He made only one voyage. On his way home, having gone on shore at St. Helena in command of a boat’s crew, and a storm having suddenly arisen, he was left behind, and reported to be lost. He was passed home in a whaler, after having endured severe privations on the island; and would relate that the only noteworthy incident of the homeward voyage was the speaking with a vessel which gave the news of the battle of Trafalgar. When he presented himself in Dorset Street, Salisbury Square, he was astonished at the frantic excitement of his brother George on opening the door. The family were in mourning for him.
The elder brother found that George had made wonderful progress in his art in the three years during which he had been at sea. Robert had meantime lost ground as an artist, and had contracted bad habits. Isaac Cruikshank was at this time etching theatrical portraits and scenes for a publisher named Roach, who dwelt in Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane. This connection drew the two sons into an acquaintance with Edmund Kean, then an obscure player, and the three got up an amateur performance of “Blue Beard” in Roach’s kitchen, Kean taking the principal part, Robert and George Cruikshank playing the two brothers, and Miss Roach appearing as Fatima. The copper was the tyrant’s castle. *
* In 1855, shortly before his death, Robert Cruikshank made
a water-colour sketch of the scene, for a life of Edmund
Kean, projected, but never written by Mr. Michael Nugent, a
Times parliamentary reporter.
The Cruikshanks—but particularly Robert—remained on intimate terms with Kean after he had become famous. The tragedian, on one occasion, to divert them, threw somersaults on the stage of Drury Lane after playing Richard. Robert drew portraits of Kean in most of his characters. *
* At the sale of Mr. Lacy’s Theatrical Library, Robert
Cruikshank’s theatrical portraits in water-colours fetched
£200.
On the death of their father the two brothers kept on the house in Dorset Street, with their mother and sister, working together. They had, after the death of Gillray, the command of the whole field of caricature, supplying nearly all those coloured etchings on copper, on the subjects of the day, which drew crowds about the print-sellers’ windows. They were the rough forerunners of H. B.‘s pencillings and of Leech’s cartoons in Punch. The prize-fighter in those days was the popular idol; and the most notorious “bruisers” found their way to the Cruikshank studio on the second floor in Dorset Street, to stand for their portraits. The Cruikshank brothers were not particular as to sitters, even to murderers * It was a strange workroom, decorated with the most incongruous ornaments. An undergraduate’s cap (the spoil of a town-and-gown riot) upon a human skull with a pipe between the teeth, a sou’wester from Margate, boxing gloves, foils, masks, and weapons of all kinds, proclaimed the wild tastes of the two artists, who generally invited their guests to a bout with the gloves. Both brothers were expert boxers, but George had cultivated the science under a distinguished professor more assiduously than Robert. It was in one of his bouts with this professor that George received a blow on his nose, which, with other taps on the same point, fixed that feature awry for the remainder of his life.
* The portrait of Elizabeth Fenning, by I. R. Cruikshank,
taken in Newgate, is a very coarse work.
To this strange studio rough old Ackerman, Fores of Piccadilly, and Johnny Fairburn of the Broadway, Ludgate Hill, came with plentiful commissions for both brothers. When Robert was in want of money and expected Johnny, he placed an empty purse upon the mantelpiece, marked “unfurnished,” and the good-natured old printseller would take it up and replenish it. When Robert married, the family removed to King Street, Holborn; and it was here that the elder brother contrived to get sittings, through a keyhole, of old Mrs. Garrick, in her ninetieth year, while she was paying visits to her friend Miss Cotherly, one of prudent Mrs. Cruikshank’s lodgers. The result was a finished, full-length etching upon copper, with the face carefully stippled. It was in portraiture that Robert excelled; and to this branch of his art he devoted himself. When at the height of his success he removed to St. James’s Place, St. James’s Street, where he established himself as a fashionable artist, carrying on, at the same time, his work as a caricaturist and illustrator. * George, on parting from his brother, went to live with his mother and sister to Claremont Square, Pentonville. On his marriage he removed only a few doors from his old residence, and at 22 and 23, Amwell Street, he remained during the thirty most brilliant years of his life, ** as the addresses on some of his best work attest.
* He was, according to his son, “still the pink of fashion,
even to designing a hat, a block for which was made at a
cost of three guineas, while all other details of costume
were treated regardless of cost. George Hibbert commissioned
Robert to execute a set of etchings for the Roxburgh Club,
at his own price, from one of Boccaccio’s tales in the
‘Decameron.’ Sixty copies were printed, and the plates were
destroyed. The English Spy, illustrated by Robert at this
time, was edited by Charles Molloy Westmacot, said to be the
son of a sweep in Newcastle Court, Strand, named Molloy. He
ultimately became the owner of the Age newspaper.”
** His mother went to live at Finchley, and died at the age
of ninety.
When he had, in part, emancipated himself from the bibulous boon companions of his youth, George fell into a regular system of hard work. He breakfasted punctually at eight o’clock, after which he smoked a pipe, and went to work at nine. When biting up plates, he would smoke more in the course of the morning to drive away the fumes of the acid. At twelve he lunched, and then resumed work until three o’clock, when he dined. After dinner he sat, with a jug of porter before him, enjoying his pipe, and talking with any friend who dropped in. His visitors were many. At five he drank tea, and then worked again from six o’clock till nine, when supper concluded the labour of the day, and was the preliminary to pipes and grog.