CHAPTER V. “LIFE IN LONDON,” “LIFE IN PARIS,” “POINTS OF HUMOUR,” ETC.
And yet it is no trifle to be a good caricaturist,” exclaimed Professor Wilson, writing an article on Cruikshank, in Blackwood, in July 1823. “Forbid the thought, ye shades of Bunbury and Gillray! forbid it, even thou, if thou be still in the land of the living, good Dighton! forbid it, charming, laughter-moving Rowlandson! Bunbury was a great genius, and would have been a great caricaturist, had he been possessed of art at all in proportion to his imagination. But he could not draw—not he. As far as faces went, he was at home, and admirable; and even as to the figure, provided he was allowed the benefit of loose breeches and capacious coats, and grizzly wigs, and tobacco smoke, he could get on well enough. But this is not the thing. The caricaturist should be able to represent everything; and then he can represent what he chooses in a very different style from that of a man whose ignorance, not his choice, limits the sphere of his representation. Rowlandson, again, is a considerable dab at drawing; but, somehow or other, his vein is ultra, his field is not comedy, but farce—buffoonery—and this will not do with the English temperament, except for merely temporary purposes. The Rev. Brownlow North (worthy of bearing that illustrious name, O Christopher!) is another capital caricaturist.... Gillray was in himself a host. He is the first name on the list of Political Caricaturists, strictly so called. George III. (honest man!), and Boney, and Fox, and Sheridan, and Pitt, and Windham, and Melville, and Grenville, are his peculiar property. His fame will repose for ever on their broad bottoms. Cruikshank may, if he pleases, be a second Gillray; but, once more, this should not be his ambition. He is fitted for a higher walk. Let him play Gillray, if he will, at leisure hours—let him even pick up his pocket-money by Gillrayizing; but let him give his days and his nights to labour that Gillray’s shoulders were not meant for, and rear (for he may) a reputation such as Gillray was too sensible a fellow to dream of aspiring after.”
This article was provoked by the success of “Life in London,” illustrated by the brothers Robert and George Cruikshank, followed by that revelation of George’s genius, his “Points of Humour,” and not by the scores of political caricatures he was throwing off for Humphrey, Fores, and others. He had not yet broken away from the uncongenial political ground to the social; but he had opened that vast gallery of London scenes which he had been accumulating during twenty years of hard toil in the metropolis. Wilson gives us a peep behind the curtain of Cruikshank’s life at this time, as he had heard it described over a glass with Egan and other roystering friends. He even ventures to lecture his protégé:—
“It is high time that the public should think more than they have hitherto done of George Cruikshank; and it is also high time that George Cruikshank should begin to think more than he seems to have done hitherto of himself. Generally speaking, people consider him as a clever, sharp caricaturist, and nothing more—a freehanded, comical young fellow, who will do anything he is paid for, and who is quite contented to dine off the proceeds of a ‘George IV.’ to-day, and those of a ‘Hone’ or a ‘Cobbett’ to-morrow. He himself, indeed, appears to be the most careless creature alive, as touching his reputation. He seems to have no plan—almost no ambition—and, I apprehend, not much industry. He does just what is suggested or thrown in his way, pockets the cash, orders his beef-steak and bowl, and chaunts, like one of his own heroes,—
‘Life is all a variorum,
We regard not how it goes.’
Now, for a year or two, to begin with, this is just as it should be. Cruikshank was resolved to see life; and his sketches show that he has seen it, in some of its walks, to purpose. But life is short, and art is long; and our gay friend must pull up.” Then the Professor remarks that perhaps he is not aware of the fact himself, but a fact it undoubtedly is, that he possesses genius—genius in its truest sense—strong, original, English genius. “Look round the world of Art,” says the Professor, and ask, how many are there of whom anything like this can be said? Why, there are not half a dozen names that could bear being mentioned at all; and certainly there is not one, the pretensions of which will endure sifting more securely and more triumphantly than that of George Cruikshank.”
He is venerated as “a total despiser of that venerable humbug” which was “the prime god of the idolatry” of his contemporaries. The lecturer proceeds:—
“I am of opinion that George Cruikshank is one of the many young gentlemen whose education (like that of the English opium-eater) has been neglected. But there is no time lost; he has, I hope, a long life and a merry one before him yet; and he may depend upon it, his life will be neither the shorter nor the duller for his making it something of a studious one. He should read—read—read. He should be indefatigable in reading. He should rise at six in the morning. If he can’t work till he has had something to settle his stomach (my own case), he can have a little coffee-pot placed on the hob over-night, and take a cup of that and a single crust of toast, and he will find himself quite able for anything. What a breakfast he will be able to devour about nine or half-past nine, after having enriched his mind with several hours of conversation with the greatest and the wisest of his species! He may rely upon it, this hint is worth taking. Then let him draw, etch, and paint, until about two o’clock p.m., then take a lounge through the streets, to see if anything is stirring—step into Westminster Hall, the fives court, the Rev. Edward Irving’s chapel (if it be Sunday), or any other public place, jotting down à la Hogarth all the absurd faces he falls in with upon his finger-nails. A slight dinner and a single bottle will carry him on till it is time to go to the play, or the Castle Tavern, or the House of Commons, or the evening preaching, or the Surrey lecture, or the like. At first sight it may appear that I am cutting short the hours of professional exertion too much, but this I am convinced is mere humbug. Does the author of Waverley eat, or drink, or ride, or talk, or laugh, a whit the less because he writes an octavo every month? No such thing. Does Jeffrey plead his causes a bit the worse because he is the editor of the Edinburgh Review? Does Wordsworth write worse poems, for collecting the taxes of Cumberland; or Lamb, worse Elias, for being clerk to the India House? The artists are all of them too diligent—that is the very fault I want to cure them of. Their pallets are never off their thumbs—their sticks are eternally in their fingers.”
He goes on to say that the advantage of a little proper reading may be illustrated by the history of George Cruikshank, “as well as by that of any other individual I have the pleasure of not being personally acquainted with.” He commends Cruikshank’s early caricatures as “in their several ways excellent things.”
“But,” he exclaims, “what a start did he make when his genius had received a truer and diviner impulse from the splendid imagination of an Egan! How completely, how toto colo did he out-Cruikshank himself, when he was called upon to embody the conceptions of that remarkable man in the designs of Tom and Jerry! The world felt this—and he himself felt it.