Part 5 (2/2)

We must not quit Cruikshank's zoological drawings without remarking on the curious inconsistency of his att.i.tude towards animals. We find him both callous and tender. In ill.u.s.trating ”The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” he chose (one a.s.sumes) to draw the Baron flaying the fox by flagellation; at any rate we have his wood-cut depicting the abominable operation; and in ”Sc.r.a.ps and Sketches” (1832), poor Reynard, for the sake of a pun, is exhibited as ”Tenant intail” of a spring-trap. Yet in ”My Sketch Book” (1835) he presents us with frogs expostulating with small boys for throwing stones at them (”I pray you to cease, my little Dears! for though it may be sport to you, it is death to us”). Again, his canine reference to cats' meat, already mentioned, implies a heartlessness towards horses which is contradicted by his touching but not much prized etching _The Knackers Yard_, to be found in ”The Voice of Humanity” (May 1831), in ”The Melange” (1834), and in ”The Elysium of Animals” (1836). Moreover, in ”My Sketch Book” (1835) he severely exhibits human insensitiveness to the sufferings of quadrupeds in _The Omnibus Brutes--qy. which are they?_ It is therefore clear that Cruikshank thought humanely about animals, though as a humorist he was irresponsible and gave woe's present to ease--its comicality. And before we write him down a vulgarian let us remember our share in his laughter at the absurdity of incarnations which confer tails on elemental furies and indecencies, and compel elemental importances and respectabilities to satisfy their self-love by ruinous grimaces and scaffoldings of adipose tissue.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”THE CAT DID IT!” From ”The Greatest Plague in Life”

(1847).]

In a comparison I have already a.s.sociated Cruikshank with Lewis Carroll, who was systematically the finest humorist produced by England till his death in 1898. The most intensely comic thing ever wrought by the hand of Cruikshank is, I think, by the absolute perfection of its reasoning _a priori_, a genuine ”carroll” in a minor key. It is the drawing in ”Sc.r.a.ps and Sketches” (1832) in which, to a haughty, unamused commander, the complainant says, ”Please, your Honor, Tom Towzer has tied my tail so tight that I can't shut my eyes.”

One of Cruikshank's humorous ideas is particularly his own, because it satisfies his pa.s.sionate industry. I mean those processions of images which he summoned by the enchantment of single central ideas. _The Triumph of Cupid_ in ”George Cruikshank's Table Book” (1845) is as perfect an example as I can cite. Cruikshank is seated by a fire with his ”little pet dog Lilla” on his lap. From the pipe he is smoking ascends and curls around him a world of symbolic life. The car of the boy-G.o.d is drawn by lions and tigers. Another cupid stands menacingly on a pleading Turk; a third cupid is the tyrant over a negro under Cruikshank's chair; a fourth cupid, sitting on Cruikshank's left foot, toasts a heart at the ”fire office”; more cupids are dragging Time backwards on the mantelpiece, and another is stealing his scythe.

Consummate ability is shown in the delicate technique of this etching, which was succeeded as an example of _multum in parvo_ by the well-known folding etching _Pa.s.sing Events or the Tail of the Comet of 1853_, appearing in ”George Cruikshank's Magazine” (February 1854).

[Ill.u.s.tration: t.i.tLE PAGE OF ”ILl.u.s.tRATIONS OF TIME,” 1827 This drawing borrows idea from Gillray, as also does the frontispiece by Cruikshank to ”Angelo's Picnic” (1834). Compare Gillray's _John Bull taking a Luncheon_ (1798).]

Playing on words is very characteristic of Cruikshank's humour. Thus he shows us ”parenthetical” legs, as d.i.c.kens wittily called them, by the side of those of ”a friend in-kneed,” and a man (dumbly miserable) arrested on a rope-walk is ”taken in tow.” Viewing Cruikshank at this game does not help one to endorse the statement of Thomas Love Peac.o.c.k, inspired by the drawing of January in ”The Comic Almanack” (1838),

”A great philosopher art thou, George Cruikshank, In thy unmatched grotesqueness,”

for a philosopher is a systematiser and a punster is an anarchist. But we do not need him as a philosopher or as an Importance of any kind.

What we see and accept as philosophy in him is the appropriation of misery for that Gargantuan meal of humour to which his Time sits down.

Yet in that philosophy it is certain that ironists and pessimists excel him.

An entomologist as generous in cla.s.sification as Mr Swinburne, author of ”Under the Microscope,” will now observe me in the process of being re-transformed into a scolytus. ”Impossible!” cries the reader who remembers my repentance on page 203. But I say ”Inevitable.” Since I had the courage to bore my way through a catalogue of famous books ill.u.s.trated humorously by Cruikshank, I feel it my duty to bid the reader look at a list of works of which he should acquire all the italicised items, in such editions as he can afford, if he wishes to know Cruikshank's humour as they know it who call him ”The Great George.”

The Humourist (4 vols., 1819-20).

_German Popular Stories_ (2 vols., 1823-4).

_Points of Humour_ (2 vols., 1823-4).

_Mornings at Bow Street_ (1824).

_Greenwich Hospital_ (1826).

_More Mornings at Bow Street_ (1827).

Phrenological Ill.u.s.trations (1826).

Ill.u.s.trations of Time (1827).

_Sc.r.a.ps and Sketches_ (4 parts and one plate of an unpublished 5th part, 1828-9, 1831-2, 1834).

_My Sketch Book_ (9 numbers, with plates dated 1833, 1834, 1835).

_Punch and Judy_ (1828).

_Three Courses and a Dessert_ (1830).

_Cruikshankiana_ (1835).

_The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman_ (1839).

_George Cruikshank's Omnibus_ (9 parts, 1841-2).

The Bachelor's Own Book (1844).

_George Cruikshank's Table Book_ (12 numbers, 1845).

George Cruikshank's Fairy Library (4 parts, 1853-4, 1864).

George Cruikshank's Magazine (2 numbers, 1854).

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