CHAPTER X. THE OMNIBUS.
It was in 1841 that George Cruikshank, when at variance with Mr. Bentley, started a periodical on his own account His friend Laman Blanchard, who was then one of the most popular essayists and political writers of the day, undertook the editorship.
The magazine opened in a thoroughly Cruikshankian style. There was a wondrously etched microcosm of the globe, which is accepted not only as one of the artist’s technical triumphs, but as one of his happiest conceptions. The human race is epitomised within this circle, not much wider than a billiard ball. The sphere teems with many-sided life, etched with the “simple frankness” which Mr. P. G. Hamerton has described as the perfection of the art * Let me here note that the famous Jack O’Lantern. His light and humorous wood drawings scattered through the volume are full of fancy and wit. He drew dainty bits to Blanchard’s graceful lyrics—“Love Seeking a Lodging,”
* “In etchings of this class Cruikshank carries one great
virtue of the art to perfection—its simple frankness. He is
so direct and unaffected, that only those who know the
difficulties of etching can appreciate the power that lies
behind his unpretending skill; there is never, in his most
admirable plates, the trace of a vain effort.”—Etching and
Etchers.
[Original Size] -- [Medium-Size]
Omnibus etchings are the last by the artist upon copper. Then follows Cruikshank’s portrait by Frank Stone, with his own very whimsical reply to Maginns sketch of him in “Portraits of Public Characters.” To the story, “Frank Hartwell; or, Fifty Years Ago,” that ran through the twelve numbers of which the Omnibus consists, Cruikshank contributed some of his finest etched dramatic scenes: for example, “Frank and Sambo attacked by Ruffians in the Hold of the Tender,” “Richard Brothers, the Prophet, at Mrs. Hartwells,” * and “Hartwell seizing Brady.” Here too, is his “Love has Legs” (a girl clipping Cupid’s wings while he dozes by the fire), and “Love’s Masquerade,” for instance. Like Kenny Meadows, Cruikshank could draw the prettiest Cupids in the world.
* “And in the talk about the Omnibus, at our first
interview, he claimed, as his own suggestion and planning,
its serial story, ‘Frank Hartwell; or, Fifty Years Ago’, by
Bowman Tiller, which he illustrated with powerful etchings.
He said that the introduction, in that story, of Richard
Brothers, the Prophet, was entirely due to him; and he told
me much concerning its eccentric author, and his custom of
roaming through the streets during the stillest hours of the
night, as he thereby fancied that he could more quietly and
effectually turn over in his brain the thoughts that he
afterwards committed to paper. He told me many things
concerning ‘Bowman Tiller,’ which, however, had better not
be repeated here; especially as the author’s name would
appear to have been lost in obscurity, and is not even
mentioned among the literary pseudonyms in Olphar Hamst’s
‘Handbook of Fictitious Names.’”—Cuthbert Bede.
Not even his “What is Taxes, Thomas?” is surpassed as a study by his “Two of a Trade”—the butcher boy and his dog, which is in the Omnibus.
“Oh! marvellous boy, what marvel when I met thy dog and thee,
I marvelled if to dogs or men You traced your ancestry!
If changed from what you once were known,
As sorrow turns to joy,
The boy more like the dog had grown,
The dog more like the boy.
It would a prophet’s eyesight baulk,
To see through time’s dark fog,
If on four legs the boy will walk,
Or if on two the dog.”
Thackeray and Captain Marryatt (who drew some small cuts which Cruikshank copied), and Edward Howard, the author of “Rattlin the Reefer,” were among the contributors. Michael Angelo Titmarsh sent one of his most famous ballads—viz., “The King of Brentford’s Testament” But the most sprightly and noteworthy feature of this first of the illustrated magazines was Mrs. Toddles, who is introduced with her feet in hot water, and with a glass of warm rum and water, with a bit of butter in it. She surely might have sat for Sairy Gramp, in Punch’s personification of the Morning Herald.
And here she is again, at Margate. She gets her feet wet; “but,” says her chronicler, “we dare say she would find a little drop of comfort, in the shape of smuggled Hollands at the lodgings.” Mrs. Toddles was no better, in her drinking, we fear, than Mrs. Gamp and her friend Betsey.
In the “Monument to Napoleon,” a famous Cruikshank idea, also in his Omnibus, we find the artist in his serious moralizing vein.
“On the removal of Napoleon’s remains,” he remarks, “I prepared this design for a monument; but it was not sent, because it was not wanted. There is this disadvantage about a design for his monument—it will suit nobody else. This could not, therefore, be converted into a tribute to the memory of the late distinguished philosopher, Muggeridge, head master of the Grammar-school at Birchley; nor into an embellishment for the mausoleum of the departed hero, Fitz Hogg of the Pipeclays. It very often happens, however, that when a monument to a great man turns out to be a misfit, it will, after a while, be found to suit some other great man as well as if his measure had been taken for it. Just add a few grains to the intellectual qualities, subtract a scruple or so from the moral attributes—let out the philanthropy a little, and take in the learning a bit—clip the public devotion, and throw an additional handful of virtues into the domestic scale—qualify the squint, in short, or turn the aquiline into a snub—these slight modifications observed, and any hero or philosopher may be fitted to a hair with a second-hand monumental design. The standing tribute, ‘We ne’er shall look upon his like again,’ is of course applicable in every case of greatness.”
