Part 17 (1/2)
In one ill.u.s.tration he introduces us to a cheerful a.s.sembly of ancestral ghosts: there is the ghostly saucer-eyed head of the family, with a ghostly hound peeping beneath his chair, a ghostly grandmother, half a dozen ghostly spinster aunts, a ghostly butler, a ghostly cook, a ghostly small boy, two ghostly candles; and lastly, a ghostly cat. Small wonder that under the influence of such ghostly surroundings the hair of the affrighted ghost-seer stands erect in the extremity of his terror.
This same book contains, too, the celebrated etching of _Jack o'Lantern_, probably the best ill.u.s.tration of the supernatural which we owe to the pencil and weird imagination of the artist. ”Talk of Fuseli and his wind-bag, there is real vivid imagination enough in this to make a whole academy of Fuselis. It is just an Egyptian darkness, with breaking through it, above a bog-hole, some black bulrushes, and above them a bending, leathery goblin exulting over some drowned traveller, the meteor lamp he carries casting a downward flicker on the dark water.
Such darkness, such wicked speed, such bad, Puck-like malice, such devilry, Hoffman and Poe together could not have better devised. Many a May exhibition has not half the genius in all its pictures that focuses in that gem of jet.” The description is admirable; but Walter Thornbury has altogether misconceived the artist's idea. _Jack o'Lantern_ is simply misguiding a belated traveller into a bog, and the elfin grin which pervades his countenance testifies to the delight he takes in his mischievous employment. The words of the song in Dryden's _King Arthur_ convey the best possible description of this wondrous conception:--
”Hither this way, this way bend, Trust not that malicious fiend; Those are false, deluding lights, Wafted far and near by sprights; Trust 'em not, for they'll deceive ye, And in bog and marshes leave ye, If you step no danger thinking, Down you fall, a furlong sinking; 'Tis a fiend who has annoyed ye, Name but Heav'n, and he'll avoid ye.”
By way of contrast to all these, I would turn to the celebrated and much-too-often-described _Triumph of Cupid_, of the ”Table Book”; but as the praises of this remarkable composition may already be counted by the ream, I have no intention whatever of contributing a further addition.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. _From ”The Universal Songster.”_
”THE OLD COMMODORE.”]
[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. _From ”The Universal Songster._”
”A tall figure her sight engross'd, And it cried, 'I beez Giles Scroggin's Ghost.'”
_Face p. 182._]
A notice, however, of George Cruikshank's supernatural work would be incomplete without some reference to his _devils_. From time immemorial our idea of His Satanic Majesty has been a.s.sociated with the distinguis.h.i.+ng appendages of horns, hoofs, and a cow's tail. ”A conceit there is,” says old Sir Thomas Browne, ”that the devil commonly appeareth with a cloven hoof, wherein, although it seems excessively ridiculous, there may be somewhat of truth, and the ground thereof at first might be his frequent appearing in the shape of a goat, which answers the description.” George Cruikshank too well apprehended the cunning nature of His Satanic Majesty to suppose him idiotic enough to introduce his hoofs, his horns, or his tail into the company of all sorts and conditions of men. It will be remembered that Fitz Dottrel takes leave to doubt the ident.i.ty of the devil who waits upon him in the character of a body servant. ”You cannot,” he says, ”cozen _me_. Your shoe's not cloven, sir; you are whole hoofed.” But ”Pug” simply and unaffectedly a.s.sures him, ”Sir, that's a popular error,--deceives many.”[91] Like ”Pug,” George Cruikshank's devils accommodate themselves, their appearance, and their costume to the prejudices of the persons they design to serve. With saints and perverse sinners it is obvious that any attempt at disguise would be futile; but with so respectable a person as a Dutch burgher, or so suspicious an individual as an English lawyer, the case is altogether different. We have specimens of the respectable devil in the ”long-legged bondholder” who appears to his unfortunate Dutch debtor; the portly, well-dressed little man in the ”Gentleman in black”; and the seedy looking old clothes dealer of ”Peter Schlemihl.” Quite a different devil to any of these is the devil that interviews St. Nicholas, the devil whom St. Medard circ.u.mvented, or the simple-minded and unfortunate devil that fell into the clutches of St. Dunstan. This last is probably the most comical _diabolique_ that Cruikshank ever designed. In an evil hour this miserable fiend had irritated the saint by mimicking his musical powers; and growing bolder with impunity, even ventured to challenge his skill as a mechanic, by doubting his ability to fit a shoe to his own diabolical hoof. The saint promptly whipped up the leg, and it was not until this simple devil found himself in the clutches of the saint, that he fully comprehended the prodigious powers of the holy personage he had ventured to chaff. In spite of his howls and frantic efforts to escape, the iron shoe is remorselessly fitted, and nail after nail driven into the quick. Imagine the sufferings of that poor devil; observe his comically distorted countenance as he bellows with agony and impotent rage; how his tail curls round his leg in the extremity of his anguis.h.!.+
