” in Oliver Twist. All readers of Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens know something of the wood engraving in The Battle of Life which ought to have been, but never was, cancelled; and some know what to look for in the vignette title of Martin Chuzzlewit. It is, however, time that the scattered details should be grouped, that re­pro­duc­tions of the plates themselves should make reference easy to those {27} who would identify their possessions, and that the additional information which is in some cases scattered about in various impermanent writings of my own and others should be focussed for the greater convenience of the collector.

In the first place, I shall present to the reader a suppressed portrait of the great novelist, which has, I believe, never since been reproduced. It was published about the year 1837 by Churton, but as to the name of the artist by whom it was etched there is a mystery which yet awaits solution. The plate is, as will be noticed, signed with the familiar pen-name “Phiz,” but was almost immediately repudiated by the chartered bearer of that title, H. K. Browne. It was promptly withdrawn from pub­li­ca­tion, and is now, as a necessary consequence, much sought after by the collector.[10] Of it the author of Charles Dickens, the Story of his Life, writes:

A very remarkable [portrait] was etched about 1837 with the name “Phiz” at the foot. It represents Dickens {28} seated on a chair and holding a portfolio. In the background a Punch-and-Judy performance is going on. The face has none of that delicacy and softness about it which are observable in the Maclise portrait. It looks, however, more like the real young face of the older man, as revealed in the photograph now publishing [i.e. just after Dickens’s death]. This portrait is very rare, and it is understood that it was withdrawn from pub­li­ca­tion soon after it appeared. Mr. Hablot K. Browne, the genuine “Phiz,” denies all knowledge of it.

[10] Since writing this, I have experienced a piece of scurvy luck. Entering a shop in the outskirts of Birmingham, I saw an impression of the etching lying on a table. I inquired its price and was met by the answer that it had just been sold to a lady for eighteenpence!

The Hotten memoir thus whets the appetites of its readers, but does not offer to satisfy them by a re­pro­duc­tion. This obvious duty I therefore here take the opportunity of discharging, and would advise the book-hunter to make a mental note of the etching in that pix of the brain where is secreted the reagent which separates the rare gold of the bookseller’s threepenny box from its too ordinary dross. The re­pro­duc­tion here given is about the size of the original etching.

So much for the suppressed portrait. Now let us take up our first edition of Pickwick, and say what has to be said about the much-discussed Buss plates and their substitutes.

The suppressed portrait of Charles Dickens

Pickwick, as we all know, was first published in parts, and only one number had appeared when {29} Robert Seymour, its illustrator, died by his own hand. Messrs. Chapman and Hall, the publishers, were at their wits’ end to get the new number il­lus­trat­ed in time for pub­li­ca­tion. Jackson, the well-known wood-engraver, who was at the time working for them, proposed for the task R. W. Buss, a “gentleman already well known to the public as a very humorous and talented artist.” The publishers gladly adopted the suggestion, and the appointment was made.

All this we find very fully set out in Mr. Percy Fitzgerald’s History of Pickwick, to which I would refer the reader who is anxious to acquaint himself with details of the transaction. The Buss etchings, which we here reproduce, had for their subjects “The Cricket Match” and “Tupman and Rachel,” and are to be found respectively opposite pp. 69 and 74 of the earliest issues of the first edition of the immortal romance. They were, in the words of the artist himself, “abominably bad,” and he was immediately superseded as illustrator by H. K. Browne, who was destined to be inseparably connected with the novelist’s work for so long a period. {30}

This episode has been so often dwelt upon, and so exhaustively dealt with, that I shall not do much more than point out how those who have written on the subject have altogether missed what is perhaps the most important link in the whole chain of cir­cum­stances. So put to it, as I have said, were the publishers to get the new number out in time lest an expectant public should be disappointed, that they were forced to fix upon Seymour’s substitute without consulting Dickens. This was really the whole crux of the situation. The author only recognised the failure of the plates. He knew nothing of the difficulties under which Buss had laboured, and so naturally made no allowances, and knew of no reason why subsequent ones should be better. The plates unquestionably were poor, but we find from Mr. Buss’s own private MS., to which, by his son’s kindness, I have had access, that this was not by any means mainly the fault of the artist. He had previously had no experience in etching, and only undertook the work after much pressure, to accommodate the publishers. To quote from his own account: {31}

The “Pickwick” suppressed plate: “The Cricket Match.”(By R. W. Buss)

At Seymour’s death, Hall engaged me to il­lus­trate Charles Dickens’s Pickwick. I commenced practice, and worked hard, I may say day and night, for at least a month on etching, and I furnished the illus­tra­tions for Pickwick. Without any reason assigned, Hall broke his engagement with me, in a manner at once unjust and unhandsome.

As a matter of fact, the plates, as they appeared, were not etched by Buss at all, but by a professional etcher after his designs. And it is curious to note that each of the plates is, not­with­stand­ing, inscribed, “Drawn & Etch’d by R. W. Buss.”

