George Cruikshank

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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK


By William Makepeace Thackeray



* Reprinted from the Westminster Review for June, 1840. (No 66.)


Accusations of ingratitude, and just accusations no doubt, are made
against every inhabitant of this wicked world, and the fact is, that a
man who is ceaselessly engaged in its trouble and turmoil, borne hither
and thither upon the fierce waves of the crowd, bustling, shifting,
struggling to keep himself somewhat above water--fighting for
reputation, or more likely for bread, and ceaselessly occupied to-day
with plans for appeasing the eternal appetite of inevitable hunger
to-morrow--a man in such straits has hardly time to think of anything
but himself, and, as in a sinking ship, must make his own rush for the
boats, and fight, struggle, and trample for safety. In the midst of such
a combat as this, the "ingenious arts, which prevent the ferocity of
the manners, and act upon them as an emollient" (as the philosophic bard
remarks in the Latin Grammar) are likely to be jostled to death, and
then forgotten. The world will allow no such compromises between it and
that which does not belong to it--no two gods must we serve; but (as one
has seen in some old portraits) the horrible glazed eyes of Necessity
are always fixed upon you; fly away as you will, black Care sits behind
you, and with his ceaseless gloomy croaking drowns the voice of all more
cheerful companions. Happy he whose fortune has placed him where there
is calm and plenty, and who has the wisdom not to give up his quiet in
quest of visionary gain.

Here is, no doubt, the reason why a man, after the period of his
boyhood, or first youth, makes so few friends. Want and ambition (new
acquaintances which are introduced to him along with his beard) thrust
away all other society from him. Some old friends remain, it is true,
but these are become as a habit--a part of your selfishness; and,
for new ones, they are selfish as you are. Neither member of the new
partnership has the capital of affection and kindly feeling, or can even
afford the time that is requisite for the establishment of the new firm.
Damp and chill the shades of the prison-house begin to close round
us, and that "vision splendid" which has accompanied our steps in our
journey daily farther from the east, fades away and dies into the light
of common day.

And what a common day! what a foggy, dull, shivering apology for light
is this kind of muddy twilight through which we are about to tramp and
flounder for the rest of our existence, wandering farther and farther
from the beauty and freshness and from the kindly gushing springs of
clear gladness that made all around us green in our youth! One wanders
and gropes in a slough of stock-jobbing, one sinks or rises in a storm
of politics, and in either case it is as good to fall as to rise--to
mount a bubble on the crest of the wave, as to sink a stone to the
bottom.

The reader who has seen the name affixed to the head of this article
scarcely expected to be entertained with a declamation upon ingratitude,
youth, and the vanity of human pursuits, which may seem at first sight
to have little to do with the subject in hand. But (although we reserve
the privilege of discoursing upon whatever subject shall suit us, and by
no means admit the public has any right to ask in our sentences for any
meaning, or any connection whatever) it happens that, in this particular
instance, there is an undoubted connection. In Susan's case, as recorded
by Wordsworth, what connection had the corner of Wood Street with a
mountain ascending, a vision of trees, and a nest by the Dove? Why
should the song of a thrush cause bright volumes of vapor to glide
through Lothbury, and a river to flow on through the vale of Cheapside?
As she stood at that corner of Wood Street, a mop and a pail in her hand
most likely, she heard the bird singing, and straight-way began pining
and yearning for the days of her youth, forgetting the proper business
of the pail and mop. Even so we are moved by the sight of some of Mr.
Cruikshank's works--the "Busen fuhlt sich jugendlich erschuttert," the
"schwankende Gestalten" of youth flit before one again,--Cruikshank's
thrush begins to pipe and carol, as in the days of boyhood; hence misty
moralities, reflections, and sad and pleasant remembrances arise. He
is the friend of the young especially. Have we not read, all the
story-books that his wonderful pencil has illustrated? Did we not
forego tarts, in order to buy his "Breaking-up," or his "Fashionable
Monstrosities" of the year eighteen hundred and something? Have we
not before us, at this very moment, a print,--one of the admirable
"Illustrations of Phrenology"--which entire work was purchased by
a joint-stock company of boys, each drawing lots afterwards for the
separate prints, and taking his choice in rotation? The writer of this,
too, had the honor of drawing the first lot, and seized immediately
upon "Philoprogenitiveness"--a marvellous print (our copy is not at
all improved by being colored, which operation we performed on it
ourselves)--a marvellous print, indeed,--full of ingenuity and fine
jovial humor. A father, possessor of an enormous nose and family, is
surrounded by the latter, who are, some of them, embracing the former.
The composition writhes and twists about like the Kermes of Rubens. No
less than seven little men and women in nightcaps, in frocks, in bibs,
in breeches, are clambering about the head, knees, and arms of the man
with the nose; their noses, too, are preternaturally developed--the
twins in the cradle have noses of the most considerable kind. The second
daughter, who is watching them; the youngest but two, who sits squalling
in a certain wicker chair; the eldest son, who is yawning; the eldest
daughter, who is preparing with the gravy of two mutton-chops a savory
dish of Yorkshire pudding for eighteen persons; the youths who are
examining her operations (one a literary gentleman, in a remarkably neat
nightcap and pinafore, who has just had his finger in the pudding);
the genius who is at work on the slate, and the two honest lads who are
hugging the good-humored washerwoman, their mother,--all, all, save,
this worthy woman, have noses of the largest size. Not handsome
certainly are they, and yet everybody must be charmed with the picture.
It is full of grotesque beauty. The artist has at the back of his own
skull, we are certain, a huge bump of philoprogenitiveness. He loves
children in his heart; every one of those he has drawn is perfectly
happy, and jovial, and affectionate, and innocent as possible. He makes
them with large noses, but he loves them, and you always find something
kind in the midst of his humor, and the ugliness redeemed by a sly
touch of beauty. The smiling mother reconciles one with all the hideous
family: they have all something of the mother in them--something kind,
and generous, and tender.

