Writing to Forster (January 1838), Dickens says, alluding to the severity of his labours, “I have not done the ‘Young Gentlemen,’ nor written the preface to ‘Grimaldi,’ nor thought of ‘Oliver Twist,’ or even supplied a subject for the plate.”
According to Mr. Ainsworth, Dickens was even so worried by Cruikshank putting forward suggestions that he resolved to send him only printed proofs for illustration.
Cuthbert Bede says, having been informed, of course, by the artist, “It is well known that Cruikshank originated the ‘Life in London.’” But this, as the reader will perceive, is a gross error. To the conception of this work, at any rate, the artist made no claim in Egan’s time, nor, it should be remembered, was he even the sole illustrator. He shared the honours with his brother. Besides, the three heroes bear unmistakable marks of the Egan parentage throughout.
Perhaps the wildest claim Cruikshank ever entered to an idea was that of having originated the pattern of a military hat worn by the Russian soldiers. Having described his own model, he adds: “The Russian soldiers, I find, wear a hat something of this shape now; and no doubt they saw my pattern, and stole my idea.” *
* “A Popgun fired off by George Cruikshank.” W. Kent and Co.
In “the corrections made in the later editions of the first volume” of his “Life of Dickens,” and published in the second volume (October 1872), Mr. Forster notices Cruikshank’s assumption of the responsibility of Dr. Mackenzie’s statement, and remarks, “The worst part of the foregoing fable, therefore, has not Dr. Mackenzie for its author; and Mr. Cruikshank is to be congratulated on the prudence of his rigid silence respecting it as long as Mr. Dickens lived.”
Suppose Cruikshank suggested to Dickens that his subject should be a poor boy thrown upon the skirts of London. It is but the motive, the theme. In all the range of Dickens’s work, there is nothing more essentially his own than “Oliver Twist,” from the name of the hero to the last line of the final chapter. Something like the following scene, which Cuthbert Bede describes, may have taken place between Dickens and Cruikshank. From the bare suggestion that there should be an “awful Jew”—receiver of stolen goods, a Hebrew Blueskin—in the story, to the conception and embodiment of Fagin, there is an immeasurable distance. *
* As well might Sir David Wilkie have claimed the authorship
of Douglas Jerrold’s drama, “The Rent Day,” because the idea
was suggested to the dramatist by the great Scotch painter’s
pictures. But Sir David only thanked Douglas Jerrold, and
sent him proofs of his “Distraining for Rent” and “The Rent
Day,” with expressions of his acknowledgments inscribed upon
them.
“I was speaking of my first interview with him at his house, Mornington Crescent, Regent’s Park,” says Cuthbert Bede. “He wished me to write a humorous story of modern life, to be illustrated by himself, with a series of designs, something after the style of his ‘Adventures of Mr. Lambkin; or, The Bachelor’s own Book,’ and he jotted down some rough memoranda and sketches (in pencil) embodying his own ideas on the subject. One of these slight drawings was singularly skilful. It represented the shoulders and the tops of the heads of people in the pit of a theatre, as they would appear to a spectator in the gallery—the foreshortening being both curious and difficult. As a matter of course, I gave my best consideration to Mr. Cruikshank’s suggestions and ideas, but submitted to him that I could not see my way to carry them out to our mutual satisfaction; and I also raised objections to the somewhat hackneyed nature of the themes that he suggested, and stated my preference for writing a story that should be wholly and entirely my own original composition. After much discussion pro and con, Mr. Cruikshank yielded to my wishes, and said, ‘Then the tale shall be entirely out of your own head!’ While he spoke, he rapidly drew a fancy sketch of my head, to the back portion of which was affixed a pig-tail, as large as that worn by an old-fashioned Jack Tar. He held this sketch up to his wife, who had just then re-entered the room, and said, in his cheery way, ‘We have settled the point. He does not like my whiskers,’—the hero of the tale, I may add, was to have been readily distinguished in the illustrations by the peculiarity of his whiskers,—‘so he is going to get a tail out of his own head.’ It reminded me of his sketch of the grenadier, whose pig-tail was tied so tightly that he was unable to shut his eyes; also of another pig-tail sketch in the Omnibus, where the gentleman who, has gone to bed ‘half-seas over’ wakes up to sobriety, and, springing out of bed, discovers that his pig-tail has been tied to the bell-rope, and that the house has been aroused through his vain struggles to get free.”
“The Adventures of Mr. Lambkin” were entirely Cruikshank’s own, and they were the least successful, and deservedly so, of his works.