* Notes and Queries, 4th series, vol. v., p. 301.
“The ‘Gallery of Comicalities,’ originated in the circumstance that some forty years ago he (George Cruikshank) was applied to by Mr. Dowling, the editor of Bells Life in London—with whom he had been on terms of intimacy—for leave to reproduce some half-dozen of the etchings from his works called ‘Phrenological Illustrations,’ ‘Illustrations of Time,’ and ‘Scraps and Sketches,’ in the pages of the journal named. Acting on the qualified permission so obtained, Mr. Claremont, the proprietor, to the utter astonishment of the artist, appropriated for his newspaper the whole, or nearly all, of George Cruikshank’s designs, contained in the works in question. When remonstrated with by the artist, and required to stay the issue of the number of the paper in which these appeared, on the ground that it was seriously interfering with the sale of the artists own works, Mr. Claremont, through his editor, peremptorily declined. Consulting a professional friend holding a post in the Court of Chancery, to know whether an injunction might not be obtained to restrain Mr. Claremont in the course he had thought proper to follow, the artist was advised to suffer the wrong rather than enter into litigation, the result of which in any court would entail pecuniary loss.
“These illustrations, I have said, first appeared in the columns of Bells Life in London, under the heading, ‘Gallery of Comicalities.’ They were afterwards published separately by Mr. Claremont. A very large number were sold, and large profits realized. George Cruikshank neither received nor would have accepted a single farthing.... George Cruikshank never contributed directly to the ‘Gallery of Comicalities,’ His designs, obtained in the manner described, were copied by an ordinary wood engraver from his etchings. The average cost of these, he informed me, would not exceed thirty shillings each. Mr. Claremont, finding the thing a profitable venture, continued the publication, and employed Kenny Meadows and others to furnish new designs. It is asserted that if there were any designs by his brother Isaac Robert, they were no doubt appropriated in the same immoral manner.”
“The Gallery of Comicalities” was a great success. Mr. William Bates, of Birmingham, says of it, in Notes and Queries, “I am happily able to count myself among those collectors who possess these witty sheets—the delight of my boyhood—in a perfect state.” The eight series into which the gallery is divided, introduces us for the first time to Kenny Meadows and John Leech, as well as to rich stolen fruit from Cruikshank’s highly productive orchard; and, according to Mr. Bates, to plentiful gleaning from the works of Isaac Robert Cruikshank. Here Meadows’ sketches from Lavater appeared, including “The Phisogs of the Traders of London,” and giving a foretaste of his “Heads of the People and in the gallery are some of poor Seymour’s sketches of the “Sporting Cockney,” and drawings by Chatfield,—an artist now forgotten, but a light in the early times of Douglas Jerrold, Dickens, Thackeray, Meadows,—and Leech’s early drawings; and the great variety of subjects treated with a vigorous, fresh, racy humour by them and others, are a foretaste of Punch that was to start in a few years. The popular appetite for caricature, and for humorous and sarcastic commentaries on the subjects of the day, was diffused among the people by Cleave’s coarser and cheaper pictorial gallery.
The taste for pictorial journalism was distinctly the creation of our caricaturists. Founded by James Gillray and his humbler contemporaries, it was developed by the genius of Rowlandson and George Cruikshank, and so popularised by the latter, that his drawings were, as we have seen, actually carried into the columns of a newspaper. Even this paper he may be said to have indirectly created. Bells Life in London originally appeared in 1824, as Pierce Egan’s Life in London, and Sporting Gazette. Egan was, when Tom and Jerry took the town by storm, the sporting contributor to the Weekly Dispatch; and the success of this work so roused the jealousy of the Dispatch conductors, that they gave Egan his congé. His dismissal, and the popularity he enjoyed at the moment, emboldened him to start a paper on his own account. It flourished awhile, and in 1827 Mr. Egan sold it to a Mr. Bell, who placed his name upon the title-page, where Egan’s had stopd. So that the journal which Mr. Cruikshank was indirectly instrumental in creating, rewarded him by unceremoniously transferring his drawings to its columns, and thus inaugurating the pictorial journalism of England.
The Phrenological Illustrations which Mr. Bell treated so unceremoniously had enjoyed more than a year’s extraordinary popularity, and had even been a topic in Christopher North’s “Noctes.” *
* November 1826.
“Tickler. James, a few minutes ago you mentioned the name of that prince of caricaturists, George Cruikshank; pray, have you seen his Phrenological Illustrations?
“Shepherd. That I hae,—he sent me the present as’ copy to Mount Benger; and I thocht me and the haill hoose wud hae fain distracted wi’ lauchin. O sirs, what a plate is yon Pheeloprogeniteeveness! It’s no possible to make out the preceese amount o’ the family, but there wad seem to be somewhere about a dizzen and a half—the legitimate produce o’ the Eerish couple’s ain fruitfu’ lines. A’ noses alike in their langness, wi’ sleight vareeities, dear to ilka pawrent’s heart! Then what kissing, and hugging, and rugging, and ridin on backs and legs, and rockin o’ craddles, and speelin o’ chairs, and washing o’ claes, and boilin o’ pirtawties! And ae wee bit spare rib o’ flesh twurlin afore the fire, to be sent roun’ lick and lick about, to gie to the tongues of the contented crew a meat flavour, alang wi’ the wershness o’ vegetable maitter! Sma’ wooden sodgers gaun through the manuel exercise on the floor—ae nine-pin stannin by himself amang prostrate comrades—a boat shaped wi’ a knife, by him that’s gaun to be a sailor, and on the wa’, emblematical o’ human Pheeloprogenitiveness (O bit that’s a kittle word!) a hen and chickens, ane o’ them perched atween her shouthers, and a countless cleckin aneath her outspread wings! What an observer o’ nature that chiel is! Only look at the back of the faither’s neck, and you’ll no wonner at his family, for is’t no like the back o’ the neck o’ a great bill?” Tickler declares that Language is almost as good, and North himself says: “Not a whit inferior Veneration.” Then Tickler observes: “George Cruikshank’s various and admirable works should be in the possession of all lovers of the Arts. He is far more than the Prince of Caricaturists,—a man who regards the ongoings of life with the eye of genius; and he has a clear insight through the exterior of manners into the passions of the heart. He has wit as well as humour—feeling as well as fancy—and his original vein appears to be inexhaustible. Here’s his health in a bumper.”
The Cruikshank of twenty years later would have been inexpressibly shocked at the manner in which the Shepherd responded: