I shall now bring to your notice a very rare coloured plate by Henry Alken, which, though not suppressed in the strictest sense, is yet {158} sufficiently relevant to the subject to admit of its inclusion in these papers. It was undoubtedly prepared for a book of which Alken was the illustrator, but, for some reason or other, although engraved, it was not included among the published plates.

During the years 1831–39 there appeared in The New Sporting Magazine, edited by R. Surtees, a series of sporting sketches of which “Mr. John Jorrocks” was the hero. These papers were collected and published in 1838 under the alliterative title of Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities, il­lus­trat­ed by “Phiz.” This volume was brought to the notice of Lockhart, who thereupon advised Surtees to try his hand at a sporting novel. The immediate result was Handley Cross. In 1843 a third edition of Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities appeared, with sixteen coloured plates after Henry Alken. The novels in the meantime were being issued with illus­tra­tions by Leech and “Phiz.” That the former has at this distance of time lost nothing of its popularity (rather, of course, on account of the illus­tra­tions than for the letterpress, which reads poorly enough now) is evidenced by {159} the fact that only the other day a copy fetched at public auction the remarkable sum of £20. One wonders what the bidding would have reached had the book been extra-il­lus­trat­ed with the unused illus­tra­tion of which it is here my purpose to treat.

Now we must be careful, in considering any work signed “Alken,” to bear in mind the fact mentioned by Mr. R. E. Graves in the Dictionary of National Biography, that although the fertility of Alken’s pencil was amazing, the idea of it might be fictitiously enhanced if the fact were not grasped that he left two or three sons—one of whom was also named Henry—all artists and all sporting artists, who have, since their father’s time, been incessantly painting, lithographing, aquatinting and etching for the sporting publishers and for private patrons of the turf.

But the original Henry Alken did his work between 1816 and 1831; hence it is clear that the illus­tra­tions to Jorrocks were the work of Henry the younger. And this is a point which should be emphasised for the guidance of the bibliomaniac, for it is the practice of many second-hand booksellers to lump all work by “Alken” under one head, from {160} ignorance possibly—in some cases I fear from unworthy motives. For it is the work of Henry Alken, the founder of the line, which is of greatest rarity and greatest merit, and to palm off work done by a namesake as work done by him is plain cheating. We remember the parallel case of George Cruikshank, who exposed a certain publisher, in a somewhat intemperate pamphlet afterwards suppressed, entitled A Popgun fired off by George Cruikshank, etc., etc. In that case the publisher had been guilty of the more than questionable proceeding of advertising certain “story-books” as “il­lus­trat­ed by Cruikshank,” which were in reality the work of George’s nephew, Percy, who, I fancy, would have been the last to concur in what was an undoubted attempt to mislead the public.[28]

[28] The woodcut of the irascible George suspending the unhappy Brooks by the nose from a pair of tongs is reproduced in my little book on Cruikshank’s Portraits of Himself.

The suppressed portrait of “John Jorrocks, Esq., M.F.H., etc.” (By Henry Alken, the younger)

Let it be clearly understood, then, that the plate which we here reproduce was the work of Henry Alken the younger. Though of little artistic merit, it is yet not unworthy of those which were published, and the reason of its {161} sup­pres­sion is difficult to fathom. The plate should be undoubtedly annexed, on its very rare appearance, by him who values his Jorrocks. This would make his copy, in the words of the second-hand booksellers, a “really desirable” one. Our re­pro­duc­tion is not quite the size of the original, which exactly tallies in size and shape with the published plates. The line of pub­li­ca­tion runs: “London, Published by R. Ackermann at his Eclipse Sporting Gallery, 191 Regent St. 1843.” The method employed in its production is a mixture of etching and aquatinting, and this impression has been coloured by hand with the brilliant tints which appealed to our sporting forebears. There need be no complaint about its lowness of tone. It would put to the blush the most versi-coloured of kaleidoscopes! To parody Dr. Johnson’s animadversion upon a certain ode, it would be just from the strict artistic standpoint to say, “Bolder colour and more timorous meaning, I think, were rarely brought together.”

So much for some unattached sup­pres­sions of the first half of the century. We will conclude {162} this chapter with certain cancelled plates of only yesterday.