We will now turn from this specimen of lithography to a very remarkable example of the sister art of wood-engraving. (Vide Frontispiece.)
In the April number 1896 of Good Words, I dealt with some bibliographical curiosities, one of which was the remarkable suppressed title-page in my possession here reproduced. My object on that occasion was to verify the fact of which I felt practically certain, that the book for which it was prepared had never come into being, and that therefore we had the curious anomaly of an elaborately engraved title-page wanting a book. Books wanting their engraved title-page are unfortunately common enough, owing to the barbarism of certain ruthless collectors. But a title-page not only wanting a book, but which {154} never had one, was as extraordinary as the grin of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, which was left behind after its author had disappeared.
“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice, “but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life.”
But then Alice had never seen this title-page of a book by “Sholto Percy” which was never written, and of which Death in London was to have been the title. The wood-block is a very beautiful one, cut by Mason, no doubt Abraham John, who engraved Cruikshank’s illustrations to Tales of Humour and Gallantry.
“Sholto Percy” was the pen-name of Joseph Clinton Robertson, who, with Thomas Byerley, published the Percy Anecdotes, 1821–23. Their full pseudonyms were “Sholto and Reuben Percy, Brothers of the Benedictine Monastery, Mount Benger.” The anecdotes were published in forty-one parts, at half-a-crown a-piece, before the close of the year 1823, and, of these, two hundred and sixty thousand copies were sold during the four years of issue! What number subsequent editions {155} have run to it is impossible to conjecture. The title of the book had its origin from the Percy Coffee-House in Rathbone Place, which the collaborators frequented. They also compiled London, or Interesting Memorials of its Rise, Progress, and Present State. 3 vols. 1823.
In the dedication of this last work to George IV. we find facsimile signatures of the two “Brothers.” That of “Sholto Percy,” the author of the book which was evidently projected but never published, tallies with that on the title-page here reproduced. From the fact that Reuben’s signature is absent we gather that, for some reason or other, the collaboration had come to an end. At any rate nothing more is heard of the partnership, nor indeed was anything else published under one or other of these noms-de-plume. And although I received various communications from strangers upon the subject of the bibliographical curiosities dealt with in the Good Words article, no light was thrown upon this perplexing title-page. Suppressed, therefore, it doubtless was, because it had no reason to be anything else, and remains a rather pathetic memorial of the gifted {156} artist and the author whose projected enterprise was perchance cut short by one of the forms of the Dread Enemy here portrayed.
The block is worthy of careful scrutiny. The only impression in existence (as I believe it to be) and in my possession is beautifully printed on India paper. In it we find Bewick’s white line used with excellent effect. Behind the main panel the colossal form of Death is just visible, holding in either hand “Death in the Cup” and “Death in the Dish.” At the lower corners his skeleton feet are just visible, fixed on the Arctic and Antarctic portions of the Globe. At the top of the panel Death drags a wheel off the chariot which is making a dash from London to Gretna Green. Immediately below this is a nail-studded coffin from which hangs a pall inscribed with the words “Death in London.” This overhangs the central group, in which Death spectacled and seated on a tombstone at a desk supported by human thighs, with a human skull as footstool, receives despatches and directs his myrmidons. Supporting this central panel two skeletons hurl death-dealing darts, whilst below one skeleton {157} starves in prison, and another, crowned with straw, rages as a maniac.
On the right-hand border a skeleton highwayman, pistol in hand, awaits his victim, ignoring the gallows which is seen under the moon in the background, and ignorant of the noose already round his neck, manipulated by a skeleton hangman in the division above. On the left-hand border a somewhat cryptic design represents a skeleton toper surmounting a skeleton quack physician who sucks a cane and, with medicine bottle in hand, goes forth on his death-dealing mission.
At the base Death, in a deluge of wind and rain, overturns a sailing boat, and incidentally presses down a struggling victim with his foot. The whole effect is finely decorative, and far surpasses anything else of Seymour’s of which I have knowledge.
But we must not linger too long over each item of our promiscuous collection of cancelled illustrations.