The artist’s bitterness against his employers was not unnatural. At the same time, we must remember that the fact that they had on the spur of the moment to decide upon an artist, without consulting Dickens, puts the matter in a very different light. The fortunes of the venture were at stake. The author, at all hazards, must be humoured. His will was paramount, and when he insisted upon Buss’s supersession by H. K. Browne, there was practically an end of the matter. Happily Buss’s labour was not all lost, and it was with much pleasure that I seized the opportunity offered me by the editor of the {32} Magazine of Art in June 1902, to point out in that pub­li­ca­tion how perverse has been the fate which has made the name of an artist of no mean order more familiar by his few failures than by his many successes. It is not generally known that there are in existence two etched plates by Buss showing that he contemplated a series of extra illus­tra­tions to Pickwick. The one is a title-page with Mr. Pickwick being crowned; the other is rather a poor rendering of “The Break-down.”

But to return to the plates themselves: only about seven hundred copies were published when plates by Browne were substituted for them. “The Cricket Match” was wholly suppressed, and the subject of “Tupman and Rachel” was etched over again, considerably altered, but evidently founded upon the Buss plate. The latter is here reproduced for the purpose of comparison.

The “Pickwick” suppressed plate “Tupman and Rachel.”(By R. W. Buss)

“Tupman and Rachel.” (By H. K. Browne)

That every Dickens collector desires to possess one of the seven hundred copies of the first issue of the first edition which contain the Buss plates, is a matter of course, and enough has been said to make clear the reason of such desire. Should any of my readers fail to sympathise, he must take {33} it as an incontrovertible sign that he is immune from that most delightful of all diseases, bibliomania.

It need only be added that, in the beautiful “Victorian Edition” of the novel, published in two volumes by Messrs. Chapman and Hall in 1887, facsimiles may be seen of the original drawings made for the suppressed plates, as well as two unpublished drawings prepared by Mr. Buss, but not used. The subjects of these are “Mr. Pickwick at the Review,” and “Mr. Wardle and his Friends under the Influence of the Salmon.” The first is an excellent drawing, and goes far to prove that, had Buss been given time, he would have no more failed as illustrator of Pickwick than he did as illustrator of various other most successful pub­li­ca­tions. The same edition also contains facsimiles of an unused drawing by “Phiz,” “Mr. Winkle’s First Shot,” and of a water-colour drawing of “Tom Smart and the Chair,” sent in to the publishers by John Leech as a specimen of his work. From which it will be seen that the “Victorian Edition,” limited to two thousand copies, is also one which every Dickens lover ought, if possible, to possess. {34}

The originals of the Buss drawings were in the possession of the artist’s daughter, Miss Frances Mary Buss, the well-known founder of the North London Collegiate and Camden Schools, until her death a few years ago. They were then sold, and I have been unable to discover into whose hands they have passed.

So much for the Pickwick suppressed plates, which, if strict chronology were to be observed, should naturally be followed by an account of the “Rose Maylie and Oliver” plates in Oliver Twist. These, however, we shall hold over for another chapter, as they will have to be considered at some length. Meanwhile, we will deal shortly with the curious wood engraving in The Battle of Life, and with the etching of “The Last Song” in The Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. The former is so far germane to our subject that it should have been suppressed, but, out of con­sid­er­ation for the artist, was not.

The Battle of Life. “Leech’s grave mistake”

Every Dickens collector desires to possess the complete set of the “Christmas Books” in their dainty red cloth bindings, dated from 1843 to 1848. A really desirable set includes, of course, {36} the Christmas Carol,[11] with coloured plates by Leech, with the green end-papers and “stave 1”; The Chimes, with the publishers’ names within the engraved part of the title-page; and The Battle of Life, with the publishers’ names on both titles. But it is only the last of these that is entitled to mention in a treatise on cancelled illus­tra­tions, and that, as I have said, not because it was suppressed, but because it should have been.

[11] It may be mentioned that there are two or three copies of the Christmas Carol known with the title-page and half-title printed in green and red, instead of in red and blue. Much store is laid by this variation amongst really moonstruck collectors.

By those who are familiar with the story it will be remembered that an early part of the plot leads one to suppose that Marion Jeddler had eloped with Michael Warden, when, as a matter of fact, she had merely escaped to her aunt. Leech, who was engaged as illustrator, was immensely busy, and only read so much of the story as seemed necessary for his purpose. As a result he was deceived, as Dickens intended his readers should be, and designed the double illus­tra­tion here reproduced, in which the festivities to welcome the bridegroom at the top of the page {37} contrast with the flight of the bride in company with Michael Warden represented below. Thus was Dickens curiously “hoist with his own petard.” And the curious thing is that, not­with­stand­ing the publicity given to the mistake in Forster’s Life of Dickens, this tragic woodcut, which wrongs poor Marion’s innocence and makes a hash of the whole story, is reproduced in the reprints up to this very day. The poor girl’s tragic figure remains, and seems likely to continue to do so, a victim to the stereotype.

