The “Guy Fawkes” illustrations were the outcome of the first campaign between Bentley and Cruikshank; and as the history of the quarrel between the publisher and his unmanageable artist is a somewhat amusing one, we may be pardoned for describing it at length. The engagement from which he sought to free himself, and which he stigmatized as “a one-sided one,” obliged Cruikshank to supply Mr. Bentley with at least one etching every month; and as Bentley continued to advertise him as the illustrator of the “Miscellany,” George commenced the second campaign by issuing in the opening pages of the opposition venture the following characteristic manifesto:—“Mr. Bentley, the publisher,” says the indignant George, “evidently wishes to create the supposition that I illustrate his ‘Miscellany.’ On the contrary, I wish the public to understand that I do no such thing. It is true that, according to a one-sided agreement (of which more may be heard hereafter), I supply a single etching per month. But I supply only that single etching. And even that can hardly be called my design, since the subject of it is regularly furnished to me by Mr. Bentley, and I have never even read a page of any of the stories thus ‘illustrated.’
“Yet Mr. Bentley not only advertises me as the illustrator of his ’Miscellany,’ but he has lately shaped his advertisement thus, in the papers as well as on the wrapper of his magazine: ‘Illustrated by Geo. Cruikshank, etc.’ Are his other artists worthy only of being merged in an etc.? This is, indeed, paying them but a poor compliment; and one which I should hardly think they would submit to. In certain other announcements I observe mentioned, in addition to my own name, a ‘Cruikshank the Younger.’ Who is he? The only Cruikshank the Younger I ever heard of as a designer, is myself. Would it not be supposed that there must be a third Cruikshank, etching, drawing, and ‘illustrating,’ as his two predecessors have done? Yet there is no such person! There is indeed a nephew of mine, who, as a wood-engraver, and a wood-engraver only, has been employed by Mr. Bentley to engrave ’Crowquill’s designs;’ just as in my ‘Omnibus’ he engraved my own drawings upon wood, and still does engrave them in ’Ainsworth’s Magazine.’ Now, can any one imagine it possible for any respectable publisher, especially ‘Her Majesty’s Publisher in Ordinary,’ to be guilty of so miserable a trick, so wretched an expedient, as that of putting off the engraver of a few of the drawings as the designer himself—as one of the ‘illustrators’ of the ‘Miscellany’? Let Mr. Bentley but produce a single design for the ’Miscellany,’ by ‘Cruikshank the Younger’ (by him so-called), and I will retract this indignant disclaimer and apologise. If Mr. Bentley cannot do this, he stands self-convicted of an attempt to impose upon the public by a mystification, for purposes as apparent as the trick itself.”
What this strange declaration of war proposed to effect is not altogether manifest; if its author imagined it would produce the result of releasing him from his engagement, he was signally mistaken, for Mr. Bentley, as might have been expected, held him all the tighter to the letter of his bond. What the artist thought and what he did are told us in the plainest language by the etchings which followed this singular manifesto. They tell us as plainly as could be expressed in words, that George reasoned after the following fashion:—“It is clear that under the terms of my engagement I am bound to supply ‘Bentley’s Miscellany’ with one etching a month; but our agreement says nothing as to the quality of the etchings, nor am I bound to see that they shall be strictly relevant to the subjects which I am called upon to illustrate.” From that time, so long as he continued to design for the “Miscellany,” George tried to do his worst, and it must be admitted that he succeeded to admiration. Anything more outrageous than these wretched drawings—taking into account the talent, power, and skill of the artist, and the quality of the work which he was at this very time executing for Harrison Ainsworth—can scarcely be conceived. They are so ashamed of themselves, that his signature—usually so distinct, so characteristic, and so clear on other occasions—is illegible, in many cases wholly wanting. At length, in vol. xiii. (1843) appeared a story called “The Exile of Louisiana,” “with an illustration by George Cruikshank” (for Bentley, probably by way of retaliation, was determined the public should know that these performances were due to the hand which had produced the famous etchings to “Oliver Twist,” “Jack Sheppard,” and the contemporaneous story of the “Miser’s Daughter”). We should like to have seen the face of the author when this extraordinary conception dawned upon him. The tale (a serious and pathetic one) was burlesqued with one of the most grotesque caricatures the mind of comic artist ever conceived. It represents Marshal Saxe recognising the widow of a late Czaaravitch in the gardens of the Tuileries. The marshal, a most extraordinary personage, would make in actual life the fortune of any enterprising showman. He possesses a nose of Slawkenbergian proportions; his pig-tail reaches below his waist; and his sword, sticking out at right angles, gives him the appearance of a fly with a pin through its middle. Near him stands a courtier, with ankles of such fearful and wonderful construction that his legs will snap the moment he attempts to use them. As for the distinguished relict of the Czaaravitch, she is one of the most wonderful of the many wonderful people who figure in the sketch. Her figure is an anatomical impossibility; while her mouth reaches from ear to ear (the letterpress, by the way, informs us that her deceased husband had married her for her beauty!). The statue of Mercury, posed like a scaramouch at a masquerade, is matched by that of Neptune, who whirls his trident round his head in a state of the wildest hilarity, cutting at the same time a caper over the body of an attendant dolphin, who is so overcome with the whimsicality of the proceeding that he is making the most violent efforts to restrain his laughter. This last shot probably hit the mark, for only three etchings appear in vol. xiv., and not one afterwards. George was victorious; but there are victories and victories, and a triumph won at the cost of an artistic reputation is as disastrous as a defeat.