With this monument Cruikshank took his leave of “Boney.”
“As for me,” he said in a note to his design, “who have skeletonised him prematurely, paring down the prodigy even to his hat and boots, I have but ‘carried out’ a principle adopted almost in my boyhood, for I can scarcely remember the time when I did not take some patriotic pleasure in persecuting the great enemy of England. Had he been less than that, I should have felt compunction for my cruelties; having tracked him through snow and through fire, by flood and by field, insulting, degrading, and deriding him everywhere, and putting him to several humiliating deaths. All that time, however, he went on ‘overing’ the Pyramids and the Alps, as boys ‘over’ posts, and playing at leapfrog with the sovereigns of Europe, so as to kick a crown off at every spring he made—together with many crowns and sovereigns in my coffers. Deep, most deep, in a personal view of matters, are my obligations to the agitator—but what a debt the country owes to him!”
But the Omnibus did not pay—even with all the wit and humour, and pleasant story, and sport with folly as it flew, to be found in it Moreover, by the close of the year, Cruikshank had renewed his connection with Mr. Ainsworth; and Cruikshank has put on record that his Omnibus was begun in his disgust at the treatment he had received from Mr. Ainsworth, who had adopted his idea of a story on the Plague of London, and sold it to the proprietors of the Sunday Times for a thousand pounds. Then as to the stopping of the Omnibus, this is Cruikshank’s own story:—
“It will now be necessary to state that the late Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, who was surgeon to their Royal Highnesses the Dukes of Kent and Sussex, was a dear and intimate friend of mine, and that I had introduced Mr. Ainsworth to him, and that after I had been going on with my Omnibus for something less than twelve months, to my utter astonishment, my friend Pettigrew called upon me one day with a message from Mr. W. Harrison Ainsworth, to this effect, that he (Mr. Ainsworth) was extremely sorry that there had been any unpleasantness between us, and that if I would forgive him, and be friends, nothing of the kind should ever happen again; that he was about to start a monthly magazine, and that if I would join him, and drive my ‘Omnibus’ into his magazine, he would take all the risk and responsibility upon himself, and make such arrangements as would compensate me liberally. To this most unexpected proposition at first I would not listen; but as my friend Pettigrew kept on for some time urging me to be friends again with Mr. Ainsworth, and as I am (as my friends say) in some cases rather too goodnatured and forgiving, I did forgive Mr. Ainsworth, and ‘shake hands,’ and agree to work with him again. My Omnibus, in some respects, did merge into Ainsworth’s Magazine; but upon again joining with Mr. Ainsworth, I announced that the Omnibus would henceforth appear as an annual.”
In the last number of the Omnibus, Cruikshank announced that, having “resumed” an arrangement entered into “a twelvemonth ago with Mr. Harrison Ainsworth,” he could not continue his Fireside Miscellany—monthly. He ended with a pictorial joke. “If he and his literary associates,” he added, “should meet the reader as agreeably in an annual as in a monthly form,” he trusted it would be as long as it was short. The remark was illustrated by the square figure of a man.
The long and short of it, however, was, that the Omnibus never appeared again.
The following note will give the reader an idea of the activity of Cruikshank’s faculty of suggestion, which led him so often to advance unwarrantable claims as an originator. It is addressed to Laman Blanchard:—
“My dear Blanchard,—
“Barker does not mean anything by ‘Unity.’ ‘Unity Peacham’ is a real name somewhere in Westminster.
“That do not-wish-to-be-known young gentleman has sent me a paper entitled ‘The Alamode Beef Shop.’ I have sent for him to suggest a series of papers upon ‘Eating Houses,’ or something of that sort, and will get him to make two or three alterations in this first paper, and will then send it to you. I think it would be desirable to have it in the neighbourhood; that is, if you think as favourably of it as does
“Yours truly,
“G. Cruikshank.
“P.S.—Some one sent us a paper entitled ‘The Alamode Beef Shop.’ I think he ought to have a note stating that he has been anticipated, and that we do not allude to politics. I would keep that ‘Traveller’s Story’ * back. We can find some other trick to finish it with. You may use the ‘Hot Water’ in the ‘Chat’ if you like. I think also we had better omit those T-total cuts; they would come in well with the Confessions of a T-totaler?”
* “Travellers’ Stories, or Travellers’ Tales, would make a
good heading—a good Peg.” Where Cruikshank put up a peg
he was inclined to claim any hat that was hung upon it.
