THE GOOSE GIRL. From "German Popular Stories," vol. ii., 1826.
In 1822 appeared a post-dated volume of "German Popular Stories ... collected by M. M. Grimm." A companion volume was published in 1826, and both books were adorned by the hand of George Cruikshank. Excepting two much-admired German leprechauns or fairy cobblers in one of Cruikshank's twenty-two etchings, they do not present a fairy worth smiling at, and these cobblers, boundlessly delighted by a present of clothes, are, of course, very far from being of the angelic élite of Fairyland, as drawn by Sir Joseph Noel Paton for Mrs S. C. Hall. But Fairyland is in the imagination of democracy, and he is a good patriot of that country who amuses us with its "freaks," for they are dear to the hoi polloi which appreciate novelty more than perfection. Cruikshank in his Grimm mood is for the "living drollery" which cured Sebastian's scepticism concerning the phœnix and the unicorn. He rejoicingly presents a nose as long as a garden hose—a nose worthy of the beard which travels from page 6 to page 7 of his "Table-Book" (1845). He refreshes us with the humorous pleasure of the giant inspecting Thumbling on the palm of his hand; and he convulses us with the vocal display of the ass, dog and cat which plunge through the glass of a window into the robbers' room. Ruskin said of these etchings that they "were unrivalled in masterfulness of touch since Rembrandt; (in some qualities of delineation unrivalled even by him)"; to that eulogy I can only add that they are inspiriting because they are candid and vivid, and show that realism can be on the side of magic.
Passing without pause some tiny cuts, upon which children would pounce for love of gnomes, in "The Pocket Magazine" (1827, 1828), we arrive again at Cruikshank's sketches for Scott's "Demonology and Witchcraft" (1830), and inspect elves and fairies, barely prettier than mosquitoes, annoying mortals. Worry is incarnate in a horizontal man who is supported in and drawn through the air by elves, directed by two drivers, one on each of his boots. Beautiful is the contempt for herrings of an elf standing on a plate which a comrade is about to smash with a hammer in the presence of a cheaply-hospitable (and sluttish) housewife whom a dozen elves have pulled downstairs by her feet.
Fables which invent sorrow to prevent it can only be classed as fairy-tales by a sacrifice of the mot juste, which I make in order to call attention to an exquisite quartet of etchings by George Cruikshank, illustrating Richard Frankum's verses entitled "The Bee and the Wasp" (1832). No hand but his who drew the shadow-buyer in Peter Schlemihl could have drawn the hair-lines of the criminal insect who mocks the drowning bee in the third of these etchings. So pleased and delicate a malignancy is expressed in him that he figures to me as a personification of evil, and I am disagreeably conscious of smiling to think that, because he speaks and is seen, he is a gentleman compared with a trypanosome or a bacillus coli.
AMARANTH "THE EVER YOUNG" IS CARRIED TO CORALLION BY THE BEE'S MONSTER STEED. From "The Good Genius that Turned Everything into Gold," by the Bros Mayhew, 1847.
A bee—but a superbee—figured in the next fairy book illustrated by Cruikshank. In his designs for "The Good Genius that Turned Everything into Gold" (1847) he showed for the first time an ambition to idealise magic. The idea that power exists in beings of familiar shape and wieldy dimensions to build palaces and fleets without mistakes, without plans and adjustments, without the publication of embryos behind hoardings—to build them without economy and sacrificial fatigue—this is the breathless poem of the crowd. The Brothers Mayhew gave this idea to Cruikshank, and one at least of his etchings for their story—the palace emerging from rock and arborescence—shows that he almost objectified it. Thus (unconsciously) did he atone for that neglect of opportunity which allowed him to deck the magical and tender, the deep and lustrous fiction of E. T. W. Hoffmann, the inspired playmate of ideas that rock with laughter and subdue with awe, with nothing better than a frigidly humorous picture of a duel with spy-glasses.
In 1848 an incomplete and refined translation of "II Pentamerone" appeared with pretty and sprightly designs by Cruikshank. These designs show a more direct sympathy with juvenile taste than his famous etchings for "German Popular Stories." With shut eyes one can still see his ogre swearing at the razor-crop, and his strong man marching off with all the wealth of the King of Fair-Flower, while the champion blower with one good blast makes bipeds of horses and kites of men. Nennella stepping grandly out of the enchanted fish to embrace her brother is dear to an indulgent scepticism. There were beautiful fields and a fine mansion inside that fish and his toothful mouth is but a portico of Fairyland.