Omnibus etchings are the last by the artist upon copper. Then follows Cruikshank’s portrait by Frank Stone, with his own very whimsical reply to Maginns sketch of him in “Portraits of Public Characters.” To the story, “Frank Hartwell; or, Fifty Years Ago,” that ran through the twelve numbers of which the Omnibus consists, Cruikshank contributed some of his finest etched dramatic scenes: for example, “Frank and Sambo attacked by Ruffians in the Hold of the Tender,” “Richard Brothers, the Prophet, at Mrs. Hartwells,” * and “Hartwell seizing Brady.” Here too, is his “Love has Legs” (a girl clipping Cupid’s wings while he dozes by the fire), and “Love’s Masquerade,” for instance. Like Kenny Meadows, Cruikshank could draw the prettiest Cupids in the world.
* “And in the talk about the Omnibus, at our first
interview, he claimed, as his own suggestion and planning,
its serial story, ‘Frank Hartwell; or, Fifty Years Ago’, by
Bowman Tiller, which he illustrated with powerful etchings.
He said that the introduction, in that story, of Richard
Brothers, the Prophet, was entirely due to him; and he told
me much concerning its eccentric author, and his custom of
roaming through the streets during the stillest hours of the
night, as he thereby fancied that he could more quietly and
effectually turn over in his brain the thoughts that he
afterwards committed to paper. He told me many things
concerning ‘Bowman Tiller,’ which, however, had better not
be repeated here; especially as the author’s name would
appear to have been lost in obscurity, and is not even
mentioned among the literary pseudonyms in Olphar Hamst’s
‘Handbook of Fictitious Names.’”—Cuthbert Bede.
Not even his “What is Taxes, Thomas?” is surpassed as a study by his “Two of a Trade”—the butcher boy and his dog, which is in the Omnibus.
“Oh! marvellous boy, what marvel when I met thy dog and thee,
I marvelled if to dogs or men You traced your ancestry!
If changed from what you once were known,
As sorrow turns to joy,
The boy more like the dog had grown,
The dog more like the boy.
It would a prophet’s eyesight baulk,
To see through time’s dark fog,
If on four legs the boy will walk,
Or if on two the dog.”
Thackeray and Captain Marryatt (who drew some small cuts which Cruikshank copied), and Edward Howard, the author of “Rattlin the Reefer,” were among the contributors. Michael Angelo Titmarsh sent one of his most famous ballads—viz., “The King of Brentford’s Testament” But the most sprightly and noteworthy feature of this first of the illustrated magazines was Mrs. Toddles, who is introduced with her feet in hot water, and with a glass of warm rum and water, with a bit of butter in it. She surely might have sat for Sairy Gramp, in Punch’s personification of the Morning Herald.
And here she is again, at Margate. She gets her feet wet; “but,” says her chronicler, “we dare say she would find a little drop of comfort, in the shape of smuggled Hollands at the lodgings.” Mrs. Toddles was no better, in her drinking, we fear, than Mrs. Gamp and her friend Betsey.
In the “Monument to Napoleon,” a famous Cruikshank idea, also in his Omnibus, we find the artist in his serious moralizing vein.
“On the removal of Napoleon’s remains,” he remarks, “I prepared this design for a monument; but it was not sent, because it was not wanted. There is this disadvantage about a design for his monument—it will suit nobody else. This could not, therefore, be converted into a tribute to the memory of the late distinguished philosopher, Muggeridge, head master of the Grammar-school at Birchley; nor into an embellishment for the mausoleum of the departed hero, Fitz Hogg of the Pipeclays. It very often happens, however, that when a monument to a great man turns out to be a misfit, it will, after a while, be found to suit some other great man as well as if his measure had been taken for it. Just add a few grains to the intellectual qualities, subtract a scruple or so from the moral attributes—let out the philanthropy a little, and take in the learning a bit—clip the public devotion, and throw an additional handful of virtues into the domestic scale—qualify the squint, in short, or turn the aquiline into a snub—these slight modifications observed, and any hero or philosopher may be fitted to a hair with a second-hand monumental design. The standing tribute, ‘We ne’er shall look upon his like again,’ is of course applicable in every case of greatness.”
With this monument Cruikshank took his leave of “Boney.”
“As for me,” he said in a note to his design, “who have skeletonised him prematurely, paring down the prodigy even to his hat and boots, I have but ‘carried out’ a principle adopted almost in my boyhood, for I can scarcely remember the time when I did not take some patriotic pleasure in persecuting the great enemy of England. Had he been less than that, I should have felt compunction for my cruelties; having tracked him through snow and through fire, by flood and by field, insulting, degrading, and deriding him everywhere, and putting him to several humiliating deaths. All that time, however, he went on ‘overing’ the Pyramids and the Alps, as boys ‘over’ posts, and playing at leapfrog with the sovereigns of Europe, so as to kick a crown off at every spring he made—together with many crowns and sovereigns in my coffers. Deep, most deep, in a personal view of matters, are my obligations to the agitator—but what a debt the country owes to him!”