"Er—well, you see, the Princess Royal makes up for the shortcomings of all the others, she is so very clever. Er—er—they are all clever and very nice."
During Corbould's connection with the Royal Family, on one occasion he wrote to us saying the Prince of Wales had got a scrapbook, and he was commissioned by the Prince to say how pleased he would be if we would give him some proofs of our engravings to put into it. We sent a large parcel, and in return Corbould wrote that the Prince was delighted with our contribution and wished him to express his "Warmest thanks to Messrs. Dalziel for their great kindness and liberality."
"26 July, 1863,
"21 Rutland Gate,
"Hyde Park.
"Dear Sirs,—I have received the impression, as well as my own, as also the proof for the Prince of Wales. I shall be at Osborne either on Thursday or Friday next, and I will give it to him. That which you engraved for the 'Keepsake, 1854,' is very beautiful, and so I shall keep the proof. Mr. Heath will be quite content and so shall I. You can tell him that I require nothing done to it. I thank you for the proof, but where are those from Spencer?[5]
"Yours very truly,
"Edward Henry Corbould."
During the early part of our career we became associated with Mr. Samuel Carter Hall, who was originator, editor and at that time proprietor of the Art Journal, and in a somewhat desultory fashion did a considerable amount of work together. Among other matters, we engraved many of the illustrations for "A Book of British Ballads," which was edited by Hall and published by Messrs. How and Parsons of Fleet Street. The drawings by Sir J. Noel Paton, P.R.S.A., John Franklin, W. B. Scott, E. H. Corbould, Henry Warren, and other artists, passed through our hands. When the great International Exhibition of 1851 was in preparation, and during the time it was open to the public, Hall published a series of profusely illustrated supplements to the Art Journal, showing the various classes of objects exhibited. On this work we were very liberally employed. These supplements were subsequently put together and published in one large, handsome quarto volume as an Illustrated Catalogue of that great and important Exhibition.
Many other catalogues, official and non-official, were published of the Exhibition, which contained a marvellous amount of every conceivable class of handicraft and ingenious device, but certainly, for comprehensive completeness, none of them at all approached the very beautiful volume which Mr. Hall gave to the world.
When we had finished our portion of the engravings, he was so grateful for the help we had given that he volunteered the promise that no other wood engravers should ever be employed upon his works. But perhaps it is only characteristic of the man to say that this promise was never carried out.
As already stated, we engraved a very large number of drawings for Mr. Hall with undeviating approval, and we were much gratified by the following passage in a letter addressed to him by E. M. Ward, the Royal Academician, on our submitting a proof of an engraving we had executed: