CHAPTER III. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK AS A TEETOTALER.
George Cruikshank was an enthusiast in all things to which he gave his mind. He did nothing in a halfhearted way. Whether preparing to address a great Exeter Hall audience on the evils of drunkenness, or marching at the head of his riflemen, or arraying himself in a table-cover to enact the part of Lord Bateman; in small things as in great, he was ever at fever-heat. He would have made a good actor, had he not been incapable of a moment’s repose; he would have been an admirable Temperance advocate, had it been in him to give himself pause in order to think over the heads of his discourse; he would have been a good volunteer officer, had it been possible for him to sit quiet in his saddle. But he seemed to be troubled with an excess of life. Life at fever-heat is the dominant characteristic of all his work. The “quiet spaces” in his etchings are rare.
Having been converted by his own “Bottle” to total abstinence from fermented liquors, he could be nothing less than an earnest and a vehement worker in the cause. He threw himself heart and soul into it; and during the thirty remaining years of his life his zeal never slackened, and he had never made sacrifices enough in it. His impulsive advocacy often took ludicrous forms. He sometimes offended people by his denunciations of even the most moderate drinkers, but he never made an enemy by his gaucherie or his downright phrases imported into quiet circles, because the parity of his motive and the well-known impetuosity of his nature excused him. I can remember, in the first year of his total abstinence, meeting him at a ball given in Fitzroy Square, by Mr. Joshua Mayhew, the father of Horace and the Brothers Mayhew. He danced and was light-hearted with the youngest; but when at supper the wine began to circulate, he stole round to the head of the table, and, laying his hand upon the shoulder of the venerable host (who was a very haughty and quick-tempered old gentleman), said, in a deep, warning voice, “Sir, you are a dangerous man.” Mr. Mayhew had a glass of wine in his hand, and was about to drink a toast to the health of one of his sons, when Cruikshank’s hand fell upon his shoulder. “I look upon every wine-drinker,” Cruikshank added firmly, “as a dangerous man, sir.” The company, knowing the hot temper of their host, expected an explosion of rage; but it was staunched by Horace Mayhew, who burst into a hearty laugh, and told his father to go on, for “it was only dear old George.”
In the same way, when dining at the Mansion House, Cruikshank, at the passing of the loving-cup, would go through an extraordinary pantomime before all the company, expressive of his horror of strong drinks. He would shake his hand angrily at the Lord Mayor, and raise his arms with horror while his neighbour quaffed of the cup. The company humoured the eccentric old gentleman; for, in their hearts, they could not but respect his downright earnestness. He lost no opportunity. Returning home at the head of his volunteer corps, he showed his jaded officers, who had freely taken beer, how fresh he was—on two oranges.
“Ah! you may laugh,” he would say, when his friends bantered him about his aggressive protests in society; “you may laugh, but I can tell you this——the presence of the old jackdaw checked the drinking, if didn’t stop it, and I am very grateful to feel sure of that.” * As Mr. Sala has observed, “the veteran sticks bravely to his text.” And well he might, for his temperance renewed his youth. “He neither smoked tobacco nor drank fermented liquors in his old age; but he was a hearty eater, an early riser, and a vigorous walker and his reward was that which, according to Gray, is only felt by boys at school—a perpetual ‘sunshine of the breast.’” He was fond of showing this vigour renewed by temperance, at every possible opportunity; for he very wisely regarded it as his most forcible argument. It enabled him, in his old age, to capture a burglar on his own premises. The story runs that when he was following the burglar to the station, with the police, he drew him under a lamp, and told him that he could see drink had brought him to this—adding that he himself drank nothing but water. “I wish I’d ha’ known that,” said the ruffian, “I’d ha’ broken your head for you.” Cruikshank delighted to show an audience how he could hold a tumbler full of water steady upon the palm of his outstretched hand. At eighty, he was seen in costume at a fancy dress ball at Willis’s Rooms, joining heartily in the dance, and letting everybody know that it was “water that did it.”
* Grace Stebbing’s article on Cruikshank in the Graphic.
It was very difficult to obtain from him the toleration of tobacco smoke in his company; for, after he had given up alcoholic stimulants, he threw away his pipe. He would say to a man of letters whom he favoured, laying his hand upon his arm, and turning those fierce eyes of his full upon him, “I want you to give up drinking and smoking, and you tell me that if you don’t smoke you can’t write. Now, I’ll meet you half-way. Give up the drink, and you may smoke—-just a little.” But, as a rule, he was as stern in the matter of tobacco as in that of beer or gin. One evening M. Legros, the distinguished French artist, lighted a cigarette in his hall as he was leaving Mornington Place. “To that vice,” said “the inimitable George” in his deepest tone, “I was a slave for many years, but now I am a free man.”