Knight's, in Sweeting's Alley; Fairburn's, in a court off Ludgate
Hill; Hone's, in Fleet Street--bright, enchanted palaces, which George
Cruikshank used to people with grinning, fantastical imps, and merry,
harmless sprites,--where are they? Fairburn's shop knows him no more;
not only has Knight disappeared from Sweeting's Alley, but, as we are
given to understand, Sweetings Alley has disappeared from the face of
the globe. Slop, the atrocious Castlereagh, the sainted Caroline (in
a tight pelisse, with feathers in her head), the "Dandy of sixty," who
used to glance at us from Hone's friendly windows--where are they? Mr.
Cruikshank may have drawn a thousand better things since the days when
these were; but they are to us a thousand times more pleasing than
anything else he has done. How we used to believe in them! to stray
miles out of the way on holidays, in order to ponder for an hour before
that delightful window in Sweeting's Alley! in walks through Fleet
Street, to vanish abruptly down Fairburn's passage, and there make one
at his "charming gratis" exhibition. There used to be a crowd round the
window in those days, of grinning, good-natured mechanics, who spelt
the songs, and spoke them out for the benefit of the company, and who
received the points of humor with a general sympathizing roar. Where are
these people now? You never hear any laughing at HB.; his pictures are a
great deal too genteel for that--polite points of wit, which strike one
as exceedingly clever and pretty, and cause one to smile in a quiet,
gentleman-like kind of way.

There must be no smiling with Cruikshank. A man who does not laugh
outright is a dullard, and has no heart; even the old dandy of sixty
must have laughed at his own wondrous grotesque image, as they say Louis
Philippe did, who saw all the caricatures that were made of himself. And
there are some of Cruikshank's designs which have the blessed faculty of
creating laughter as often as you see them. As Diggory says in the play,
who is bidden by his master not to laugh while waiting at table--"Don't
tell the story of Grouse in the Gun-room, master, or I can't help
laughing." Repeat that history ever so often, and at the proper moment,
honest Diggory is sure to explode. Every man, no doubt, who loves
Cruikshank has his "Grouse in the Gun-room." There is a fellow in the
"Points of Humor" who is offering to eat up a certain little general,
that has made us happy any time these sixteen years: his huge mouth is a
perpetual well of laughter--buckets full of fun can be drawn from it. We
have formed no such friendships as that boyish one of the man with the
mouth. But though, in our eyes, Mr. Cruikshank reached his apogee some
eighteen years since, it must not be imagined that such is really the
case. Eighteen sets of children have since then learned to love and
admire him, and may many more of their successors be brought up in the
same delightful faith. It is not the artist who fails, but the men who
grow cold--the men, from whom the illusions (why illusions? realities)
of youth disappear one by one; who have no leisure to be happy, no
blessed holidays, but only fresh cares at Midsummer and Christmas, being
the inevitable seasons which bring us bills instead of pleasures. Tom,
who comes bounding home from school, has the doctor's account in his
trunk, and his father goes to sleep at the pantomime to which he takes
him. Pater infelix, you too have laughed at clown, and the magic wand of
spangled harlequin; what delightful enchantment did it wave around you,
in the golden days "when George the Third was king!" But our clown lies
in his grave; and our harlequin, Ellar, prince of how many enchanted
islands, was he not at Bow Street the other day,* in his dirty,
tattered, faded motley--seized as a law-breaker, for acting at a penny
theatre, after having wellnigh starved in the streets, where nobody
would listen to his old guitar? No one gave a shilling to bless him: not
one of us who owe him so much.