The worst perhaps has to follow, for in spite of the agony of his crippled hoof, a deed will have to be ”signed, sealed, and delivered,”
by which his claim to a legion of sinful souls has to be for ever released and extinguished. It is worthy of remark that George Cruikshank's devils--simple-minded, weak creatures, more mischievous than really wicked, in all their contests with the saints (Saint Anthony excepted) invariably come off second best.
In estimating his merits, the genius of George Cruikshank may not inaptly be compared to a diamond. One facet often emits more brilliant coruscations than any other; and if we may be permitted to compare his powers of realizing the grave, the comical, the supernatural, and the terrible to the facets of a diamond, we think the one which would be found to emit the most brilliant flashes of light would be the last.
Thackeray, one of the most friendly and most competent of his critics, would seem to have considered that much of his power was shown in depicting subjects of this kind. ”What a fine eye,” he tells us, in his famous article which has supplied the backbone--the muscles--the very integuments of so many others,--”what a fine eye the artist has, what a skilful hand, and what a sympathy for the wild and dreadful!”
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Designed, Etched and Published by_ GEORGE CRUIKSHANK._November 1st, 1829._
THE GIN SHOP.
”--now, Oh dear, how shocking the thought is, They makes the gin from aquafortis:
They do it on purpose folks' lives to shorten, And tickets it up at two-pence a quartern.”--_New Ballad._
_Face p. 184._]
From an early period of his career as an etcher and designer, George had waged a deadly war with gin,--that potent, insidious, and evil spirit of London; the most priceless services he rendered to the cause of temperance being unquestionably given long before he had any notion of joining the ranks of the total abstainers. Like the _Triumph of Cupid_, the well-known _Gin Juggernaut_ of the ”Sketch Book” requires nothing more than a pa.s.sing allusion. An example less known but quite as admirable will be found in the ”Sc.r.a.ps and Sketches.” It is called _The Gin Shop_,[92] and shows us the interior of a London gin palace. In place of the usual barrels, around the walls are ranged coffins, labelled respectively: ”Deady's Cordial;” ”Blue Ruin;” ”Gin and Bitters;” the largest (a huge one) being marked ”Old Tom.” Death, habited as a watchman, has baited a huge gin trap, wherein stand five persons (two of them children, besides a baby in arms), _all_ imbibing the deadly liquid. The wretched woman with the infant has actually placed her foot on the spring, and so great is the artist's power of realization, that we momentarily expect to see the horrible thing close with a snap! A skeleton, whose fleshless skull is masked with a pleasant female countenance, officiates as barmaid, and behind her yawns a pit, on the further side of which a circle of evil spirits curvet around a huge still. Just such a weird scene as would strike a sympathetic chord in the artist's fancy was found for him in Scott's novel of ”Red Gauntlet.” The episode selected for ill.u.s.tration is the frightful adventure of Hutcheon and Dougal MacCallum. ”When midnight came, and the house was quiet as the grave, the silver whistle sounded as sharp and shrill as if Sir Robert was blowing it, and up got the two old serving-men and tottered into the room where the dead man lay. Hutcheon saw enough at the first glance; for there were torches in the room, which showed him the foul fiend in his ain shape, sitting on the laird's coffin! Ower he couped, as if he had been dead. He could not tell how long he lay in a trance at the door; but when he gathered himself, he cried on his neighbour, and getting nae answer, raised the house, when Dougal was found lying dead within twa steps of the bed where his master's coffin was placed. As for the whistle, it was lost ance and aye, but mony a time it was heard at the top of the house on the bartizan and among the auld chimneys and turrets, where the howlets have their nests.” The coffin of the dead laird lies in state on a table covered with black cloth, richly ornamented with his armorial bearings; at the foot of the bier stands his black plumed helmet; while atop of the coffin crouches the grinning ape with the laird's whistle in his paw; on the ground, as they have been tossed about by the mischievous beast, lie his rapier, gauntlet, and other military trappings. The furniture, the fittings, the sombre hangings, the gloomy ancestral portraits, all are in keeping with the weird scene and its surroundings.