To it also, it must be added, he owed one of his most imaginative and delightful etchings,—“The Triumph, of Cupid,”—published in his “Table Book.”
His earnestness was extravagantly expressed in all things. As a furious anti-Papist, he would draw aside and shake his coat when Sisters of Charity or a Catholic priest passed him. “Do you see that fellow in front?” he suddenly asked a friend with whom he was walking. It was a workman quietly enjoying his pipe. “Do you know what I would do to him if I were a man of fortune? I’d kick him! To think that any man should be fool enough to place a tube between his lips, and go puff, puff, puff!” This was his “counter blast.” And he glared at the workman as he passed on. He had himself been an inveterate smoker for more than forty years!
On another occasion he drew sharply up before the windows of his old wine merchant, and called out, “Give me back my thousand pounds!”
When the Crystal Palace was opened at Sydenham, Cruikshank, in his rage that it had not been made a Temperance palace, drew some extravagant drawings of the opening ceremony for Messrs. Cassell, one of which represented the Archbishop of Canterbury bestowing his blessing upon a public-house.
Dining one day at Grampian Lodge, Forest Sill, with his friend Dr. Rogers, he suddenly began to tell the company that he had had a vision the night before. Then he related it with much gesticulation, and with dramatic effect.
He had seen two devils in council. One had said, “England is moral, prosperous, happy—this will never do. How can we put an end to it? Her crops are splendid; look, for instance, at her barley, her-” The second devil interrupted: “I have an idea. Her barley, which makes such splendid food, let us teach them to soak it, to sour it, to make it ferment; in short, to turn it into a tempting poison.”
“Agreed!” cried the first devil.
“Why,” the second devil continued, “we will actually make them drink it of their own accord; they shall lift the poison to their own lips with their own hands.”
“Ha! ha!” shouted the first devil; “and then of course, there will be murder, robbery, violence, and misery all over the land.”
“The devils have had their way,” the old man added his keen eyes glancing round the table to mark the effect of his vision.
He was indeed, as a writer called him, a “muscular teetotaler.”
“In his time,” a Temperance writer * records to his honour, “he must have attended thousands of temperance meetings, and at these few men were more welcome.
* The Temperance Record, February 7th, 1878.
The style of his advocacy was peculiar, he passed from grave to gay with facility, but he never lost sight of the great object he had in view. He seemed for years, to be deeply impressed at the numerous murders that were taking place, all of them, or nearly so, being in the last instance, if not in the first, attributable to drink. He used to exclaim, with deep fervour, ‘Can nothing be done to stop these dreadful murders?’ The clear remedy of total abstinence from that drink which was their inciting cause then came naturally from his lips; but though individuals responded to his appeal, the general mass of the public remained unmoved. Sometimes he would suggest a deputation to the House of Lords. But though this idea was not acted upon, yet he lived to see that august assembly collect evidence well fitted to be of service to them, and also to the public at large. Mr. Cruikshank’s powers of mimicry were also very great, and often has he convulsed his audience with his inimitable acting; but, at the same time, there was no mistaking his deep earnestness, and the sincerity with which he expressed the convictions of his heart.
He did his utmost, when the teetotalers had failed at the Crystal Palace, to establish a teetotal palace in the old Surrey Zoological Gardens; and he was drawn in state from the Hampstead Road to Walworth, in a carriage and four, to open a bazaar in aid of the scheme. He even prepared a design for the building. But although many went to cheer the honest, earnest old man, few remained to invest, and the design fell to the ground. It may have been some consolation to him and to his Temperance friends to mark, afterwards, the services which the Crystal Palace was destined to render to the cause of Temperance, for a drunkard has hardly ever been seen under its shining roof.
Cruikshank could never convert his mother to his views. She lived with him during the latter years of her life, and died under his roof, in the care of a most reverent and attentive son.. She had always been a careful, sober body, and would not be coerced, because her son could not take his beer or toddy without committing excesses. She had been a handsome woman in her days, a grandson records, and it was picturesque to see the lame old lady, leaning upon her crutch, and wrapped in a plaid,—with her shrivelled features and wild grey hair,—raise her withered arm, and with the old fire declare that she would not surrender her principles. A glass of beer with dinner, and a little toddy at bedtime, she had always taken, and she took them to the end, and George had to submit.
