“In that paper I spoke of a lady in an omnibus, whose set of false teeth were projected into her opposite neighbour’s lap through a sudden jolt of the vehicle while she was sucking her parasol handle. This led me to tell Cruikshank an anecdote that I had then recently heard, and which, as it has not been in print, I may here narrate; for Cruikshank laughed very heartily at it, and said that he should like to make an illustration to it, and asked me if I could not write a paper on country rectors and their adventures, in which it might be introduced, and which he would further illustrate. Very likely this suggestion might have been carried into effect if Mr. D. Bogue had carried on the magazine. As it was, it was lost to the world.”
Cuthbert Bede has also given us an account of Cruikshank’s first introduction to the editor of his unfortunate final magazine:—
“He told me that, as in my own case, he had not known Cruikshank personally until this projected magazine brought them together, although Cruikshank had illustrated ‘Frank Fairleigh.’ The great artist’s first call upon Smedley was made only a few days previous to my own; and Smedley gave me the following account of it: ‘He was shown into this room, while I was sitting at that writing-desk by the window, I wheeled my chair round (poor Smedley had to use a self-acting wheeled chair), and advanced to meet him. Thus I had my back to the light, and he was facing the window. He appeared so amazed at seeing me such a cripple as I am, that he could not overcome his wonder, but kept exclaiming, “Good God! I thought you could gallop about on horses!” and the like expressions. I explained how it was; and we then proceeded to discuss business details. It was a hot, sultry day, and Cruikshank had walked fast; he was heated, and his face and forehead were very red. His hair was blown about, and, instead of sitting quietly on a chair, he was standing up and gesticulating wildly. I have a sense of the ludicrous, and had the greatest difficulty to keep from laughing, or to look him in the face. For all this time, in the very centre of his capacious and very red forehead, there was a round something of ivory, not plain, but carved in circles, and as big as a large button.
I wondered what it could be. Was it some Temperance badge? Was it some emblem of office in some secret society, in which he held rank as a Great Panjandrum with the little button atop? For the life of me I could not divine what it was. And all the time he was holding me with his glittering eye, and going through a whole pantomime of gesticulations. Suddenly, and to my from his forehead, and dropped on the hearthrug at his feet. Cruikshank looked at it with bewilderment, and said, “Wherever did that come from?”
“From off your forehead,” I replied. “From off my forehead!” he echoed, as he rubbed it fiercely. “Yes,” I said, “it has been there ever since you entered the room.” Cruikshank seized his hat, and looked into its crown, when it appeared that the ivory circlet had dropped from, the ventilating hole in the crown of the hat as Cruikshank had walked to my house, and that it had found its way down to his forehead, where, what with the heat of his head and the fragments of glue on the ivory, it had become firmly fixed, and would perhaps have remained there for some hours longer if he had not accompanied his conversation with so much action When he found out the truth, and fully realized the absurdity of the intense relief—for I was beginning to feel that I could not bear the mystery much longer—the ivory badge fell situation, he burst into such a hearty roar of laughter as I have not heard for many a day. This was my first personal introduction to George Cruikshank.’”
Cuthbert Bede had also the advantage of seeing Cruikshank at work on that plate of his magazine which will make its two numbers live longer than many a serial which has lasted twenty years.
“When I first went into his studio,’’ says Cuthbert Bede, “there were many specimens of his work around him, oil paintings, etchings, and wood-block drawings in various stages of execution. He seemed to take a particular pleasure in showing me these, and in explaining their designs. The chief work on which he was thus engaged was his wondrous etching of ‘The Comet of 1853,’ which was to form the frontispiece for the projected magazine. On account of its dimensions—the actual plate, without the title, ‘Passing Events, or the Tail of the Comet of 1853,’ being 15 1/4 by 7 inches—it had to appear as a folding plate. It was crammed with hundreds of figures, giving, at one view, an epitome of the leading events of the year—the Peace Conference, the war between Russia and Turkey, the war in China, the Queen’s review of the troops at Chobham, the naval review at Portsmouth, Spirit Rapping, Table Turning, the Derby Day, Betting, the City Corporation Commission, John Gough and the Temperance Demonstration, the Nineveh Bulls, the Zulu Kaffirs and Earthmen, the Anteater, Albert Smith’s ‘Mont Blanc,’ Charles Kean’s ‘Sardanapalus,’ Bribery and Corruption, the Australian Gold Discovery, Mrs. Stowe and ‘Uncle Tom,’ the New York and Dublin Exhibitions, the Vivarium, Guy Fawkes, Lord Mayor’s Day, Wyld’s Great Globe, Captain McClure and the North-west Passage, Miss Cunningham’s Seizure by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Ceiling-walker, Smithfield Cattle Show, Chiswick Flower Show, Christmas Merry-making, and the Pantomimes—these are among the subjects that appear in the Comet’s Tail, and the gradual progress of which to its ultimate perfection I was so fortunate as to see....
“The hundreds of tiny figures in this etching are shown with a distinctness and power of characterisation unrivalled by any other artist. I think that he surpassed Callot in this respect; and that no one could approach George Cruikshank in his vigorous, life-like, and picturesque delineation of surging crowds and packed masses of human beings.”
It was his wont to open a serial with a tour-de-force of this description.