* This was written in 1840.

We know not if Mr. Cruikshank will be very well pleased at finding his
name in such company as that of Clown and Harlequin; but he, like them,
is certainly the children's friend. His drawings abound in feeling for
these little ones, and hideous as in the course of his duty he is from
time to time compelled to design them, he never sketches one without
a certain pity for it, and imparting to the figure a certain grotesque
grace. In happy schoolboys he revels; plum-pudding and holidays his
needle has engraved over and over again; there is a design in one of the
comic almanacs of some young gentlemen who are employed in administering
to a schoolfellow the correction of the pump, which is as graceful
and elegant as a drawing of Stothard. Dull books about children George
Cruikshank makes bright with illustrations--there is one published by
the ingenious and opulent Mr. Tegg. It is entitled "Mirth and Morality,"
the mirth being, for the most part, on the side of the designer--the
morality, unexceptionable certainly, the author's capital. Here are
then, to these moralities, a smiling train of mirths supplied by George
Cruikshank. See yonder little fellows butterfly-hunting across a common!
Such a light, brisk, airy, gentleman-like drawing was never made upon
such a theme. Who, cries the author--

"Who has not chased the butterfly,
And crushed its slender legs and wings,
And heaved a moralizing sigh:
Alas! how frail are human things!"

A very unexceptionable morality truly; but it would have puzzled another
than George Cruikshank to make mirth out of it as he has done. Away,
surely not on the wings of these verses, Cruikshank's imagination begins
to soar; and he makes us three darling little men on a green common,
backed by old farmhouses, somewhere about May. A great mixture of blue
and clouds in the air, a strong fresh breeze stirring, Tom's jacket
flapping in the same, in order to bring down the insect queen or king
of spring that is fluttering above him,--he renders all this with a few
strokes on a little block of wood not two inches square, upon which one
may gaze for hours, so merry and lifelike a scene does it present. What
a charming creative power is this, what a privilege--to be a god, and
create little worlds upon paper, and whole generations of smiling,
jovial men, women, and children half inch high, whose portraits are
carried abroad, and have the faculty of making us monsters of six feet
curious and happy in our turn. Now, who would imagine that an artist
could make anything of such a subject as this? The writer begins by
stating,--

"I love to go back to the days of my youth,
And to reckon my joys to the letter,
And to count o'er the friends that I have in the world,
Ay, and those who are gone to a better."

This brings him to the consideration of his uncle. "Of all the men
I have ever known," says he, "my uncle united the greatest degree of
cheerfulness with the sobriety of manhood. Though a man when I was a
boy, he was yet one of the most agreeable companions I ever possessed.
. . . He embarked for America, and nearly twenty years passed by before
he came back again; . . . but oh, how altered!--he was in every sense
of the word an old man, his body and mind were enfeebled, and second
childishness had come upon him. How often have I bent over him, vainly
endeavoring to recall to his memory the scenes we had shared together:
and how frequently, with an aching heart, have I gazed on his vacant and
lustreless eye, while he has amused himself in clapping his hands and
singing with a quavering voice a verse of a psalm." Alas! such are
the consequences of long residences in America, and of old age even in
uncles! Well, the point of this morality is, that the uncle one day in
the morning of life vowed that he would catch his two nephews and tie
them together, ay, and actually did so, for all the efforts the rogues
made to run away from him; but he was so fatigued that he declared
he never would make the attempt again, whereupon the nephew
remarks,--"Often since then, when engaged in enterprises beyond my
strength, have I called to mind the determination of my uncle."