Addressing, on one occasion, a Temperance oration to a Bristol audience, he appealed to his female hearers not to believe that “nourishing stout” was necessary to nursing-mothers; and he pointed to himself as a melancholy example, saying, “My mother first lifted the poisoned chalice to my lips.” His aged mother read this in the morning paper. Her wrath was violent. “What!” she cried, “am I to be told publicly, at eighty years of age, that I, who always begged and prayed him to be sober, taught him to drink?” Her son did not return home for several days; but he heard of his speech in no uncertain tones when he presented himself to the old lady, who had, in his youth, often physically chastised him for his excesses.
Perhaps the best specimen of his manner of laying his subject before an audience is the speech which he delivered at the Grand Demonstration of the National Temperance League, in the Guildhall, on the 19th of November, 1864. It wants his by-play, his dramatic delivery, his grotesque movements, and then the solemn sounds of his voice, to be completely understood; but it is sufficiently original and suggestive as reported:—
“My Lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,—-My worthy friend the doctor has given you a very excellent discourse upon his own profession. It So happens that as I was coming to this meeting I met with a gentleman who had just been to consult his medical man; and finding I was coming to this meeting, he laughed at all idea of abstaining from intoxicating drinks. He told me he had been to see a very eminent member of the medical profession. I asked him what was the result.
“He said the physician told him he wanted a stimulant and prescribed one. I said, ‘What did you give him:’
“He replied, ‘Of course, I gave him the usual fee—a guinea.’ I said, ‘I can show you how to save that guinea in future. If you will give me half of it. I will give it to some good charity, and the other half you may keep in your pocket.’ He said, ‘How is that?’ I said, ‘Instead of going to the physician, go to the publican, and tell him what is the matter with you, and he will prescribe the same thing; and if the landlord is not in, say the same to the potboy, and he will do as well. Rely upon it, they will prescribe exactly the same thing as the doctor, and the effects will be the same. Now, I must say one word, if you please, to defend a very eminent prince who has been mentioned here to-night. I am sorry to say it happened to be my fate to hold up to ridicule the Prince Regent—very often indeed; but he was not such a bad man as he is represented to be. It must be recollected that if he committed excess in the way of drinking, it was then the fashion for all the eminent persons to get drunk. No man was considered a liberal man—no man was considered a gentleman, in fact, unless he made his companions drunk; and therefore, with all due respect to my friend Mr. Scott, who mentioned the circumstance, it must be recollected that about half a century back it was the fashion—it is a fearful thing, but it was the fashion—of gentry to get drunk; therefore we ought to make allowances. But now, my Lord Mayor, to come to this very serious question. This hall is the place where the great City feasts are held, and the question is, is it possible that there can be any grand entertainment given without mixing up with it the intoxicating cup? What will be said? It is very well for you, my lord, who are almost an abstainer yourself—very well for you—but what will be said of another Lord Mayor who comes here and gives a dinner without wine and beer? What will be said of him? He will be called a shabby fellow; and the question is, whether the guests will not all be melancholy. It will, perhaps, be somewhat in this style: ‘Have a little more soup?’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘More fish?’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘Bit of fowl?’ ‘No.’ ‘Venison?’ ‘No.’ ‘What, can’t you eat any more?’ ‘No, I don’t like it: I want something to drink.’ There is the serious thing: what is to be done? There is one way of settling that question. It is supposed that there can be no sociality, no comfort, no enjoyment, without intoxicating drinks. Now, I recommend the next Lord Mayor who may succeed our honoured chairman, if he be in favour of the moderate use of these delightful drinks, to be so good as to ask the present company to come to dinner. Wouldn’t you enjoy yourselves? And then, when we have had enough to eat, and want something to drink, here you are (holding up a glass of water)—Mr. Chairman, your very good health! Ladies and gentlemen, your good health! (drinking the toast.) We should have a jolly time of it. (Loud and long-continued cheering.) Mr. Morley says we will take the sherbet without the punch. That is the way in which these things are looked at; but supposing that it is impossible that any social enjoyment can be had without the use of these stimulants, let us take another view of the question. I have had the honour of dining here, and I have enjoyed myself very much, not only in the time when I used to take wine myself—because I recollect there was such a time as that—but when I have been a teetotaler I have been, here, and enjoyed my dinner very much indeed, without any of these drinks. But