“Then he told me how the crying sin of the age had sunk deep down into his heart, especially when he had seen it flourishing, like an upas tree, in all its foul deformity, in those courts and alleys into which he was so often led in search of subjects for his pencil; and how the design for ‘The Bottle’ had gradually grown upon him, and the necessity for practising what he preached, which he found he could do only by cutting himself adrift from all alcoholic drinks. He also explained how his plans to disseminate the scenes of his ‘Drunkard’s Progress,’ in such a form and at such a low price that they should reach those masses for whom he specially designed them, were hampered and well-nigh frustrated, chiefly by the cost of engraving such large drawings on wood; and how the new art of glyphography had come to his assistance, and enabled him to draw the eight designs, and to sell them (with Dr. Charles Mackay’s explanatory poem) for a shilling—which in the year 1847 was an extraordinarily low price for such a production. ‘You will remember,’ he said, ‘how Maclise represented me seated on a beer-barrel, getting my inspiration from pothouse scenes, and pencilling them on the crown of my hat?’ ‘Yes, I remember: it was in the Fraser gallery of portraits.
And you have amply proved to the world since then that you can turn to the best account, and for the public good, the people and incidents that you saw in those places.’ I told him that of ‘The Bottle’ and ‘Drunkard’s Children’ series I preferred the one where the poor girl commits suicide from Waterloo Bridge—the idea of the body falling from a height being so vividly conveyed to the eye, as to impress one with the conviction that we can really see the swift descent of that ‘one more unfortunate.’”
An instance of Cruikshank’s earnestness in the Temperance cause happened in May 1854. He had been invited to preside over a meeting of total abstainers, to be held in Sadler’s Wells Theatre, a place associated in his mind with the glories of his friend Joe Grimaldi, the clown, and the days when he was a frequenter of the clown’s club, “The Crib,” hard by. The great Temperance advocate, J. B. Gough, was to address the audience. Cruikshank introduced him in his own original way, delivering, as the papers remarked, a speech full of piquant and incontrovertible truth. But it was at the close of the orator’s speech that the chairman proved himself equal to the occasion. Seeing that the audience were under the spell of Mr. Gough’s eloquence, he rose and exhorted them at once to come forward and sign the pledge. With this he advanced to the footlights, bridged the orchestra with a few planks, and stood by to receive the ladies who came forward in crowds, many of them leading their children. So delighted was the artist with the number of converts he led to the table to sign the pledge, that he drew the scene for the Illustrated London News, with himself for central figure.
I remember attending another meeting in George Cruikshank’s company. It was a gathering of London pickpockets, called by Mr. Henry Mayhew, when he was engaged upon his London Labour and London Poor inquiry. The solemn, but still somewhat grotesque impressiveness of the Temperance preacher, as he rose, while that dreadful company of keen-eyed vicious lads were eating the plain Temperance supper which had been provided for them, to bid them renounce the evils of their way, and as a beginning, to shun the bottle and the beer-pot, dwelt long in my memory. “Man,” said Lord Lytton, “has no majesty like earnestness.” That night, honest, whole-hearted Cruikshank, as with wild gesticulation he talked to “the dear lads”—for the forlornest and wickedest waif was dear to him—was clothed in majesty; and it cowed a man at hand, who acknowledged, within his hearing, that he had smuggled something stronger than water into the room.
