CHAPTER VI. A SLICE OF BREAD AND BUTTER.
George Cruikshank’s habit of putting himself forward as the originator of any work with which he was connected was never more amusingly displayed than when, in March 1870, he made one of a deputation of the National Education League to Mr. Gladstone. “I must say,” he remarked on this event, in his introduction to the second edition of his ‘Slice of Bread and Butter,’ “that it afforded me much gratification to hear all the suggestions which I had placed before the public so many years ago, so eloquently and forcibly advocated upon this occasion.”
It was a harmless assumption in this instance, to be freely forgiven in the earnest old man who was still exerting himself to the utmost of his ability for what he conceived to be the right way, in the cause of popular education.
He had thrown his ideas into one of those whimsical forms, peculiar to him. He was fond of illustrated pamphleteering, and the reclamation of ragged children left out in the cruel streets hungry and half naked had always been a subject near to his heart. His last effort in their behalf he called “A Slice of Bread and Butter.” On the title page we find one of his bright little pictorial stories in wood. An outcast child lies upon the pavement surrounded by a crowd of men, who are in eager consultation as to the restorative which shall be administered. In the distance is the parish church, but overhead swings the sign of the Britannia, and the landlord, with a pipe in his mouth, is contemplating the scene from the bar parlour. The story is told with all the old completeness.
The crowd consists of “some worthy gentlemen, magistrates, and others,” who, on their way “to the Town Hall on county business,” have found this forlorn boy upon the pavement leaning against the wall. As he was neither begging nor stealing, and did not obstruct the pathway, he could not be taken into custody. When asked what was the matter, he replied, “I wants summut to eat.” Then follows the learned consultation around the starving boy:—
“Now the worthy magistrates and the other gentlemen—some of whom were clergymen, and ministers, and lawyers—were all kind-hearted and benevolent men as well as the doctor; and they all exclaimed, as with one voice, upon hearing what the doctor said, ‘Oh, dear me, how very shocking!—let him have some food instantly!’
‘Yes, yes!’ cried one: ‘here, officer! go into the Britannia, and get him something to eat instantly.’
‘I suppose,’ said he, turning to the doctor, “a bit of plain bread and butter wall be best for him in his present condition?’ ‘The very thing,’ he replied; and as the officer was about to run into the house to get a bit of bread and butter, another gentleman of the party cried out, ‘Stop! see that you bring brown bread.’ ‘Pooh! pooh!’ said another; ‘it does not matter what sort of bread it is, but it must be toasted.’ ‘White or brown, or plain or toasted, it matters not much,’ exclaimed a fourth, ‘provided there is plenty of butter on it.’ ‘I object most decidedly to the butter,’ observed a very sedate gentleman. ‘As to that,’ shouted out another, ‘I consider the butter as most essential: it is full of nourishment; and, besides, the poor boy might be choked by cramming dry bread down his throat without butter; but then we must be careful that it be salt butter.’ ‘No! no!’ cried another; ‘fresh butter, if you please, and as much as you please; but no salt.’ ‘You are all wrong, my friends!—quite wrong!’ vociferated another of the party; ‘depend upon it, that dry toast is the best thing he can have.’ ‘Oh! oh! oh!’ exclaimed all the other gentlemen; ‘who ever heard of such a thing as giving dry toast to a starving child?’ ‘Who ever, indeed!’ chimed in another; ‘it is quite ridiculous to toast the bread at all; the poor child might die before it was ready! No! no! plain bread and butter is best for him; but mind, if I have to pay my part towards it, the bread must be new—yes, new bread.’
‘New bread!’ exclaimed some of the party why, that’s worse than all; for if it does not stick in his throat, it will in his stomach, and perhaps kill him. New bread is indigestible and most unwholesome stuff.’ ‘Well, well; let it be plain stale bread and butter, but only the crumb of the loaf, and I will pay my part willingly,’ observed another. ‘Crumb without crust!’ said one of the former speakers; ‘why, the crust of the loaf contains ten times more nourishment than the crumb, and I, for one, will have nothing to do with it, nor pay a farthing towards it, unless he has a good lump of crust.’
“Now during this contention, or
‘all this splutter About the toast and bread and butter,’
the poor boy seemed to be getting worse and worse, and at the same time all these worthy gentlemen becoming more and more excited; some calling out for ‘Fancy bread,’ some for ‘French rolls,’ others for ‘German black bread,’ and all refusing to pay any part towards the bread and butter, unless cut after their own fashion, when they were reminded by one of the party that there was not the least necessity to trouble themselves about paying for what the boy might have, as it could be charged to the county. To which they all replied, rather sharply, that, as to that, if they did not think it right to pay out of their own individual pockets, neither did they think it right that the public money should be used for purposes which they could not individually approve of. ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ cried the doctor, ‘pray let the child have something. Is it not dreadful to let this poor boy perish before our eyes, when there are the means of relief within reach? For mercy’s sake, let him have something to keep him alive!’ ‘Well,’ replied one of the magistrates (who was chairman of the Sessions),'as you see he cannot have the bread and butter, you must prescribe something else for him.
