Edouart seems to have moved on to Dublin in 1833, but we doubt if he was pleased when the Dublin Evening Mail of July 24th describes him as “the most comical and at the same time the cleverest artist from Paris. His art gives the scissors all the expressive powers of the pencil, and extracts from a single tint of black the miraculous effects of a whole rainbow of colours.”
Edouart is by now cutting out genre pictures, and subjects from “Æsop’s Fables” are mentioned, while the portraits increase rapidly in number, 6,000 being taken in Dublin alone. The Archbishop of Dublin and a great number of clergy and the officers of the garrison head the list. In his exhibition he shows, amongst thousands of others, His Royal Highness the late Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester, and the Duke of Wellington; the Bishops of Norwich, Bangor, St. Davids, and Bristol; Doctors Chalmers and Gordon; Edward Irving, Charles Simeon, Rowland Hill, Joseph Wolfe, Jabez Bunting, Sir Walter Scott, Mrs. Hannah More, Mrs. Opie (herself a silhouettist), Kean, Liston, Power, Sir Astley Cooper, Baron Rothschild, etc.
In August, 1834, Edouart went to Cork. Later he visited Kinsale, Fermoy, Mallow, Limerick, and many other places. Paganini’s portrait was taken at Edinburgh in October, 1832, where Edouart went, travelling from Glasgow on purpose to obtain it. Signor Paganini declared it was the first likeness of himself which was not caricatured. This full-length portrait shows the maestro standing, violin in hand, just ready to begin. In the background are lithograph portraits of the members of an orchestra: they are seated in a domed music-room.
It was in 1835 that Edouart’s book was published. We presume it had been written during the time of his prodigious activities in silhouette cutting while he moved from place to place and conducted his exhibition. It is a thin demy octavo volume of 122 pages, now extremely rare. The copy in the possession of the author was presented to Miss C. J. Hutchings by Edouart at Cheltenham, August 25th, 1836. There are eighteen full-page plates, showing black portraits or fancy figures mounted on lithograph backgrounds, by Unkles & Klasen, 26, South Mall, Cork. In the original volumes of duplicates kept by Edouart many of these mounts were found, as the silhouettist doubtless kept a number by him ready for mounting his portraits.
In a chapter headed “The Vexations and Slights my Profession has brought upon me,” Edouart deplores “the vulgarity into which silhouettes have fallen, so that I could not walk in public with a lady on my arm without hearing such remarks as this, ‘Who can she be—that lady with the black shade man?’ The same disposition to cast odium on me was displayed whenever I was seen walking arm-in-arm with friends who moved in circles of high life. It went so far that, being in the habit of walking at the Wells of Cheltenham, and accustomed to go to the balls at the Rotunda, I was forced to deprive myself of the pleasure of being with my friends in these places. On different occasions several persons of high rank in society accused me of being somewhat proud,” and so on through many pages.
On one occasion his greeting was of the most cordial description, owing to an amusing mistake. “A friend having given a recommendatory letter to a particular friend in town, I was received in a better manner than ever I was received since I began taking black shades. As my friend would not recommend me to a suitable lodging, we went to the editor of a newspaper, to whom he spoke, and then presented me to him. Upon this we all went to the governor of the castle, who had a house to let in the town. The governor willingly consented to let me have the house, though he feared the boards might not be strong enough for the exercise of my profession, and the quantity of people it would be likely to attract; indeed, it would be advisable to practise on the ground floor, that the noise and bustle would not be so great, and the like....
“The governor, who had been a military man, asked me very good-humouredly if it were not trespassing on my goodness to allow him to take a round with me, saying that he had taken lessons, and took off his coat. I declared that I had not brought my tools with me.” The scene is described in several pages, and shows how the governor offers eventually to lend gloves, when it dawns upon the profilist that the letter has been misread, and the sports around him imagine he is a pugilist.
Edouart seems to have suffered much at the hands of his sitters.
“But, Monsieur Edouart,” says one of these, “you have taken John, who is a head taller than his brother William, a great deal smaller. How can that be? It is a mistake of yours; you must correct that.”