The tail-piece to this characteristic pamphlet—as charming as it is characteristic—is a brightly-executed drawing on wood of Britannia seated upon the British lion, couchant, with her arms about “her ragged and reformatory pets.”
Cruikshank’s zeal for the cause to which he had devoted himself led him to take delight in the illustration even of little Temperance pamphlets and fly-sheets.
Ruskin had said, in his “Time and Tide, by Weare and Tyne” (1867), “It is no more his business to etch diagrams of drunkenness than it is mine at this moment to be writing these letters against anarchy.” Yet just as Mr. Ruskin has gone on with his letters, so Cruikshank went on with his diagrams of drunkenness to the end.
In 1867, when Cruikshank brought out his “British Bee-Hive,” with a worker at a trade or profession in every cell, the estates of the realm at the top, and the army and navy at the bottom, and called it “a penny political picture for the people, with a few words upon Parliamentary Reform, by their old friend George Cruikshank,” he was opposed to the Reform Bill, and advised the working-men to be content with the glorious constitution as it stood, and keep away from Reform meetings, as “revolutionary proceedings.”
Perhaps the best of Cruikshank’s pamphlets, taking the text and the drawings together, is “The Glass and the New Crystal Palace,” published by John Cassell. It is thoroughly Cruikshankian, and in his most vivacious mood: some of the illustrations—as the Spirit Level—a drunkard at full length upon the pavement; the Social Villagers, with Death for the host, and the villagers represented by their tombstones; and the whisky after the goose, and the goose after the whisky, for instance.
Think what would have become of the neglected or forgotten humourist, if, when the mere laughing public had turned away from him to Leech and Doyle, and Tenniel and Du Maurier, he had not been fired with the ardour of an apostle in the cause he had taken up. His Almanac had failed for lack of readers; and David Bogue had thrown up Cruikshank’s magazine, after the second number—convinced that the artist had outlived his public. His ambition to become a painter was mercifully renewed, with the renewal of his health and mind, through temperance. Full of vigour he used to say, “A man should paint from his shoulder, sir.” He became almost wholly a serious man in his work, and appealed to the public in a new capacity. He resolved, stimulated by the success of “The Bottle,” to paint a great picture that should remain behind him, a monument of his genius, and an immortal temperance lesson. He was ready, and eager, to give a helping hand in all directions to the last. In 1870, I asked him to join my Committee, when I was a candidate for the Maryle-bone division of the London School Board. I give his prompt answer as an example of his clear head and hearty readiness in his old age to serve a friend:—
“October 27th, 1870.
“Dear Blanchard Jerrold,—Your request would have been complied with on the instant, but it so happens that a gentleman called upon me a few days back with a message from friend Hepworth Dixon, asking me to allow my name to be placed on his Committee for this ‘Educational Council,’ to which, of course, I assented.
“Now if one man can have his name placed on two Committees, then by all means place my name on your Committee, but if not, then let me know if there is any other way in which I can assist in this matter the man who is a relative of, and who bears the name of two dear friends who were always held in the highest esteem by,
“Yours truly,