But the Omnibus did not pay—even with all the wit and humour, and pleasant story, and sport with folly as it flew, to be found in it Moreover, by the close of the year, Cruikshank had renewed his connection with Mr. Ainsworth; and Cruikshank has put on record that his Omnibus was begun in his disgust at the treatment he had received from Mr. Ainsworth, who had adopted his idea of a story on the Plague of London, and sold it to the proprietors of the Sunday Times for a thousand pounds. Then as to the stopping of the Omnibus, this is Cruikshank’s own story:—
“It will now be necessary to state that the late Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, who was surgeon to their Royal Highnesses the Dukes of Kent and Sussex, was a dear and intimate friend of mine, and that I had introduced Mr. Ainsworth to him, and that after I had been going on with my Omnibus for something less than twelve months, to my utter astonishment, my friend Pettigrew called upon me one day with a message from Mr. W. Harrison Ainsworth, to this effect, that he (Mr. Ainsworth) was extremely sorry that there had been any unpleasantness between us, and that if I would forgive him, and be friends, nothing of the kind should ever happen again; that he was about to start a monthly magazine, and that if I would join him, and drive my ‘Omnibus’ into his magazine, he would take all the risk and responsibility upon himself, and make such arrangements as would compensate me liberally. To this most unexpected proposition at first I would not listen; but as my friend Pettigrew kept on for some time urging me to be friends again with Mr. Ainsworth, and as I am (as my friends say) in some cases rather too goodnatured and forgiving, I did forgive Mr. Ainsworth, and ‘shake hands,’ and agree to work with him again. My Omnibus, in some respects, did merge into Ainsworth’s Magazine; but upon again joining with Mr. Ainsworth, I announced that the Omnibus would henceforth appear as an annual.”
In the last number of the Omnibus, Cruikshank announced that, having “resumed” an arrangement entered into “a twelvemonth ago with Mr. Harrison Ainsworth,” he could not continue his Fireside Miscellany—monthly. He ended with a pictorial joke. “If he and his literary associates,” he added, “should meet the reader as agreeably in an annual as in a monthly form,” he trusted it would be as long as it was short. The remark was illustrated by the square figure of a man.
The long and short of it, however, was, that the Omnibus never appeared again.
The following note will give the reader an idea of the activity of Cruikshank’s faculty of suggestion, which led him so often to advance unwarrantable claims as an originator. It is addressed to Laman Blanchard:—
“My dear Blanchard,—
“Barker does not mean anything by ‘Unity.’ ‘Unity Peacham’ is a real name somewhere in Westminster.
“That do not-wish-to-be-known young gentleman has sent me a paper entitled ‘The Alamode Beef Shop.’ I have sent for him to suggest a series of papers upon ‘Eating Houses,’ or something of that sort, and will get him to make two or three alterations in this first paper, and will then send it to you. I think it would be desirable to have it in the neighbourhood; that is, if you think as favourably of it as does
“Yours truly,
“G. Cruikshank.