Now, six of these works were illustrated entirely by me, and one—Windsor Castle—partly so, numbering altogether One Hundred and Forty-Four of the very best designs and etchings which I have ever produced; and yet in this Biographical Sketch my name is not mentioned in any way as connected with these works, which omission, I thought, was not only very ungenerous but also very unjust. For, if Mr. W. H. Ainsworth did not himself sketch out this ‘Biographical Sketch’ of himself, he must have known full well what the writer was stating; and he might as well have said to that gentleman, ‘Just mention that Mr. George Cruikshank illustrated several of the novels written by me,’ and have given the titles, and also have acknowledged that I had given him the original ideas of three of the tales, and assisted him with suggestions when these works were being produced; and, had he done this, I should have been satisfied. But to be thus ignored altogether not only created a feeling of surprise but also of dissatisfaction. And when it was announced that Mr. Andrew Halliday had dramatised Ainsworth’s Miser’s Daughter, I went to see the performance; and when I saw represented on the stage scenes and characters which had emanated from me and my name not mentioned, I then publicly claimed to to be the originator of that romance, and to have suggested the original idea and the characters to Mr. Ainsworth.
No. 2, Jack Shepherd, illustrated by me, and published in monthly parts in Bentley’s Miscellany. This story originated from Mr. Ainsworth, and, when preparing it for publication, he showed me about two or three pages of manuscript on ‘post paper’; and I beg that it may be observed that this was the only bit of manuscript written by this author that I ever saw in the whole course of my life!
No. 4, The Tower of London, the Original Idea of which was suggested by me to Mr. Ainsworth, and also illustrated by me and published in monthly numbers. In this work Mr. Ainsworth and I were partners holding equal shares.
And now comes the question of how it should so happen, as Mr. W. H. Ainsworth and I were such friends and fellow-workers and partners in the work of The Tower of London, that he should have got another artist to illustrate Old St. Paul’s (‘one of my pet subjects, which I had nursed in my brains for years, and which I had long intended to have placed before the public with my own hands,’ as G. C. relates in another charge)? And, after that was finished, to have employed a French artist to illustrate Windsor Castle. Ay, that is the question! And now comes the answer and the reason for this most extraordinary proceeding. I must here first state that as large sums of money had been realised from my ideas and suggestions for the work of Oliver Twist, it occurred to me one day that I would try and get a little of the same material from the same source; and as Mr. Ainsworth and I were at that time upon the most friendly—I may say brotherly—terms, I suggested to him that we should jointly produce a work on our own account and publish it in monthly numbers, and get Mr. Bentley to join us as the publisher. Mr. Ainsworth was delighted with the idea of such a partnership, and at once acceded to the proposition; and when I told him that I had a capital subject for the first work he inquired what it was, and upon my telling him it was The Tower of London, with some incidents in the life of Lady Jane Grey, he was still more delighted; and I then told him that I had long since seen the room in ‘the Tower’ where that beautiful and accomplished dear lady was imprisoned, and other parts of that fortress to which the public were not admitted, and if he would go with me to the Tower I would show these places to him. He at once accepted my offer, and off we went to ‘Hungerford Stairs,’ now the site of the Charing Cross Railway Station, and whilst waiting on the beach for a boat to go to London Bridge, we there met my dear friend the late W. Jordan, the well-known editor and part-proprietor of The Literary Gazette, who inquired where we were going to. My reply was that I was taking Mr. Ainsworth a prisoner to the Tower! With this joke we parted. I then took Mr. Ainsworth to the royal prison, and when we arrived there I introduced him to my friend Mr. Stacey, the storekeeper, in whose department were these ‘Chambers of Horrors’; and then and there did Mr. Ainsworth, for the first time, see the apartment in which the dear Lady Jane was placed until the day she was beheaded, or, in other words, the day on which she was murdered, and which place I had long before made sketches of for the purpose of introducing them in a Life of Lady Jane Grey, and which for many years I had intended to place before the public.
I have now most distinctly to state that Mr. Ainsworth wrote up to most of my suggestions and designs, although some of the subjects we jointly arranged to introduce into the work; and I used every month to send him the tracings or outlines of the sketches or drawings from which I was making the etchings to illustrate the work, in order that he might write up to them, and that they should be accurately described. And I beg the reader to understand that all these etchings or plates were printed and ready for publication before the letterpress was printed, and sometimes even before the Author had written his manuscript; and I assert that I never saw a page of this work until after it was published, and then hardly ever read a line of it. It is a curious coincidence, but clearly proves what I have just stated with respect to these outlines or tracings—that Mr. Ainsworth in January last was applied to for these and other tracings or outlines, and his reply was, that ‘he would be very happy to send the tracings mentioned, but he had no idea what had become of them, as he had not seen them since ‘The Tower of London’ was published. This letter I have in my possession.
This Tower of London became so very popular, that before it was finished, a bookseller came to me and said if we brought out another work similar in style and interest, that he would take 20,000 a month to begin with, and pay ready money for them; and another bookseller offered to take 25,000 or 30,000 a month upon the same terms.
When this work was completed, I told Mr. Ainsworth that I had another capital subject for our next work. ‘Ah! what is it?’ said he; to which I replied, ‘The Plague and the Fire of London.’
‘Oh!’ he exclaimed, ‘that is first-rate!’
[The aggrieved Artist proceeded to state at length his sense of injury at the hands of the Author, who, on the facts set forth, had not considered Cruikshank’s rights in several instances, notably Old Saint Paul’s and Windsor Castle. This first break between the partners was bridged over, owing to the peace-making overtures of a mutual friend, and Cruikshank’s publication of The Omnibus was suspended and finally abandoned in favour of that artist consenting to collaborate (as in Bentley’s Miscellany) in a new venture, namely Ainsworth’s Magazine.]
The Artist’s statement is thus continued:—