Harrison Ainsworth’s long connection with the artist had taught The Misunderstanding with Ainsworth. him that he was one who would be neither driven nor led, and he was wise enough to accommodate himself to circumstances. The admirable woodcut design at the head of that division of the magazine which was known as “Our Library Table,” shows us the artist and the handsome editor in consultation, and the attitude of the two men is indicative of the fact that Ainsworth is attentively listening to the advice or suggestions of his coadjutor, a fact to which Cruikshank himself has been particular to draw our attention. To the free and unfettered conditions under which Cruikshank co-operated with Ainsworth we owe a series of the most justly celebrated and valuable of his designs. In matters, however, connected with art, Cruikshank was, as we have seen, a difficult man to get on with, and it was fairly safe to predict that a quarrel between the author and artist was a mere question of time. The artist remained on the staff of “Ainsworth’s Magazine” for three years, enriching its pages with some of the choicest efforts of his pencil. At the end of that period came the unfortunate but almost unavoidable misunderstanding; and George Cruikshank, as he had done with Bentley, withdrew from the concern. Unlike Bentley, however, Ainsworth appears not only to have foreseen, but to have made preparations for the inevitable; and accordingly, when George Cruikshank retired, his place was immediately taken by an artist of talent, destined to win for himself a considerable position among the ranks of designers and etchers: this was Hablot Knight Browne, then and now known to us under his monosyllabic nom-de-guerre of Phiz.
It seems to us fitting in this place to say a few words on the subject of George’s pretension to be the originator of two of Ainsworth’s stories, because the truth of his assertion has been questioned by a late commentator.[94] George’s statements simply amount to this: that so far as the illustrations to the “Miser’s Daughter” and “The Tower of London” are concerned, the author wrote up to his designs. We have considered Ainsworth’s answers to this statement, and find that although he fences with, he does not deny it. It was one essential condition of Cruikshank’s success that his fancy should be free and untrammelled, and the truth of his statement appears to us to be proved by the illustrations to these works, which are certainly the finest which he ever designed; that he was therefore (as he stated) the originator of these tales in the sense in which he used the word, we can entertain no manner of doubt.
Most of the Cruikshank commentators, whilst writing on the subject of the Harrison Ainsworth etchings, have thought fit to decry the author’s share of the performance; but the fact that the pictures are so much better than the letterpress should not prevent us from dealing fairly with the veteran author, who, like the distinguished artist with whom he so long co-operated, has now gone to his rest. Even Mr. Ainsworth’s detractors will, we think, admit that without him we should have lost the admirable illustrations to “Windsor Castle,” “Jack Sheppard,” and “St. James’s”; it may even be doubted whether without him we should have had the still better series of etchings which adorn the “Tower of London” and the “Miser’s Daughter.” If this be the fact, it seems to us we owe a lasting debt of gratitude to this venerable writer, who experienced the vicissitudes which inevitably befall mere talent when allied with genius. He was a writer of the George Payne Ransford James school, dispensing, however, with the inevitable setting sun and two travellers, and received a price for his productions which many a better author might well envy. For his novel of “Old St. Paul’s” (1841) he was paid by the proprietors of the Sunday Times one thousand pounds; “The Miser’s Daughter” attained an extraordinary success; and the same remark applies to “Windsor Castle.” For “The Lancashire Witches” he received from the proprietors of the Sunday Times one thousand pounds. Several of the works named had not the benefit of Cruikshank’s illustrations; but in 1850-1, cheap editions of all such of Mr. Ainsworth’s romances and tales as had appeared up to that period, were published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall without any illustrations at all. “Windsor Castle” was the first of the series, and upwards of thirty thousand copies were disposed of in a short time; while all the other works enjoyed a very large sale, and popular favour was so far from being exhausted, that another edition of his novels was called for in 1864-1868. He was a veritable literary rolling stone. In 1845 he disposed of his magazine to the publishers, and purchased the “New Monthly,” previously edited by Theodore Hook and (after his death) by Thomas Hood; in 1854 he bought the far-famed “Miscellany” itself, becoming its proprietor and editor; in that year he seems also to have re-purchased “Ainsworth’s Magazine,” which as a separate and rival publication thenceforth ceased to exist.