This episode is generally referred to as “Leech’s grave mistake,” and grave undoubtedly it was; but the matter has its bright side, which redounds to the credit of the great novelist. I take the liberty of quoting from what has always seemed to me a very noble letter when we remember that Dickens was of all men most sensitive to any shortcomings in the work of his collaborators. He writes to Forster:

When I first saw it it was with a horror and agony not to be expressed. Of course I need not tell you, my dear fellow, Warden has no business in the elopement scene. He was never there. In the first hot sweat of this surprise and novelty I was going to implore the printing of that sheet to {38} be stopped, and the figure taken out of the block. But when I thought of the pain that this might give to our kind-hearted Leech, and that what is such a monstrous enormity to me, as never having entered my brain, may not so present itself to others, I became more composed, though the fact is wonderful to me.

Of course, had it been in these days of hurried pub­li­ca­tion, Dickens would hardly have given the matter a second thought. The average illustrator of to-day is curiously superior to the requirements of his author. He either does not read the episodes that he is called upon to il­lus­trate, or, if he reads them, he does not grasp their meaning, or, if he grasps their meaning, the meaning does not meet with his approval. At any rate, he constantly makes a hash of the whole thing. Take for example Penelope’s English Experiences, by Miss Kate Wiggin, now lying before me. Look at the illus­tra­tion, opposite p. 58, of Lady de Wolfe’s butler, who struck terror into Penelope’s soul because he did not wear a livery, and try, if you can, to recognise him in the shoulder-knotted, stripe-waistcoated, plush-breeched, silk-stockinged menial with an “unapproachable haughtiness of demeanour,” which the illustrator has portrayed. {39} Nor is this one of a few exceptional cases: their number might be multiplied ad infinitum.

But to return to The Battle of Life. Curiously enough, there is another little episode connected with this book, never, I believe, noticed before, which accentuates our impression of the generosity of Dickens’s character.

Three years after its pub­li­ca­tion a somewhat scurrilous little volume (now excessively rare), bearing the allusive title The Battle of London Life; or Boz and his Secretary, issued from the press. It was il­lus­trat­ed by six lithographs signed with the name of George Augustus Sala. It was a poor enough performance, but attracted attention by its ad captandum title, and the portrait of “Boz in his Study.” It is an imaginary and far from complimentary account of Dickens’s employment of a secretary, whose occupation it is to show him round the haunts of vice in London, by way of providing “local colour” for the novels. Eventually the secretary turns out to be a detective, who has been told off by the Government to discover the nature of the novelist’s intimacy with the revolutionist, Mazzini. It is a vulgar little {40} brochure, and, for all its futility, must have been very distasteful to the idol of the day. It was therefore the more magnanimous of Dickens to ignore the part which Sala had in it, and to speak so generously of him as we find him doing in the Life, besides employing him and pushing him, as he did largely later on, in his periodicals. A smaller man would not have allowed himself to forget such youthful indiscretions, for “memory always obeys the commands of the heart.”

Judged as a work of art, The Battle of Life is perhaps the least successful of Dickens’s “Christmas Books.” Edward FitzGerald’s opinion of it was shown in an autograph letter which came into the market only the other day. “What a wretched affair is The Battle of Life!” he writes; “it scarce even has the few good touches that generally redeem Dickens.”

“The Last Song” with the suppressed border. (By George Cruikshank)

Whilst we are on the subject of an illus­tra­tion which should have been suppressed but was not, it should be pointed out that this was not the only occasion upon which Leech misunderstood Dickens’s purport. This we learn from Mr. F. G. Kitton’s monumental work, Dickens and {41} his Illustrators. Here he tells us that in another Christmas book, The Chimes, Leech delineated, in place of Richard as described in the text, an extremely ragged and dissipated-looking character, with a battered hat upon his head. When the novelist saw it the drawing had already been engraved, but the woodcut was promptly suppressed; there still exists, however, an impression of the cancelled engraving, which is bound up with what is evidently a unique copy of The Chimes (now the property of Mr. J. P. Dexter), where blank spaces are left for some of the woodcuts. This particular copy is probably the publishers’ “make-up,” which had accidentally left their hands.

Let us now consider for a moment a very remarkable etching which was, so far only as regards an important portion of it, cancelled in all but the very first issue of The Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. These were published in two volumes in 1838. Besides writing the preface, Dickens was only responsible for the editing of Mr. Egerton Wilks’s manuscript, which had been prepared from autobiographical notes. A good deal of fault was found with the work, particularly {42} on the ground that Dickens himself could never have seen Grimaldi. To this he very pertinently replied, “I don’t believe that Lord Braybrooke had more than the very slightest acquaintance with Mr. Pepys, whose memoirs he edited two centuries after he died!”[12]

The volumes are now most valued for the twelve etchings by George Cruikshank; but the important thing from the bibliolater’s point of view is to possess the earliest issue with “The Last Song” surrounded by a grotesque border. This border, which is here produced, was removed from the plate after the first issue of the first edition. I have just had offered to me a copy of this edition containing “The Last Song” in the two states, i.e. with and without the border, for the modest sum of eight guineas!

[12] My attention was lately called to a copy of the memoirs in which the former owner had pasted the following amusingly irrelevant note:—“At the Beckford sale a copy of the famous Grimm—the Grimm with the illus­tra­tions printed in bronze-coloured ink—fetched £64.” I have a very shrewd suspicion that the annotator had an un­me­thod­i­cal brain, and believed Grimm to be short for Grimaldi! Requiescat in pace.