supposing we had this hall upon the occasion of the Lord Mayor’s feast with the most elegant people in the world (for I believe of all the people in the world the British people are the best looking and the best dressed): imagine the scene! The tables are set out in the most splendid manner; everything looks grand and happy; but what is going on outside? Ay! my friends, the most splendid monument in the world where this drink is used in moderation as it is in this country, may in the inside be a splendid monument of good order, taste, and sobriety, but at the outside there is filth and dirt and crime through drink. I say, suppose these social meetings cannot be enjoyed without these drinks, let us look at the outside. Now, there are a certain number of circumstances or acts committed in society, which are always injurious, not only to the individual himself, but also to society at large. Now, I do not mean to say that every teetotaler is an honest man. There may be some dishonest fellows amongst them. I have heard of two in the last thirty years. This reminds me, by-the-bye, of a teetotal turnkey at Coldbath Fields. There were two youths brought into the prison, who were teetotalers, and the other turnkeys jeered the teetotal turnkey upon it. He said, ‘It is true that there are two teetotalers here, but they are here only for begging, whereas you have about fifteen hundred brought in who drink, and they are most of them committed for stealing.’ There are a number of besetting sins connected with drinking, such as robberies, brutal assaults, garotting, house-breaking, suicide, and murder. By-the-bye, speaking of murder, there has been a very strong feeling existing for many years, and still increasing, against the punishment of death. I think it is a very horrible thing indeed to hang anybody; but, my friends, do not forget that it is a still more horrible thing for one to be murdered. Do not let us forget that. There was a young man in the country a little while ago hanged for murder—quite a young man. It was a sad thing indeed, no doubt, to see this poor fellow gibbeted; but what was he hanged for? He had been drinking on the Saturday night, and he murdered a young woman as she was going to church on the Sunday morning. Do not forget that these horrible, detestable, damnable crimes are committed under the influence of drink. We will talk about doing away with the punishment of death after we have stopped murders. I had the honour of speaking in the Mansion House when Mr. Charles Pearson, the City solicitor, brought on the question about the convicts; and I told the Lord Mayor then, that if we could do away with intoxicating liquors altogether, we might wheel out that dreadful instrument the gibbet into the Old Bailey, and make a bonfire of it. I believe you will find, if you go into the question, that there is hardly a murder committed in this country out of a hundred—I may say out of a thousand—not ten out of ten thousand—but drink has something to do with it. Remove the drink, and you will stop murder. But there is a gentleman who ought to have been speaking instead of myself, and therefore I will not detain you much longer; but I will say this, my friends, and call your attention to it especially, that the teetotal question has now been before the world for about thirty years, and during that short time I challenge any one to point out any teetotaler who has been committed for a brutal assault upon his wife, or for garotting, or picking pockets, or house robbery, or murder. I challenge the world to produce one single case wherein any real teetotaler has been convicted of one of those crimes. Then, if this be so, what have we to do but to spread this Temperance movement throughout the length and breadth of the land? and then we should stop, if not all crimes, if not all offences, still the great majority of them; and that is what we are aiming at. And recollect this, my friends, that we are not a society formed merely for the purpose of reclaiming the drunkard. It is a very good thing to do so, and I am sorry to say that my time is so occupied that I am almost in despair. I have six most dreadful cases in hand at the present moment There is nobody to assist them. I could not go to the brewer or distiller, and ask them to give me funds for the support of these people whom they have rained; and why not? Because there is blood upon the money. I would not have it. But I had to-day a letter imploring me for help from the nephew of an old friend of my father. What am I to do? I have a lady in the country at this moment, the wife of a barrister, who is starving for want of help, and whose husband has been ruined by drinking. My time is occupied, and my friends are gone, and I am called upon for all I can afford. But, my friends, if you do away with these drinks, you do away with these cases. But it is utterly impossible to go into the evils arising out of these drinks in the time I have to speak—they are so extensive; all I have to say is, ‘Go on and prosper!’ and prosper we shall. I cannot sit down without saying that I look upon this meeting to-night to be one of the grandest movements that this cause has ever had. I say it from my heart, and think that those gentlemen who have assisted in getting up this meeting deserve our best thanks.”