Does it not seem impossible to make a picture out of this? And yet
George Cruikshank has produced a charming design, in which the uncles
and nephews are so prettily portrayed that one is reconciled to their
existence, with all their moralities. Many more of the mirths in
this little book are excellent, especially a great figure of a
parson entering church on horseback,--an enormous parson truly, calm,
unconscious, unwieldy. As Zeuxis had a bevy of virgins in order to make
his famous picture--his express virgin--a clerical host must have passed
under Cruikshank's eyes before he sketched this little, enormous parson
of parsons.

Being on the subject of children's books, how shall we enough praise the
delightful German nursery-tales, and Cruikshank's illustrations of
them? We coupled his name with pantomime awhile since, and sure never
pantomimes were more charming than these. Of all the artists that ever
drew, from Michael Angelo upwards and downwards, Cruikshank was the man
to illustrate these tales, and give them just the proper admixture of
the grotesque, the wonderful, and the graceful. May all Mother Bunch's
collection be similarly indebted to him; may "Jack the Giant Killer,"
may "Tom Thumb," may "Puss in Boots," be one day revivified by his
pencil. Is not Whittington sitting yet on Highgate hill, and poor
Cinderella (in that sweetest of all fairy stories) still pining in her
lonely chimney-nook? A man who has a true affection for these delightful
companions of his youth is bound to be grateful to them if he can, and
we pray Mr. Cruikshank to remember them.

It is folly to say that this or that kind of humor is too good for the
public, that only a chosen few can relish it. The best humor that
we know of has been as eagerly received by the public as by the most
delicate connoisseur. There is hardly a man in England who can read but
will laugh at Falstaff and the humor of Joseph Andrews; and honest Mr.
Pickwick's story can be felt and loved by any person above the age of
six. Some may have a keener enjoyment of it than others, but all the
world can be merry over it, and is always ready to welcome it. The best
criterion of good humor is success, and what a share of this has Mr.
Cruikshank had! how many millions of mortals has he made happy! We have
heard very profound persons talk philosophically of the marvellous
and mysterious manner in which he has suited himself to the time--fait
vibrer la fibre populaire (as Napoleon boasted of himself), supplied a
peculiar want felt at a peculiar period, the simple secret of which
is, as we take it, that he, living amongst the public, has with them
a general wide-hearted sympathy, that he laughs at what they laugh at,
that he has a kindly spirit of enjoyment, with not a morsel of mysticism
in his composition; that he pities and loves the poor, and jokes at the
follies of the great, and that he addresses all in a perfectly sincere
and manly way. To be greatly successful as a professional humorist,
as in any other calling, a man must be quite honest, and show that his
heart is in his work. A bad preacher will get admiration and a
hearing with this point in his favor, where a man of three times his
acquirements will only find indifference and coldness. Is any man more
remarkable than our artist for telling the truth after his own manner?
Hogarth's honesty of purpose was as conspicuous in an earlier time,
and we fancy that Gilray would have been far more successful and more
powerful but for that unhappy bribe, which turned the whole course of
his humor into an unnatural channel. Cruikshank would not for any
bribe say what he did not think, or lend his aid to sneer down anything
meritorious, or to praise any thing or person that deserved censure.
When he levelled his wit against the Regent, and did his very prettiest
for the Princess, he most certainly believed, along with the great
body of the people whom he represents, that the Princess was the most
spotless, pure-mannered darling of a Princess that ever married a
heartless debauchee of a Prince Royal. Did not millions believe
with him, and noble and learned lords take their oaths to her Royal
Highness's innocence? Cruikshank would not stand by and see a woman
ill-used, and so struck in for her rescue, he and the people belaboring
with all their might the party who were making the attack, and
determining, from pure sympathy and indignation, that the woman must be
innocent because her husband treated her so foully.