‘Dear, dear me!’ said the doctor, ‘I am really shocked at such inconsistency. Will you let him have a little brandy, then!’ ‘Oh yes I’ they all cried out together, ‘let him have some brandy—by all means give him some brandy!’”
The brandy made Ragged Jack drank; and presently, being still hungry, he is tempted to steal a roll from a baker’s shop, and dragged to the Town Hall, where the magistrates, who had left him upon the pavement taking brandy, give him a month’s imprisonment, and detention in a reformatory school.’ The chaplain was kind to him, and said, “Yes, now that Jack was a convicted thief, he had plenty of good wholesome bread and butter.” In the reformatory he was educated, and taught a trade, and sent to a distant town where his antecedents would not be against him. On his way he met his cousin, Tom Rag—“a boy as ragged and wretched as he used to be himself.” Tom wants to know how Jack has managed to get such nice clothes and a basket of tools, that he may go and do likewise.
“Cousin Jack, who had been taught, and indeed now knew, that thieving was a wicked thing to do, was sorely puzzled how to advise his friend in this matter; for, having a great regard for Tommy, he wished to save him from the miserable state in which he himself had once been—skulking and wandering about the streets all day, picking up hits and scraps of food, even out of the gutters like the dogs, and at night sleeping in the corner, perhaps, of an open sheep-pen in the cattle-market, or crouching from the drenching rain by the side of a doorway; and when he contrasted that state of his existence with the comfort he had felt, and the attention he had received whilst in the jail and the reformatory, he knew not how to advise his poor cousin, knowing that poor Tom was, as he himself had been, almost perishing for want of a little good wholesome bread and butter, clean clothes, and a comfortable bed to lie in, which he well knew poor Tom would have if he could be sent to jail, as he had been. When he thought of all this he was sorely puzzled what to recommend; but at last he said: ‘Tom, you must not steal; so you had better go a-begging, and perhaps you may be lucky enough to be sent to jail for that, and then you will have everything done for you, as I have had, and come out better than me; for nobody will be able to say that you have been a thief. Yes; go and beg, Tom!
But if this don’t answer, why, then, I suppose you must go a-THIEVING, as I did.’”
“It may be asked, Where were the parents of these poor boys all this time? Well, they could tell you at the Britannia public-house, only they don’t like to talk about such disagreeable matters there. But the fact is, Jack’s father used to use that house, and was once a decent sort of man, and was at one time a ‘moderate drinker’; but upon one occasion he got mad drunk, and in that state of drunken insanity went home and killed his wife, was sent to jail, and died there. Tom’s father was transported for committing some crime after he had ‘been drinking’ at the Britannia; and Tom’s mother took a little drop at first to comfort her, and then drank herself to death.” The foregoing will remind many readers of the scheme of Mr. Jenkins’s “Ginx’s Baby.”
But Cruikshank gives his views on popular education in his homely simple way:—
“One of the great social questions of the day is the necessity and importance of a general or national system of education for the humble classes, upon such a comprehensive plan as shall give every child born in the United Kingdom a certain amount of book knowledge, and also of moral and religious training, as they are, or ought to be, entitled to as juvenile members of a civilized community—such training as may prepare them to fill useful and honest positions in life, or, perhaps, be the first step to those high stations so often filled by honest, hardworking, mercantile men, or ingenious mechanics. Now, every thinking and right-minded person will agree that this object is a most desirable one, and that no innocent child should be so neglected as to be allowed to grow up in a state of savage ignorance; and at the first blush nothing seems more easily to be accomplished, in a wealthy and intelligent country like ours, than to arrange such a general system as is here alluded to, and to provide the ways and means. Well! all this would be simple and easily accomplished, but for one obstacle—namely, the differences in the religious opinions of a portion of the adult population. Yes, strange as it may appear,—nay, monstrous as it is,—nevertheless these religious differences have been, and are now, the only bar to the adoption of any wide and general system of secular education.”
“It is of course impossible to please all parties; but few persons, I imagine, could surely object to a national system of education upon the following plan:—In the first place, an Act of Parliament should be passed, making it imperative that every child should receive some education, and where the parents are destitute or depraved, then that the State shall take the position of the parents, and educate and train up all the neglected and helpless children. In the second place:—In the schools, let reading, writing, and arithmetic be taught (with other branches of education, if possible, or required), and such moral training as will teach a child the difference between Right and Wrong—and here let the schoolmaster’s duty cease, and that of the ministers of religion begin. And in the third place:—Let it be the duty of the clergyman, and ministers of all denominations, to instruct all those children who belong to their particular church, chapel, or sect, in the religious belief of their parents; but when the parents do not attend any place of worship, or profess any particular creed—then, that the clergy of the Established Church be allowed to instruct all such children in the religion of the State. By such an arrangement as this, it appears to me that if all the poor helpless children of the land were schooled in the common elements of reading, writing, etc., for five days in the week, and the clergy and ministers of all denominations were to instruct these children one day in the six in the religion of the class to which they belong (independent of the Sunday), that then all parties might be satisfied, and a great objection done away with as to the great general system which I here propose for secular instruction and moral and religious training.”
He goes on to remark that a reformatory may be wanted in any country, under any circumstances, “but why should we have Ragged Schools in rich England?” He proceeds to argue that there would be no need for either Ragged Schools or Reformatories if the use of “strong drink” were abolished; and he calls upon “the grown-up people not to allow innocent children to starve and fall into evil ways, because they cannot agree upon the mode of cutting a Slice op Bread and Butter.” He adds: “But as prevention is better than cure, I call upon all those who delight in good works to aid the Temperance cause, which is, in truth, the only radical cure for the evils complained of.”
The tail-piece to this characteristic pamphlet—as charming as it is characteristic—is a brightly-executed drawing on wood of Britannia seated upon the British lion, couchant, with her arms about “her ragged and reformatory pets.”
Cruikshank’s zeal for the cause to which he had devoted himself led him to take delight in the illustration even of little Temperance pamphlets and fly-sheets.
Ruskin had said, in his “Time and Tide, by Weare and Tyne” (1867), “It is no more his business to etch diagrams of drunkenness than it is mine at this moment to be writing these letters against anarchy.” Yet just as Mr. Ruskin has gone on with his letters, so Cruikshank went on with his diagrams of drunkenness to the end.
In 1867, when Cruikshank brought out his “British Bee-Hive,” with a worker at a trade or profession in every cell, the estates of the realm at the top, and the army and navy at the bottom, and called it “a penny political picture for the people, with a few words upon Parliamentary Reform, by their old friend George Cruikshank,” he was opposed to the Reform Bill, and advised the working-men to be content with the glorious constitution as it stood, and keep away from Reform meetings, as “revolutionary proceedings.”
Perhaps the best of Cruikshank’s pamphlets, taking the text and the drawings together, is “The Glass and the New Crystal Palace,” published by John Cassell. It is thoroughly Cruikshankian, and in his most vivacious mood: some of the illustrations—as the Spirit Level—a drunkard at full length upon the pavement; the Social Villagers, with Death for the host, and the villagers represented by their tombstones; and the whisky after the goose, and the goose after the whisky, for instance.
Think what would have become of the neglected or forgotten humourist, if, when the mere laughing public had turned away from him to Leech and Doyle, and Tenniel and Du Maurier, he had not been fired with the ardour of an apostle in the cause he had taken up. His Almanac had failed for lack of readers; and David Bogue had thrown up Cruikshank’s magazine, after the second number—convinced that the artist had outlived his public. His ambition to become a painter was mercifully renewed, with the renewal of his health and mind, through temperance. Full of vigour he used to say, “A man should paint from his shoulder, sir.” He became almost wholly a serious man in his work, and appealed to the public in a new capacity. He resolved, stimulated by the success of “The Bottle,” to paint a great picture that should remain behind him, a monument of his genius, and an immortal temperance lesson. He was ready, and eager, to give a helping hand in all directions to the last. In 1870, I asked him to join my Committee, when I was a candidate for the Maryle-bone division of the London School Board. I give his prompt answer as an example of his clear head and hearty readiness in his old age to serve a friend:—
“October 27th, 1870.
“Dear Blanchard Jerrold,—Your request would have been complied with on the instant, but it so happens that a gentleman called upon me a few days back with a message from friend Hepworth Dixon, asking me to allow my name to be placed on his Committee for this ‘Educational Council,’ to which, of course, I assented.
“Now if one man can have his name placed on two Committees, then by all means place my name on your Committee, but if not, then let me know if there is any other way in which I can assist in this matter the man who is a relative of, and who bears the name of two dear friends who were always held in the highest esteem by,
“Yours truly,
“Geo. Cruikshank.”