CHAPTER IV DICKENS CANCELLED PLATES: “OLIVER TWIST,” “MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT,” “THE STRANGE GENTLEMAN,” “PICTURES FROM ITALY,” AND “SKETCHES BY BOZ.”

IN dealing with the episode of the suppressed plate in Oliver Twist we must be careful to bear in mind the fact that between the pub­li­ca­tion of Pickwick and the later novel there was an essential difference. The former was first published in self-contained parts, whereas the latter was published serially in Bentley’s Miscellany. Hence, the first editions of Pickwick in book form are to be met with bound from the parts, whereas the first editions in book-form of Oliver Twist are only to be found as issued by the publishers complete in three volumes. And unless we grasp this distinction at the outset we shall find it impossible to understand the apparently erratic appearance and disappearance {44} of the suppressed plate of “Rose Maylie and Oliver: the Fireside Scene” and its substitute.

The first instalment of the novel was published in the second number of Bentley’s Miscellany, February 1837, and it continued to run for nearly two years and a quarter. From this it will be seen that the last instalment of the novel was not published until three months of the year 1839 had elapsed.

In the meantime, however, the novel and the illus­tra­tions had been completed, and the whole story was printed in book form and published in three volumes in the second year of its serial issue, the exact date being November 9, 1838.

As a consequence we shall find the following curious result—namely, that the owners of the very earliest issue of Oliver Twist find themselves not in the happy possession of the suppressed plate, as would be naturally expected, but in the melancholy possession of its exceedingly ugly substitute.

This, to the uninitiated, would prove as great a puzzle as to Macaulay’s New Zealander would appear the fact that in Truro Cathedral the older {45} structure is of a later style than the new. But this is comparing small things with great. For we are fain to confess that, unlike the law, de minimis curat helluo librorum.

Thus, then, we have to face this apparent anomaly, that, to possess a copy of Oliver Twist with brightest impressions of the etchings throughout, we are under the necessity of combining the early plates from Bentley’s Miscellany with the later plates from the first edition published in volume form. This not uninteresting fact I may, I believe, claim to be the first to point out, and it goes far to explain a very misleading note on p. 151 of Reid’s monumental Catalogue of George Cruikshank’s Works, which shows clearly that the late Keeper of the Prints was greatly at sea in the matter.

Referring to the “Fireside Scene,” he says: “The plate was used in 1838, when the work reappeared in three volumes, in lieu of the preceding (‘Rose Maylie and Oliver at Agnes’s Tomb’), which was thought by the publisher to be of too melancholy a nature for the conclusion of the story.” From which any casual reader would be {46} led to the conclusion that “Rose Maylie and Oliver at the Tomb” was the suppressed plate, and that the “Fireside Scene” was substituted for it, whereas exactly the opposite was the case.

The novel was ready for pub­li­ca­tion complete in three volumes in the autumn of 1838. The illus­tra­tions for the last volume had been somewhat hastily executed “in a lump.” And Dickens, who always was most solicitous about the work of his collaborating artists, did not set eyes upon them until the eve of pub­li­ca­tion. One of them, “The Fireside Scene,” he so strongly objected to that it had to be cancelled, and he wrote to the artist asking him to design “the plate afresh and to do so at once, in order that as few impressions as possible of the present one may go forth.”[13] The pub­li­ca­tion of the book, however, could not be delayed, and thus we have it that the earliest issue of the first edition of Oliver Twist in book-form contains the “Fireside Scene” opposite p. 313, vol. iii., which it is the desire of every Dickens collector to possess, while the later issue of the latter part of the novel in Bentley’s Miscellany {47} contains that which Cruikshank substituted for it at the novelist’s request.

Both the plates are here reproduced for the convenience of the owner of this or that edition.

But this is not all that has to be said upon the subject of the “Rose and Oliver” plates, and again I claim to be the purveyor of a little exclusive information.[14]

It has generally been supposed that Cruikshank, although naturally put about by Dickens’s disapproval, did immediately proceed to carry out his author’s suggestion. For example, we find Mr. Francis Phillimore, in his introduction to the Dickens Memento, published by Messrs. Field and Tuer, saying: “The author was so disgusted with the last plate that he politely but forcibly asked Cruikshank to etch another. This was done at once.” I am, however, in a position to prove that this was emphatically not the case. And it is what one would naturally expect, for George was the last person in the world to acquiesce calmly and unhesitatingly in the condemnation of work which he had himself deemed sufficiently good. {48}

In the year 1892 I had the privilege of examining the splendid collection of Mr. H. W. Bruton, of Gloucester, which has since been dispersed. On that occasion he drew my attention to a unique impression of the “Fireside” plate in his possession, from which we (he was the first to see the point) drew the necessary conclusion which follows. The importance of the impression lies in the fact that it shows that a large amount of added work had been put into the plate, principally of a stipply nature, after all the impressions which had so displeased Dickens had been struck off. By which it is evident that George tried hard to improve the original plate instead of at once falling in with the suggestion that the subject should be designed afresh. This proof was probably submitted to Dickens and again rejected, for no impressions of the plate with stippled additions are known to have been published.[15] And plainly it was only after considerable effort to make the plate do, that the artist designed the {49} far worse picture of “Rose Maylie and Oliver before the Tomb of Agnes,” which is a questionable adornment to the later issues of the story. And had it not been for the delay so caused, it is more than probable that the suppressed plate would have been even a greater rarity than it actually is.