To be sure we have never heard so much from Mr. Cruikshank's own lips,
but any man who will examine these odd drawings, which first made him
famous, will see what an honest hearty hatred the champion of woman has
for all who abuse her, and will admire the energy with which he flings
his wood-blocks at all who side against her. Canning, Castlereagh,
Bexley, Sidmouth, he is at them, one and all; and as for the Prince, up
to what a whipping-post of ridicule did he tie that unfortunate old man!
And do not let squeamish Tories cry out about disloyalty; if the crown
does wrong, the crown must be corrected by the nation, out of respect,
of course, for the crown. In those days, and by those people who so
bitterly attacked the son, no word was ever breathed against the father,
simply because he was a good husband, and a sober, thrifty, pious,
orderly man.

This attack upon the Prince Regent we believe to have been Mr.
Cruikshank's only effort as a party politician. Some early manifestoes
against Napoleon we find, it is true, done in the regular John Bull
style, with the Gilray model for the little upstart Corsican: but as
soon as the Emperor had yielded to stern fortune our artist's heart
relented (as Beranger's did on the other side of the water), and many
of our readers will doubtless recollect a fine drawing of "Louis XVIII.
trying on Napoleon's boots," which did not certainly fit the gouty
son of Saint Louis. Such satirical hits as these, however, must not be
considered as political, or as anything more than the expression of the
artist's national British idea of Frenchmen.

It must be confessed that for that great nation Mr. Cruikshank
entertains a considerable contempt. Let the reader examine the "Life in
Paris," or the five hundred designs in which Frenchmen are introduced,
and he will find them almost invariably thin, with ludicrous
spindle-shanks, pigtails, outstretched hands, shrugging shoulders, and
queer hair and mustachios. He has the British idea of a Frenchman; and
if he does not believe that the inhabitants of France are for the most
part dancing-masters and barbers, yet takes care to depict such in
preference, and would not speak too well of them. It is curious
how these traditions endure. In France, at the present moment, the
Englishman on the stage is the caricatured Englishman at the time of the
war, with a shock red head, a long white coat, and invariable gaiters.
Those who wish to study this subject should peruse Monsieur Paul de
Kock's histories of "Lord Boulingrog" and "Lady Crockmilove." On the
other hand, the old emigre has taken his station amongst us, and we
doubt if a good British gallery would understand that such and such a
character WAS a Frenchman unless he appeared in the ancient traditional
costume.

A curious book, called "Life in Paris," published in 1822, contains
a number of the artist's plates in the aquatint style; and though we
believe he had never been in that capital, the designs have a great
deal of life in them, and pass muster very well. A villanous race of
shoulder-shrugging mortals are his Frenchmen indeed. And the heroes
of the tale, a certain Mr. Dick Wildfire, Squire Jenkins, and Captain
O'Shuffleton, are made to show the true British superiority on every
occasion when Britons and French are brought together. This book was one
among the many that the designer's genius has caused to be popular; the
plates are not carefully executed, but, being colored, have a pleasant,
lively look. The same style was adopted in the once famous book called
"Tom and Jerry, or Life in London," which must have a word of notice
here, for, although by no means Mr. Cruikshank's best work, his
reputation was extraordinarily raised by it. Tom and Jerry were as
popular twenty years since as Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller now are;
and often have we wished, while reading the biographies of the latter
celebrated personages, that they had been described as well by Mr.
Cruikshank's pencil as by Mr. Dickens's pen.

As for Tom and Jerry, to show the mutability of human affairs and the
evanescent nature of reputation, we have been to the British Museum and
no less than five circulating libraries in quest of the book, and "Life
in London," alas, is not to be found at any one of them. We can only,
therefore, speak of the work from recollection, but have still a very
clear remembrance of the leather gaiters of Jerry Hawthorn, the green
spectacles of Logic, and the hooked nose of Corinthian Tom. They were
the schoolboy's delight; and in the days when the work appeared we
firmly believed the three heroes above named to be types of the most
elegant, fashionable young fellows the town afforded, and thought
their occupations and amusements were those of all high-bred English
gentlemen. Tom knocking down the watchman at Temple Bar; Tom and Jerry
dancing at Almack's; or flirting in the saloon at the theatre; at the
night-houses, after the play; at Tom Cribb's, examining the silver cup
then in the possession of that champion; at the chambers of Bob Logic,
who, seated at a cabinet piano, plays a waltz to which Corinthian Tom
and Kate are dancing; ambling gallantly in Rotten Row; or examining
the poor fellow at Newgate who was having his chains knocked off before
hanging: all these scenes remain indelibly engraved upon the mind, and
so far we are independent of all the circulating libraries in London.