THE LIFE OF GEORGE CRUIKSHANK,

VOL. I. (of II)

The Life Of George Cruikshank In Two Epochs

By Blanchard Jerrold

With Numerous Illustrations

1882

"If ever you happen to meet with two volumes of Grimm's 'German Stories,* which were illustrated by Cruikshank long ago, pounce upon them instantly; the etchings in them are the finest things, next to Rembrandt's, that, as far as I know, have been done since etching was invented."—Ruskin.

"All British people, even publicans and distillers, we should hope, have a kindly feeling for George Cruikshank."—W. M. Rossetti.

"Am I stilted or turgid when I paraphrase that which Johnson said of Homer and Milton, in re the Iliad and the Paradise Lost, and say of Hogarth and Cruikshank that George is not the greatest pictorial humourist our country has seen, only because he is not the first?"—Sala's "Life of William Hogarth."

CONTENTS

DEDICATION.

PREFACE.

THE LIFE OF GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. EPOCH I. 1794—1847.

CHAPTER I. TWO EPOCHS.

CHAPTER II. FROM CRANACH TO CRUIKSHANK.

CHAPTER III. CRUIKSHANK'S EARLY DAYS.

CHAPTER IV. CRUIKSHANK AS A POLITICAL CARICATURIST.

CHAPTER V. "LIFE IN LONDON," "LIFE IN PARIS," "POINTS OF HUMOUR," ETC.

CHAPTER VI. HAND-TO-MOUTH WORK.

CHAPTER VII. THREE COURSES AND A DESSERT

CHAPTER VIII. SKETCHES BY BOZ, OLIVER TWIST, AND THE LIFE OF GRIMALDI.

CHAPTER IX. ILLUSTRATIONS TO HARRISON AINSWORTH'S ROMANCES.

CHAPTER X. THE OMNIBUS.

DEDICATION.

TO GUSTAVE DORÉ.

My dear Doré,

When some five-and-twenty years ago we were waiting together, at Boulogne, for the arrival of the Queen, who was on her way to Paris, we spent an evening at the hotel with the late Herbert Ingram, for whom we had undertaken—you to illustrate, and I to describe—the pageant for the "Illustrated London News" It was a pleasant evening, closed by a long moonlight ramble on the sands. While we talked, you, filled a vast sheet of paper with a medley of fancies, squibs, caricatures, and satires, in which public events were jumbled with private jokes; while the great folk, of whose doings we were the chroniclers, were marshalled in procession with our humble selves. I remember the astonishment expressed on Ingram's face when, as we were leaving for our walk and cigar, he glanced over your shoulder at the hosts with which you had peopled the broad page before you. It was a prodigious tour de force,—so curious and complete an emanation of the humorous and satirical part of your genius, that I pardon Ingram for having decamped with it on the morrow morning before we were up.

It is the remembrance of all that sheet contained which has led me to dedicate this record of our friend George Cruikshanks life and work to you. Poring over his etchings and wood drawings, my mind has constantly reverted to your work of the Rabelais, Wandering Jew, and Contes Drôlatiques period; and I have perceived a strong affinity between one aspect of your genius and that of "the inimitable George."

It is to the illustrious illustrator of Rabelais and of Dante that I dedicate these disjecta membra of a life of the illustrator of Grimm, of Oliver Twist, and of Shakespeare's Falstaff.

Accept it, my dear Doré, as a tribute to your genius, but also as a public acknowledgment of your sterling qualities as a friend and of your rare gifts as an intellectual companion.

BLANCHARD JERROLD.

New Year's Day, 1882.

PREFACE.

In the following pages I have endeavoured to present George Cruikshank to the reader—not only as he lived and moved and worked, but also in the light in which he was held by his many friends and his distinguished critics. The artist has been warned by the poet that he should "rest in art." Cruikshank was not of those who needed the warning. He remained heart and soul in his creative work throughout a long career, content to live modestly, and to rest his claim to the respect of the world upon his labours. If his indefatigable industry failed to bring him the fortune which fashion now lavishes upon his inferiors, he was consoled by the fervid admiration of such critics as Thackeray and Ruskin, and other distinguished contemporaries, whose opinions on his genius I have freely given, as the best aids to a thorough estimate of him as an artist.

These volumes should be accepted as mémoires pour servir, as material towards a just judgment of the artist and the man. I am indebted to George Cruikshank's friends for many personal anecdotes, and to my own recollections of him, ranging from my boyhood to his death, for the general outline of the "dear old George," whose humour and eccentricity delighted Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, Thackeray, and their friends for many years. I am indebted to the late Charles Landseer, to Mr. Frederick Locker, the late Mr. W. H. Wills (co-editor with Dickens of Household Words and All the Year Round), Mr. Percival Leigh, the only survivor of the original contributors to Punch, Mr. George Augustus Sala, Dr. B. W. Richardson, the late Mr. Gruneison, Mr. Percy Cruikshank, Cuthbert Bede, and many others, including the gentleman with whom Cruikshank's temperance campaign brought him in contact