The only work which Cruikshank illustrated for Charles Lever was “Arthur O’Leary,” and the reason of this has been explained by himself in a letter which he wrote to Mr. Fitzpatrick, the author of Charles Lever’s life: “I had the honour and the pleasure,” he says, “of being personally acquainted with the late Charles Lever, and I regret that I was only able to illustrate one of his works, ‘Arthur O’Leary,’ my engagements on ‘Jack Sheppard,’ etc., at that time prevented me from illustrating his other works, which he wished me to have done, but I do not remember ever having any written correspondence with him, as the MS. or printed matter was placed in my hands for illustration; and then I had entirely to deal with the publisher. Mr. Charles Lever was an author whom I held in high estimation.” Lever himself was highly gratified with these illustrations.
By 1845, that is to say, at least two years before he had taken The Final Leap in the Dark. his final leap in the dark, Cruikshank had contrived to pick quarrels with the very class of men whom it was his special interest to conciliate, and had been driven to set up an opposition serial of his own—the celebrated “Table Book“—which, notwithstanding the superlative excellence of his own illustrations and the talent of his literary contributors, comprising such names as John Oxenford, Horace Mayhew, Shirley Brooks, Mark Lemon, W. M. Thackeray, and others, could not manage to prolong its existence beyond its first volume. In matters connected with his own interests he was not only impracticable, but seems to have been remarkably destitute of tact and even of discernment. It cannot be doubted that the estrangement from Bentley was unwise and impolitic, for as one of the greatest publishers of fiction of the day, his influence was both far-reaching and comprehensive. In quarrelling with Dickens, Ainsworth, and Bentley, three of the great artistic employers of labour of his time, and in face of the growing popularity of John Leech and Hablot Knight Browne, he was literally quarrelling with his bread and butter, and few men, even of genius, may afford to do that. He was essentially impulsive, and frequently acted under the influence of first impressions. Although fond of his pipe and his glass, as his famous Reverie,—The Triumph of Cupid, in the “Table Book,” will show, he had always evinced a horror of drink, and had, as we have seen, done his best at various times to expose its insidious and baneful influences. At last, in 1847, came a sudden and extraordinary impulse of enthusiasm, under the influence of which he not only produced his Bottle, but laid aside for ever his pipe and his bowl. To do any real good, he said he must practise what he preached: he joined the “teetotallers,” and not being one of those who did things by halves, entered heart and soul into the crusade against drink by becoming a temperance advocate. This last was the one step needed to fill up the measure of the artist’s folly, and to secure for him the reputation of being an incurably eccentric, self-willed man.
Those who would charge the author with blaming George Cruikshank for joining the ranks of the teetotallers will do him grave injustice. Although very much of the opinion of Robert Burton, author of the “Anatomy of Melancholy,” that, “No verses can please men or live long that are written by water-drinkers,” and disposed to undervalue the tact and discretion of some of the advocates of total abstinence, for its abstract principles he can say and think nothing but what is good. But he is writing, be it remembered, of a great artist—one whose mission was that of an artist, not that of a temperance orator,—of one who had served the righteous and good cause of temperance best when he remembered that genius had made him an artist and not a temperance orator,—of one who had rendered that cause yeoman’s service long before he joined the total abstainers, in designing The Gin Juggernaut, The Gin Trap, and work of a kindred nature. The cause, too, so far as mere verbal advocacy was concerned, was better served by men of vastly inferior mark and ability. Before this fatal plunge was taken his genius had roamed in an absolutely uncontrolled range of freedom. He had travelled into the land of chivalry and romance, into the realms of fairy fancy, magic, and diablery; he had brought back with him pictures of the wondrous people, lands, and scenes which his fancy had visited. All this was at an end; this wonderful genius was now forced into a narrow groove, where it could no longer have the freedom of action which was essential to its very existence. From the moment that George Cruikshank turned temperance orator, the world of English art lost one of its brightest ornaments, and he himself both fame and fortune; for, as Mr. Bates observes, “some of his earliest friends were alienated, and remunerative work that might have been his was diverted, from sheer prejudice, into other hands.” His style, too, as Mr. Bates further remarks, “suffered by the contraction of his ideas and sympathies, and his art became associated with that vulgarity and want of æstheticism which perhaps necessarily characterizes the movement.” The Bottle and The Drunkard’s Children, although successful in a pecuniary point of view—compared with what had gone before,—can scarcely be called art at all; in these too he unconsciously put himself in competition with Hogarth, and as a matter of necessity failed.