The idea of a temperance Lord Mayor’s Banquet suggests, no doubt, many vastly amusing incidents and episodes to the mind of the comic writer, but honest-hearted George Cruikshank could not, and would not, in his latter dav, see any element of fun in drunkenness, and he was quite in earnest in recommending the next Lord Mayor to fill his loving-cup with pump water. *
* Since Cruikshank delivered the above speech, a Temperance
banquet has been held at the Mansion House.
The account he gave, moreover, of his trouble about the many people who were seeking his assistance, was true of his experience year after year. His doors were besieged. He was waylaid by petitioners for his known bounty (the recklessness of which, as we have seen, Dickens reproved) whenever he went abroad. A poor man himself, for ever in money troubles, even to the end of his laborious life, his heart lay always open to a tale of distress. He was never without “cases” on hand.
It has been remarked of his Temperance days, by one of his friendliest critics, that his style suffered from the contraction of his ideas and sympathies, “and it cannot be questioned that with the general public his reputation declined in proportion to the increase of his popularity among the teetotalers.” He lost heavily, in a pecuniary sense, by his Temperance advocacy. Publishers ceased to employ him. He remarked that, for the last ten years of his life, he was without commissions. He had refused none, he would say. He was willing to work, and he held that his powers were unimpaired.
Temperance preacher; to them the inimitable George, the illustrator of Boz, the kindly satirist, the creator of “Points of Humour,” the illustrator of Grimm, was dead.
And, firmly believing this, the brave old man held on in the rigid course of duty he had laid down for himself. He had seen all the horrors which lie behind drunkenness; in his early time he had himself been a tavern hero; and he had dedicated the remainder of his life to the work of warning the rising generation out of the path in which he himself had stumbled.
“I come forth,” he said, in one of his earliest temperance harangues, “to set by my humble example the opinion of this unthinking world at defiance.”
But the public had come to regard him simply as a keen a sense of the ridiculous as most men. I can see clearly what is ridiculous in others. I am so sensitive myself, that I am quite alive to every situation, and would not willingly place myself in a ridiculous one; and, I must confess, that if to be a teetotaler was to be a milksop, if it was to be a namby-pamby fellow, or a man making a fool of himself or of others, then indeed I would not be one—certainly not; but if, on the contrary, to be a teetotaler is to be a man that values himself, and tries by every means in his power to benefit others; if to be a teetotaler is to be a man who tries to save the thoughtless from destruction; if to be a teetotaler is to be a man who does battle with false theories and bad customs, then I am one. I have been a convert but a short time, not much over twelve months. I only wish that I could say, with Dr. Gourley, that I had never taken a glass of spirits in my life; I wish that I had acted upon the principles of total abstinence only thirty years ago; for if I had, I am convinced that at this time I should have been much better, both in body and mind. I have experienced much benefit already, both physically and mentally. I never did sneer at or scorn the question of Temperance, yet I never thought that I should stand up as a teetotal advocate; but I am proud that I have been put into the position in which I am now placed.
Later on, still conscious of the disadvantage at which he was placing himself as an artist, he said to another audience—.
“When I left off drinking wine altogether, and became a total abstainer, I became a healthier and stronger man, more capable of meeting the heavy responsibilities that were upon me, and for the following two years I had my life renewed, and all the elasticity of my schoolboy days came back to me. Domestic afflictions then came upon me, ending in death, and my spirits and health were crushed down. In this extremity I applied to my medical adviser. He said, ‘Medicine is of no use to you; you must drink wine again.’ I refused, and my medical friend called in some others of his profession; he told me they had had a consultation, the result being that all of them agreed it was necessary I should drink wine to restore my sinking constitution. I replied,
“‘Doctor, I’ll take your physic, but not your wine. Let me try everything else first, and only when there is no other chance give me wine, because I feel there is a great principle at stake in this matter.’ I have said, and I believe, wine is unnecessary, even as a medicine, and I do not wish to do a single act which would tend to weaken or destroy the weight and force of that conviction. And here I stand. I have not tasted the vile and destroying enemy, and I am almost restored to health, without having risked the violation of my principles. I call this a triumph; and I stand here as an evidence that wine is totally unnecessary, even as a medicine.”
Much later, we find the preacher an octogenarian—albeit rudely buffeted by the world, and well-nigh forgotten as a living artist—still true to his noble text. “Alcoholic liquors,” he exclaimed to an audience, little more than two years before his death, “were recommended to keep up strength! But what kept up his strength? He had not taken a drop of wine, beer, or any alcoholic drink, for twenty-seven years, and he would be eighty-three next September, if he lived till then. What was it, then, that kept up his strength? Since he had given up drinking beer and smoking, he had had a higher enjoyment of life, because all his nervous system was in proper tone.”
Cuthbert Bede, who knew Cruikshank intimately in his teetotal days, has drawn this graphic picture of the Temperance advocate at home:—
“Though I had interchanged letters with Mr. George Cruikshank for several years, it was not until early in the autumn of 1853 that I made his personal acquaintance. He had asked me to write a serial story for a projected publication to be illustrated by himself ; and, as it would simplify matters if we could talk over the subject together, I went up from the country to London to call upon him. He was then living in Mornington Crescent, near to Regent’s Park. Numerous portraits had made me familiar with his personal appearance, so that I needed not to be told who was the gentleman who so courteously received me downstairs, and then took me upstairs to his comfortable studio, where he introduced me to his wife. Some of our first conversation, indeed, was on the subject of his portrait; for, among the pictures on his walls, I had noticed the original of the portrait by Frank Stone, which was engraved on steel for the Omnibus, and was certainly a far more flattering representation of George Cruikshank than the caricaturist’s sketches of himself. I told him that I considered the best portrait of himself was to be found in his own etching, ‘The Reverie,’ published in his Table- Book, and in every respect a wonderfully fine specimen of his art and genius. I also referred to his own account of ‘My Portrait,’ in the Omnibus, in which, with his own pen and pencil, he portrayed himself, and made comments on a curious description of himself that had been given in a publication called ‘Portraits of Public Characters’; how he was said to be of the medium height, with a forehead of a prominently receding shape, with a handsome pair of whiskers, and hair partaking of a lightish hue; and, moreover, how the ludicrous and extraordinary fancies with which his mind was constantly teeming often imparted a sort of wildness to his look frighten from his presence those unacquainted with him.
“He read these and similar passages to me, and was immensely tickled at their egregious absurdity. In truth, his manner at once impressed me as being peculiarly gentle, and kind, and genial. Instead of assuming any airs of superiority, I found him possessed of all the humble modesty and chivalrous courtesy of the truly great artist and thorough gentleman; and although I was quite young, and he was in his sixty-first year, he treated me as though I had been his equal, if not superior, in ability. We had so much to talk about, and he had so much to show me, that my first interview with George Cruikshank had been prolonged to nearly four hours before I became aware how quickly the time had flown. The time had then arrived for their luncheon, or early dinner; and as both Mr. and Mrs. Cruikshank pressed me to stay, and I had by this time overlapped the hour at which I had made another engagement, I readily and peculiarity to his manner, which would suffice to consented to remain, and we went downstairs to dinner. ‘There will be nothing else than a leg of mutton,’ said Cruikshank. ‘I happen to know that, for I came in with it,’ I replied; ‘for as I knocked at the hall door the butcher’s boy was down in the area, delivering the leg of mutton to the cook.’ Cruikshank seemed to be greatly amused at this, for he laughed heartily, and said to his wife, ‘My dear, Mr. ———— came in with the mutton.’ Something in the occurrence seemed to mightily tickle his fancy, for more than once he repeated the words to his wife, ‘My dear, Mr. ———— came in with the mutton!’ It was while I was eating it that I terribly forgot myself. The day was very sultry; it was five hours since I had breakfasted; we had been busy talking, and I felt thirsty. So, while the parlourmaid was handing something to me. I asked her to give me a glass of beer. She replied, ‘We have no beer, sir.’ ‘Then,’ I said, ‘please to bring me the sherry.’ ‘There is no sherry, sir.’ Whereupon my host interposed, and laughingly explained that he could not allow the introduction of any alcoholic liquor into his house; and that, while I was his guest, I must content myself with drinking water. Then I suddenly remembered that which I ought not to have forgotten, even for a moment, that my host had devoted himself to teetotal, who, six years before, had drawn the eight scenes of ‘The Bottle,’ and had thereby struck a powerful blow at one of the greatest vices of the age.