[13] Vide Forster, Life of Charles Dickens, vol. i. p. 101. (Library Edition.)

[14] I first alluded to this in Temple Bar for September 1892.

[15] It need hardly be said that if any of my readers finds that his copy contains “The Fireside Scene” differing from the first of those here produced, he may congratulate himself on the possession of a great rarity.

As I have said above, Mr. Bruton’s collection was dispersed in 1897 at Sotheby’s. No. 145 in that sale was an unrivalled run of the Oliver Twist illus­tra­tions, seeing that it consisted of a complete set of proofs of the etchings, and included, with other rarities, the unique proof just mentioned. The lot sold for £32:10s. By the kindness of its late owner, I am enabled to present to my readers a re­pro­duc­tion of this unique impression of the plate in its second state.

So much then for the story of the suppressed plate. There is, however, something more to be said of its substitute.

If we turn to our edition of Oliver Twist, so long as it does not happen to be one published subsequently to 1845, or one containing the suppressed plate, we shall find Rose standing with her {50} arm on Oliver’s shoulder before a tablet put up to his mother’s memory, and we shall find that Rose’s dress is light in colour save for a dark shawl or lace fichu, which is thrown across her shoulders and bosom. In the 1846 edition of the book, the plate has been largely touched up and shaded, and Rose’s dress turned into a black one.[16] Now, it is perfectly evident that it is the old plate altered and used over again and not a new plate copied from the old, for every line and every dot in the illus­tra­tion to the earlier editions reappears in this. The perplexing matter that I have to draw your attention to, however, is that, in the same lot (145) at the Bruton sale mentioned above, there was sold a proof of this plate with Rose Maylie in the black dress, and this a proof before letters, an impossible nut for the amateur to crack who does not know that the lettering of plates may be stopped-out or burnished away or covered up for the striking off of misleading impressions; from which the moral may be drawn that it is better to believe in proof impressions after letters where they are well {52} authenticated, than to presume that a proof is before letters merely because those letters do not appear. Verb. sat sap. The plate in this state is here reproduced for the sake of comparison.

[16] The dress is also black in a reprint of the first edition published by Messrs. Macmillan in 1892, and in the large edition with the illus­tra­tions coloured, published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall in 1895.

Before passing from Oliver Twist, it should be pointed out that the first issue of 1838, which contains the suppressed plate, is also differentiated from the second issue of the same year by what is sometimes alluded to as the “suppressed title-page,” which runs as follows:—“Oliver Twist; / or, the / ‘Parish Boy’s Pro­gress;’ / by ‘Boz,’ / in three vol­umes, / Vol. I (II. or III.) / Lon­don: / Richard Bent­ley, New Bur­ling­ton Street. / — — / 1838.”

The second issue, with the substituted plate, has:—“Oliver Twist / By / Charles Dickens, / Author of ‘The Pick­wick Pa­pers,’” the rest of the title being as in the first. It is curious to notice, further, that in a later edition the original title is resumed.

So much for Oliver Twist. We must not, however, quit Dickens without mentioning one or two other items, which more or less of right find their place in a treatise on “Suppressed Plates.” {53}

There is, for example, the etched title-page to the first issue of the first edition of Martin Chuzzlewit, where the reward on the direction post appears as “100£” instead of “£100,” which is often wrongly labelled “suppressed.” As a matter of fact it was not suppressed at all. It is nothing more than the first state of a plate which was afterwards altered. However, the bait is so valuable a one with which to entice the bibliomaniac, that there is no prospect of the description being lightly relinquished, and as it is one object of this treatise to protect the unwary, allusion to it is not out of place. The fact that it is the title-page issued after the book had appeared serially with its forty illus­tra­tions, disposes of any lingering idea that in acquiring it we are assured of the possession of early impressions of the other plates. But the undiscriminating bibliomaniac requires no logical justification, and the plate will still retain its market value.

A like variation is to be found in a well-known etching by George Cruikshank, entitled “The Worship of Wealth.” The head of Mammon is represented by a small money-bag, and the {54} features of the face by the letters GOLD. Of this plate only one state was known until in a happy moment one of our best-known collectors discovered and secured a unique proof with all the letters printed in reverse, thus:—

—a triumph which only the true dilettante will appreciate at its proper value.

Another variation of the same kind is to be found in the first and second issues of Pine’s beautiful edition of Horace (1733), in which the text is engraved throughout. In the first there is the misprint “Post est” on the medal of Cæsar. In the second “Potest” has been substituted. Copies containing the mistake fetch twice as much in the market as those containing the correction! This is, however, justifiable, as the mistake connotes an early set of impressions.

