There is a rare caricature on the subject of the Irish union, which exhibits a little of the style of Isaac Cruikshank, and a copy of which is in the possession of Mr. Fairholt. From this I have taken merely the group which forms our cut No. 236. It is a long print, dated on the 1st of January, 1800, and is entitled “The Triumphal entry of the Union into London.” Pitt, with a paper entitled “Irish Freedom” in his pocket, is carrying off the young lady (Ireland) by force, with her natural accompaniment, a keg of whisky. The lord chancellor of Ireland (lord Clare) sits on the horse and performs the part of fiddler. In advance of this group are a long rabble of radicals, Irishman, &c, while close behind comes Grattan, carried in a sedan-chair, and earnestly appealing to the lady, “Ierne, Ierne! my sweet maid, listen not to him—he’s a false, flattering, gay deceiver.” Still farther in the rear follows St. Patrick, riding on a bull, with a sack of potatoes for his saddle, and playing on the Irish harp. An Irishman expostulates in the following words—“Ah, long life to your holy reverence’s memory, why will you lave your own nate little kingdom, and go to another where they will tink no more of you then they would of an old brogue? Shure, of all the saints in the red-letter calendar, we give you the preference! och hone! och hone!” Another Irishman pulls the bull by the tail, with the lament, “Ah, masther, honey, why will you be after leaving us? What will become of poor Shelagh and all of us, when you are gone?” It is a regular Irish case of abduction.
No. 237. The Farthing Rushlight.
The last example I shall give of the caricatures of Isaac Cruikshank is the copy of one entitled “The Farthing Rushlight,” which, I need hardly say, is a parody on the subject of a well-known song. The rushlight is the poor old king, George, whom the prince of Wales and his Whig associates, Fox, Sheridan, and others, are labouring in vain to blow out. The latest caricature I possess, bearing the initials of Isaac Cruikshank, was published by Fores, on the 19th of April, 1810, and is entitled, “The Last Grand Ministerial Expedition (on the Street, Piccadilly).” The subject is the riot on the arrest of sir Francis Burdett, and it shows that Cruikshank was at this time caricaturing on the radical side in politics.
Isaac Cruikshank left two sons who became distinguished as caricaturists, George, already mentioned, and Robert. George Cruikshank, who is still amongst us, has raised caricature in art to perhaps the highest degree of excellence it has yet reached. He began as a political caricaturist, in imitation of his father Isaac—in fact the two brothers are understood to have worked jointly with their father before they engraved on their own account. I have in my own possession two of his earliest works of this class, published by Fores, of Piccadilly, and dated respectively the 3rd and the 19th of March, 1815. George was then under twenty-one years of age. The first of these prints is a caricature on the restrictions laid upon the trade in corn, and is entitled “The Blessings of Peace, or, the Curse of the Corn Bill.” A foreign boat has arrived, laden with corn at a low price—one of the foreign traders holds out a sample and says, “Here is de best for 50s.” A group of bloated aristocrats and landholders stand on the shore, with a closed storehouse, filled with corn behind them; the foremost, warning the boat away with his hand, replies to the merchant, “We won’t have it at any price—we are determined to keep up our own to 80s., and if the poor can’t buy at that price, why they must starve. We love money too well to lower our rents again; the income tax is taken off.” One of his companions exclaims, “No, no, we won’t have it at all.” A third adds, “Ay, ay, let ’em starve, and be d— to ’em.” Upon this another of the foreign merchants cries, “By gar, if they will not have it at all, we must throw it overboard!” and a sailor is carrying this alternative into execution by emptying a sack into the sea. Another group stands near the closed storehouse—it consists of a poor Englishman, his wife with an infant in the arms, and two ragged children, a boy and a girl. The father is made to say, “No, no, masters, I’ll not starve; but quit my native country, where the poor are crushed by those they labour to support, and retire to one more hospitable, and where the arts of the rich do not interpose to defeat the providence of God.” The corn bill was passed in the spring of 1815, and was the cause of much popular agitation and rioting. The second of these caricatures, on the same subject, is entitled, “The Scale of Justice reversed,” and represents the rich exulting over the disappearance of the tax on property, while the poor are crushed under the weight of taxes which bore only upon them. These two caricatures present unmistakable traces of the peculiarities of style of George Cruikshank, but not as yet fully developed.
George Cruikshank rose into great celebrity and popularity as a political caricaturist by his illustrations to the pamphlets of William Houe, such as “The Political House that Jack built,” “The Political Showman at Home,” and others upon the trial of queen Caroline; but this sort of work suited the taste of the public at that time, and not that of the artist, which lay in another direction. The ambition of George Cruikshank was to draw what Hogarth called moral comedies, pictures of society carried through a series of acts and scenes, always pointed with some great moral; and it must be confessed that he has, through a long career, succeeded admirably. He possesses more of the true spirit of Hogarth than any other artist since Hogarth’s time, with greater skill in drawing. He possesses, even to a greater degree than Hogarth himself, that admirable talent of filling a picture with an immense number of figures, every one telling a part of the story, without which, however minute, the whole picture would seem to us incomplete. The picture of the “Camp at Vinegar Hill,” and one or two other illustrations to Maxwell’s “History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798,” are equal, if not superior, to anything ever produced by Hogarth or by Callot.
The name of George Cruikshank forms a worthy conclusion to the “History of Caricature and Grotesque.” He is the last representative of the great school of caricaturists formed during the reign of George III. Though there can hardly be said to be a school at the present day, yet our modern artists in this field have been all formed more or less under his influence; and it must not be forgotten that we owe to that influence, and to his example, to a great degree, the cleansing of this branch of art from the objectionable characteristics of which I have on more than one occasion been obliged to speak. May he still live long among the friends who not only admire him for his talents, but love him for his kindly and genial spirit; and none among them love and admire him more sincerely than the author of the present volume.
FINIS.