“I duly apologized for my forgetfulness; and the incident naturally led Cruikshank to dilate on that important theme, in furtherance of which he so steadily devoted his great powers to the very end of his career, with a persistent courage and devoted zeal that won for him the genuine respect and admiration of those even who could not wholly agree with him in details. I was one of those. I could travel with him, very willingly, up to a certain point, after which our paths parted, and we ‘agreed to differ.’ I could accompany him to temperance, but not to total abstinence. During the remainder of the time that we occupied over dinner, we scarce spoke on any other subject than that which gave ism, and that I was sitting at the table of the artist rise to the scenes of ‘The Bottle,’ ‘The Drunkard’s Children,’ ‘The Gin Trap,’ ‘The Gin Juggernaut’—and, at a later period, his large oil-painting, ‘The Worship of Bacchus.’
“Our discussion on the subject was preserved with perfect good humour; so much so, that I ventured to remind him that only a year or so before he had been converted to teetotalism he had caricatured Father Mathew, in an etching for the Comic Almanac for 1844, representing him as an old pump. I reminded my host that these were his sentiments for more than fifty years of his life, and that he had never during that period objected to the moderate use of alcoholic liquors, although he had always vigorously lashed their gross abuse; and I pleaded that I had not lived for half those years that I had named, and that I might be pardoned for my forgetfulness in asking his servant for beer and wine.
“Then he told me how the crying sin of the age had sunk deep down into his heart, especially when he had seen it flourishing, like an upas tree, in all its foul deformity, in those courts and alleys into which he was so often led in search of subjects for his pencil; and how the design for ‘The Bottle’ had gradually grown upon him, and the necessity for practising what he preached, which he found he could do only by cutting himself adrift from all alcoholic drinks. He also explained how his plans to disseminate the scenes of his ‘Drunkard’s Progress,’ in such a form and at such a low price that they should reach those masses for whom he specially designed them, were hampered and well-nigh frustrated, chiefly by the cost of engraving such large drawings on wood; and how the new art of glyphography had come to his assistance, and enabled him to draw the eight designs, and to sell them (with Dr. Charles Mackay’s explanatory poem) for a shilling—which in the year 1847 was an extraordinarily low price for such a production. ‘You will remember,’ he said, ‘how Maclise represented me seated on a beer-barrel, getting my inspiration from pothouse scenes, and pencilling them on the crown of my hat?’ ‘Yes, I remember: it was in the Fraser gallery of portraits.
And you have amply proved to the world since then that you can turn to the best account, and for the public good, the people and incidents that you saw in those places.’ I told him that of ‘The Bottle’ and ‘Drunkard’s Children’ series I preferred the one where the poor girl commits suicide from Waterloo Bridge—the idea of the body falling from a height being so vividly conveyed to the eye, as to impress one with the conviction that we can really see the swift descent of that ‘one more unfortunate.’”
An instance of Cruikshank’s earnestness in the Temperance cause happened in May 1854. He had been invited to preside over a meeting of total abstainers, to be held in Sadler’s Wells Theatre, a place associated in his mind with the glories of his friend Joe Grimaldi, the clown, and the days when he was a frequenter of the clown’s club, “The Crib,” hard by. The great Temperance advocate, J. B. Gough, was to address the audience. Cruikshank introduced him in his own original way, delivering, as the papers remarked, a speech full of piquant and incontrovertible truth. But it was at the close of the orator’s speech that the chairman proved himself equal to the occasion. Seeing that the audience were under the spell of Mr. Gough’s eloquence, he rose and exhorted them at once to come forward and sign the pledge. With this he advanced to the footlights, bridged the orchestra with a few planks, and stood by to receive the ladies who came forward in crowds, many of them leading their children. So delighted was the artist with the number of converts he led to the table to sign the pledge, that he drew the scene for the Illustrated London News, with himself for central figure.
I remember attending another meeting in George Cruikshank’s company. It was a gathering of London pickpockets, called by Mr. Henry Mayhew, when he was engaged upon his London Labour and London Poor inquiry. The solemn, but still somewhat grotesque impressiveness of the Temperance preacher, as he rose, while that dreadful company of keen-eyed vicious lads were eating the plain Temperance supper which had been provided for them, to bid them renounce the evils of their way, and as a beginning, to shun the bottle and the beer-pot, dwelt long in my memory. “Man,” said Lord Lytton, “has no majesty like earnestness.” That night, honest, whole-hearted Cruikshank, as with wild gesticulation he talked to “the dear lads”—for the forlornest and wickedest waif was dear to him—was clothed in majesty; and it cowed a man at hand, who acknowledged, within his hearing, that he had smuggled something stronger than water into the room.