The Strange Gentleman

Another Dickens plate demanding mention is the exceedingly rare etched frontispiece by “Phiz,” to be found in only a few copies of The Strange {55} Gentleman, published in 1837 by Messrs. Chapman and Hall. This “Comic Burletta” was founded upon “The Great Winglebury Duel,” in Sketches by Boz, and was first performed at the St. James’s Theatre in September 1836. A second edition was {56} published in 1860 with a coloured etching by Mr. F. W. Pailthorpe, the last illustrator to carry on the tradition of Cruikshank and H. K. Browne. The “Phiz” etching is here reproduced. Even the second edition is extremely rare, and readily sells for between two and three pounds. The reason for the disappearance of the “Phiz” plate is not known, and I only give particulars of it here because of its excessive rarity, and because it is constantly referred to as “suppressed,” though with no strict justification. The British Museum copy of the book only contains Mr. Pailthorpe’s frontispiece, but a copy with the “Phiz” plate is to be found in the Forster Library, South Kensington.

Then, again, we have Dickens’s Pictures from Italy, published by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans in 1846, with the beautiful “vignette illus­tra­tions on the wood,” by that master engraver, Samuel Palmer. For some reason or other that representing “The Street of the Tombs, Pompeii,” on the title-page, disappears after the exhaustion of the first and second editions, both published in the same year. It reappears, however, in the late {57} reprint of 1888, and is also only here alluded to because sometimes referred to as “suppressed.”

The suppressed plate from “Sketches by Boz”

The last of the Dickens illus­tra­tions germane to our subject is that much-desired etching of “The Free and Easy,” which should be found opposite page 29 of the “second series” of Sketches by Boz. Both the first and second series were originally published in 1836. In 1839 another edition appeared with all the etchings to the original edition enlarged (except “The Free and Easy,” which was cancelled), and with thirteen additional plates. An edition on the lines of the first issue of the second series, only with the illus­tra­tions in lithography, was published in Calcutta in 1837.

It is important, in collating the first editions of the Sketches, to bear in mind the fact that the first series was in two volumes and the second in one. Otherwise it is impossible to understand why “Vol. III.” is engraved on each of the plates in the second series. As showing how eagerly these volumes in fine condition, and of course uncut and in the original cloth binding, are sought after, it may be mentioned that thirty pounds is by no means an unheard-of price. {58}

Unfortunately the plates will in most cases be found to be badly foxed. The tissue of the paper itself has in many cases been attacked by damp and rotted right through.

In such cases any remedy except the drastic one of punching is of course out of the question. Hence the rarity of a really “desirable” set of the plates,—a rarity which is largely due to the hoarding away of books in glass cases; for books require fresh, dry air, with the rest of God’s creatures.

It may not be out of place here, whilst on the subject of foxing, to warn the collector that every plate in a book should be carefully examined before any extravagant price is given for what is called a fine copy. No doubt we are much indebted to the clever “doctors” of prints who punch the fatal spots out and pulp them in, who fill up the worm-holes and vamp up the cleaned prints with green-wood smoke and coffee infusions to a respectable appearance of age. At the same time we must never allow ourselves to forget that there are such occupations as vamping and “improving,” and that it is not for vamped and improved copies that we should pay excessive prices.

CHAPTER V ON SOME FURTHER SUPPRESSED PLATES, ETCHINGS, AND WOOD ENGRAVINGS BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK

IN Chapter III. we have incidentally considered the suppressed grotesque border to the etching of “The Last Song” by George Cruikshank in the Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. In this chapter we shall treat of certain other sup­pres­sions to which the “inimitable” George’s work was subjected.

The first to which I shall direct your attention has a curious and romantic history attaching to it, instinct with the rough and brutal methods of our immediate ancestors. It is a highly-coloured etched broadside published in 1815, the very year of the tragic death of the gifted and ill-fated Gillray, whose mantle, as political caricaturist, was now fallen upon his brilliant young contemporary. {60} These were the days of hard hitting, of reckless charges, of imprisonment for libel, of dramatic political episodes, and the wonder is that George Cruikshank escaped the fates of the Burdetts, the Hones, and the Hobhouses of the period. The fact is that George was a very shrewd young man and had a very shrewd idea of how far it was safe to go. Indeed, in this partially suppressed cartoon we find him upon the very verge of recklessness and only drawing back from danger just in the nick of time.

I have spoken of the partial sup­pres­sion of this broadside, and in this partial cancellation it is differentiated from all others with which we have hitherto dealt. Brutal enough as is the satire as we see it, there is a brutality curiously hidden within, which, unsuspected by the uninitiated, proves to what astounding lengths satire of that period was sometimes ready to go.

Before dealing in detail with this “Financial Survey of Cumberland or the Beggar’s Petition” it will be as well to relate the cir­cum­stances which led up to its perpetration.

Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, born {61} 1771, was perhaps the best hated of all the royal personages of the period then in England, and this not­with­stand­ing the fact that he was a man of conspicuous bravery. He was, for a few years after Queen Victoria’s accession, next heir to the throne of England. Later he ascended the throne of Hanover under the regulations of the Salic law, and gained the affection of his people, proving himself a wise and beneficent ruler. Probably William IV. put his character into a nutshell when he said: “Ernest is not such a bad fellow, but if any one has a corn he is sure to tread on it.”

However that may be, there is no doubt that there is hardly a crime in the whole decalogue which was not at one time or another laid at his door, and not the least among these was the crime of murder.

To quote the succinct account of this affair given in the Dictionary of National Biography:—“On the night of 31st May 1810 the duke was found in his apartments in St. James’s Palace with a terrible wound in his head, which would have been mortal had not the assassin’s weapon struck against the duke’s sword. Shortly afterwards his {62} valet, Sellis,[17] was found dead in his bed with his throat cut. On hearing the evidence of the surgeons and other witnesses, the coroner’s jury returned a verdict that Sellis had committed suicide after attempting to assassinate the duke. The absence of any reasonable motive... caused this event to be greatly discussed, and democratic journalists did not hesitate to hint that he really murdered Sellis.” One of these, Henry White, was sentenced in 1815 to fifteen months’ imprisonment and a fine of £200 for publishing the rumour. The story again cropped up in 1832, when the duke had made himself particularly obnoxious to the radical press, and was exploited by a pamphleteer named Phillips. The duke prosecuted him, and he was promptly found guilty and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.

[17] Not Serres, as Reid has it in his descriptive account of Cruikshank’s works. The keeper of the prints evidently confused the name of the valet with that of Mrs. Olive Serres, who later on called herself Princess Olive of Cumberland, and claimed to be the duke’s legitimate daughter.

Not­with­stand­ing this, there was little abatement in the persecution of the duke. Even Lord Brougham in the House of Lords sneeringly called {63} him to his face “the illustrious duke—illustrious only by courtesy.” I take up a few consecutive numbers of that venomous little contemporary paper, Figaro in London, and find week by week some very plain speaking. Here are a few examples:—

“That he’s ne’er known to change his mind Is surely nothing strange; For no one ever yet could find He’d any mind to change.”

Again:—

“He boasts about the truth, I’ve heard, And vows he’d never break it; Why zounds a man must keep his word When nobody will take it.”

Again, referring to a youth dressed à la Prince de Cumberland, who had been brought up at Bow Street charged with being an expert pickpocket, Figaro says: “A similarity to the Duke of Cumberland is a very serious matter, and in the opinion of Mr. Halls (the police magistrate) quite sufficient to entitle any one to a couple of months’ imprisonment, as a common thief or an incorrigible vagabond.”

Again:— {64}

“INQUEST EXTRAORDINARY

Again:—“The new piece announced at Drury Lane under the title of The Dæmon Duke or The Mystic Branch has no reference whatever to his Royal Highness of Cumberland.”

But these might be multiplied almost to infinity. The examples quoted make it sufficiently plain why it was that the Whig Cabinet of the day felt it advisable to hurry on our late Queen’s marriage.

So much for a general review of the duke’s career. We will now return to the year 1815 and the pub­li­ca­tion of the broadside with which we are more particularly concerned.

The duke had just announced his intention of marrying the Princess of Salm, who had been twice a widow. The Prince Regent had raised no objection, but the Queen, who had a rooted aversion to second marriages, made no secret of her disapproval. The country, too, was indignant, because another royal marriage spelt, in accordance with what was now the ordinary usage, a further burden upon the exchequer.

“A Financial Survey of Cumberland or the Beggars Petition.” (From the only known uncoloured impression of the Plate)

“A Financial Survey of Cumberland or the Beggars Petition.” (From the only known uncoloured impression of the Plate)

“A Financial Survey of Cumberland or the Beggars Petition.” (From a coloured impression of the plate, with the figure of the valet obliterated with lamp-black)

“A Financial Survey of Cumberland or the Beggars Petition.” (From a coloured impression of the plate, with the figure of the valet obliterated with lamp-black)

{65}

On July 3 the proposal was made in the Commons to increase the duke’s pension of £18,000 a year, which he held in addition to his salary of £3000 a year as Colonel of the 1st Hussars, by £6000. The House was equally divided on the vote, when a dramatic incident occurred. Lord Cochrane, heir to the Dundonald peerage, and a member of the House of Commons, had, in the previous year, been wrongfully found guilty of participation in a Stock Exchange fraud and had been imprisoned. On this very 3rd day of July he was released from prison, and immediately repaired to Westminster. The House was at that moment going to a division. His lordship entered just in time to record his casting vote against the increase of the duke’s pension, and thus by an ex­traor­di­nary coincidence the duke was the poorer and the country the richer by £6000 a year.

This is the moment seized by Cruikshank in the broadside here reproduced. Before the half-open door of “St. Stephen’s,” behind which is seen a crowd of members, Lord Cochrane fires, from a mortar decorated with a full-bottomed wig, a {66} cannon-ball labelled “casting vote.” This, striking the duke full in the rear, drives him towards a bank on which stand three grenadiers, the Princess of Salm (recognisable by the flag which she carries, labelled “Psalms”) and her little boy, who sings—

My daddy is a grenadier And he’s pleas’d my Mammy O, With his long swoard and broadswoard And his bayonet so handy O.

