* The book ran through two editions in the year of original
publication; in 1836 a third edition was issued; it was
republished in 1849, and was added to Bohn’s Illustrated
Library in 1852. But so completely has the author
disappeared (albeit he gave the artist the sketches for his
pictures), that in the London Library catalogue the book is
called “George Cruikshank’s Three Courses and a Dessert.”
* Messrs. Williams, Vizetelly, Thompson, and E. Landells
admirably caught the peculiar flow and effective confusion
and involvement of Cruikshank’s lines on wood.
[Original Size] -- [Medium-Size]
In these illustrations are some of Cruikshank’s most astonishing feats in the way of making inanimate things laugh and speak. Take the three lemons which serve for introduction to “the Dessert.” Most charming as to pencilling and engraving, they are exquisitely humorous. Remaining lemons that you might squeeze, they are three still convivial fellows in close confabulation.
The portrait of an old Irish boy, the hoops of the keg serving for nightcap, which introduces the second course of Irish dishes, is a jewel of a boy.
These illustrations delighted Thackeray. He has transferred some of them to his essay in the Westminster.
“Is there,” he asks of a battle of bottles on spider legs, “any need of having a face after this? * ‘Come on,’ says Claret-bottle, a dashing, genteel fellow, with his hat on one ear, ‘come on; has any man a mind to tap me? ‘Claret-bottle is a little screwed (as one may see by his legs), but full of gaiety and courage. Not so that stout, apoplectic Bottle of Rum, who has staggered against the wall, and has his hand upon his liver; the fellow hurts himself with smoking, that is clear, and is as sick as sick can be. See, Port is making away from the storm, and Double X is as flat as ditch-water. Against these, awful in their white robes, the sober watchmen come.”
* This illustration is not in “Three Courses and a Dessert.”