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About this time—that is, between 1849 and 1853—Cruikshank illustrated two Christmas stories by Mrs. G-ore, “The Snowstorm” and “The Inundation,” in Angus B. Beach’s “Clement Lorimer,” * the “Songs of the late Charles Dibdin,” Frank Smedley’s “Frank Fairleigh,” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”—representing some seventy etchings, and as many wood blocks. The “Frank Fairleigh” etchings introduced Cruikshank to Frank Smedley, and led to a final venture in the magazine form, with which David Bogue, the publisher, had resolved to test finally the hold the artist still had on the public.
* Mr. Wedmore, in his article on Cruikshank, says of one of
the etchings in this book, “Miss Eske carried away during
her Trance,” that it is among the things that show him to
have had “the imagination of tragedy.”
Bogue had long been Cruikshank’s fast friend and admirer, and was loth to believe that his name had ceased to be an attraction to the British public upon a title-page. Moreover, he had had some recent successes with the “inimitable” George. In two years the “Sandboys,” in which was his amazingly minute “All the World going to see the Exhibition” and his drawing of the transept, packed with myriads of people at the opening ceremony (I remember standing by him while he sketched it from the south-western gallery), had gone through four editions. But his recent Fairy Library had been a failure. Dickens (in Household Words), among others, had protested against teetotalism being introduced into fairyland; and had, two years previously, even ridiculed what was called Cruikshank’s temperance fanaticism, in a paper called “Whole Hogs.” These attacks, no doubt, helped to put an end to the George Cruikshank’s Fairy Library, after he had illustrated with some exquisitely dainty scenes, “Pass in Boots,” “Hop o’ my Thumb,” u Jack and the Beanstalk,” and “Cinderella.” * Cuthbert Bede, in a “Reminiscence of Cruikshank” in Notes and Queries, remarks: “It was very evident from that article, ‘Frauds on the Fairies,’ and also from a previous one from the same pen, called ‘Whole Hogs,’ that Dickens considered Cruikshank to be occasionally given over to the culture of crotchets, and to the furious riding of favourite hobbies. But in all these things it is indisputable that the great moral artist was firmly persuaded that he was acting in the cause of suffering humanity, and engaged upon some work for the amelioration of his fellow-creatures. And whatever was the act, and however small and trivial it might appear in the sight of the majority, Cruikshank threw himself into it heart and soul, and, like everything else he put his hand to, he did it with all his might.”
* These have been since published in a volume by Bell and
Daldy, and by Routledge and Co.
To be driven from fairyland, which was the realm of his happiest dreams, was a bitter disappointment, and he felt deeply the blow of the friend who drove him forth from it.