The duke, from whose hand falls his petition, and whose head is adorned with a cuckold’s horns, cries aloud, “Pity the sorrow of a poor young man”; whilst Cochrane thunders out, “No, no, we’ll have no petitions here. Do you thint (sic) we are not up to your hoaxing, cadging tricks? You vagrant, do you think we’ll believe all you say or swear? Do you think that your services or your merits will do you any good here? If you do, I can tell you from experience that you are cursedly mistaken. So set off and don’t show your ugly face here again. If you do, shiver my timbers if I don’t send you to Ellenborough Castle: aye, aye, my boy, I’ll clap you in the grated chamber, where there’s neither door, window, {67} onr (sic) fireplace. I’ll put you in the Stocks! I’ll put you in the Pillory! I’ll fine you. I’ll, I’ll play hell with you! D—— me, I think I have just come in time to give you a shot between wind and water.”

On the ground below the flying duke lie documents recording his pensions and salaries.

No wonder, you will say, that such a scandalous attack upon a personage so near the throne should be suppressed with a high hand. The marvel is that artist and publisher should have escaped the fate of Henry White and the pamphleteer Phillips. But you will be more surprised than ever when you learn that not only did artist and publisher go scot-free, but that the plate, so far from being suppressed, was published and scattered broadcast amongst the people without protest.

Why, then, it will be asked, does it take its place in a treatise on suppressed plates? I will tell you.

Do you not notice in the darker impression of the plate here reproduced—darker because the original has been painted—that such perspective as the picture has is destroyed by a great black blot {68} which reaches from the feet of the three soldiers right down to the path in the right-hand lower corner of the design? Well, that great black blot covers what would have inevitably landed George Cruikshank and Mr. W. N. Jones of 5 Newgate Street, publisher, in a larger building higher up the same street, if it had not been for a happy afterthought of Mr. W. N. Jones, which took shape in a liberal use of lamp-black.[18]

On the space so covered the reckless George, unmindful of the fate of Henry White, had etched the scantily clothed figure of the unhappy valet Sellis, with bleeding throat, crying aloud, “Is this a razor that I see before me? Thou canst not say I did it.”

[18] This use of lamp-black has its parallel in the case of one of the tailpieces to Bewick’s Birds, in the first edition of which an apprentice was employed to veil certain indelicacies with a coat of ink. Unfortunately, from want of density, the colouring rather serves to accentuate than hide the offending details. In the next edition a plug was inserted in the block and two bars of wood engraved in the interests of decency.

After but one or two proofs had been pulled, George and his publisher would seem to have become appalled at their temerity, and the plate was only issued coloured and with the peccant {69} figure blotted out. For many years I hoped and hoped in vain to come across an uncoloured proof displaying the hidden figure. But it was not until 1905 that I was fortunate enough to light upon the probably unique proof here reproduced, which had passed out of the Bruton collection into that of the omnivorous collector, the late Edwin Truman.

For the sake of those who have preserved the valuable catalogue of the sale in 1897 of the Bruton collection of the works of George Cruikshank, it should be observed that Reid’s misnomer of the valet to which I have drawn attention above has been there repeated.

So much, then, for the partially suppressed broadside of 1815, which incidentally may be looked upon as the forerunner of the blottesque censorship of Russian newspapers. We will now pass on to another broadside which was not only suppressed in full, but of which the copies that had already been sold were assiduously bought up.

The cir­cum­stances surrounding this plate are by no means so dramatic as those with which we have last dealt. At the same time, by means of it we obtain one of those sharp contrasts in political {70} moods and tenses which pleasurably tickle the imagination. We learn how little is absolute in life, how much is relative. We realise how the reactionary of to-day may have been the reformer of yesterday. In a word, we see in this most conservative member of the Russell administration of 1846–1852 and of the Coalition of 1853, in this complacent recipient of the peerage of Broughton de Gyfford and the Grand Cross of the Bath, in this happy husband of a Marquis’s daughter,—we see, I say, in this Tory nobleman of the ’fifties the irreconcilable John Cam Hobhouse of the early years of the century, committed to Newgate for breach of privilege, the author of the subversive Letters to an Englishman, and the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Parliament of the Westminster mobocracy.

“A Trifling Mistake”——Corrected——

“A Trifling Mistake”——Corrected——

“A Trifling Mistake”——Corrected——[detail for epub/mobi editions]

In Cruikshank’s broadside here reproduced the future President of the Board of Control is represented twirling his thumbs in enforced retirement and with full leisure to repent of his indiscretions. Above the mantelpiece rep­re­sen­ta­tions of St. Stephen’s and Newgate are placed in sharp contrast. Below the last a former occupant of the {72} cell has scratched a rude gibbet. The grate is empty. On the table stand an empty pewter pot and pipe. On the wall is seen a long quotation from his anonymous pamphlet A Trifling Mistake, for which he has been committed to prison. This, with a barbed addition, gives the title to the broadside itself. The quotation runs:—