Poor man, it was a bitterly cold morning last December, and he arrived before breakfast, and stayed to breakfast. Mr. Austin Dobson was there; and he told us the story of how he invented Old Fagin in the condemned cell.” Mr. Dobson says of him at this breakfast: “On the morning in question (I think it must have been the 14th of December last, 1877), Mr. Cruikshank came in; and I, who had not seen him more than once or twice in my life, was only too eager to ask him all sorts of questions about himself. Except that he was a little bent, he had no appearance of age—certainly not of the advanced age he had reached. He was very-bright and alert, and appeared to have an excellent memory for the circumstances of his career.”
He celebrated his silver wedding on the 8th of March, 1875, when his house was crowded with his friends and admirers, who took tea with him. Mr. S. O. Hall, his old friend, addressed a few words to the company, which so affected Mrs. Cruikshank, that she fell weeping upon her husband’s neck. Mr. Walter Hamilton, who was present, remarks: “To receive the congratulations of so many friends was a task which would have fatigued and excited many a younger man than Mr. Cruikshank; but he preserved his self-possession through it well, having a ready jest and a smile for each and all; whilst Mrs. Cruikshank, who was fairly hedged in on every side with bouquets, looked far too young to be one of the principals in such a ceremony. A guard of honour from his old corps attended to congratulate their late colonel. It was late in the afternoon before Mr. Cruikshank withdrew for a few moments from the crowded rooms, and as he went he whispered, laughingly, to the author, ‘You are down on our list of visitors for the Golden Wedding.’”
“On the morning of the 1st of February,” writes his young friend, Grace Stebbing, ** “there was still living a bright, brave-spirited old man, who had worked on untiringly almost to the end, even to within three weeks of his death, when I, one of those privileged to claim his friendship even from my infancy upwards, met him hurrying along the streets with cheerful, eager aspect, to keep ‘a business appointment.’”
** The Graphic, February 9th, 1878.