_The Death of Sikes_, and _f.a.gin in the Condemned Cell_ (especially the latter) have been described any number of times, and the circ.u.mstances, moreover, under which the latter design was conceived, told invariably wrong. In the _Murder of Sir Rowland Trenchard_ [”Jack Sheppard”], we have a Rembrandtish etching, quite equalling in power and intensity that of _f.a.gin in the Condemned Cell_. The gloomy depths of the well hole are illumined only by the pine torch of the frightened Jew, as Wild hammers with his bludgeon on the fingers of the doomed wretch who, maimed and faint from loss of blood, clings with desperate tenacity to the bannister, from which his relaxing grip will presently plunge him into the black abyss below.
The ”Tower of London” introduces us to two scenes of a dismal and terrible character in the etching ent.i.tled _Xit Wedded to the Scavenger's Daughter_, the artist carries us to a gloomy torture chamber, dimly lighted by a solitary lantern. On the framework of the rack sits the dwarf Xit, his limbs compressed in the grip of the frightful instrument called the ”Scavenger's daughter,” while Simon Renard, scarcely able to repress a smile, interrogates the comical little figure at his leisure. Behind him stands Sorrocold, the surgeon; and in the farther corner Mauger (the headsman), Nightgall, and an a.s.sistant torturer, recline against the wall. The feeble rays of the lantern throw an obscure light upon the gloomy walls decorated with the stock in trade of the torturers, thumb-screws, gauntlets, collars, pinchers, saws, chains, and other horrible and suggestive implements.
Affixed to the ceiling is a steel pulley, the rope which traverses it terminating with an iron hook and two leathern shoulder straps. Facing the gloomy door stands a brazier filled with blazing coals, in which a huge pair of pinchers are suggestively heating. Reared against the side of a deep dark recess is a ponderous wheel--broad as that of a wagon, and twice the circ.u.mference; and next it the iron bar with which the bones of those condemned to die by this most horrible torture were broken while alive. The etching of _Mauger Sharpening his Axe_ is nearly as celebrated as that of _f.a.gin in the Condemned Cell_. ”A wonderful weird dusk, with no light but that which glimmers on the bald scalp of the hideous headsman, who, feeling the edge of his axe with his thumb, grins with a devilish foretaste of his pleasure on the morrow. I need scarcely say that all the poetry, dramatic force, mystery, and terror of the design is attributable to Cruikshank, and not to Ainsworth.”[93]
Scenes still more realistically terrible even than these, such as the _Ma.s.sacre at Tullabogue_, _The Rebel Camp on Vinegar Hill_, and the _Executions at Wexford Bridge_, will be found in Maxwell's ”History of the Irish Rebellion.”
Mr. Lockhart, we may remember, advised the artist in the early part of his career to ”think of Hogarth,” and throughout the whole of George Cruikshank's designs of the graver caste the influence of the study of Rembrandt and of Hogarth will be apparent to those acquainted with the characteristics of these great artists. In the case of Rembrandt it is manifest in the deep shadows, penetrated by broad but skilfully treated rays of light, throwing the salient parts of the design into prominent but pleasing relief; in the case of Hogarth it is shown in minute attention to details of a character singularly appropriate to the designs. Delineators of subjects of greater pretension are frequently content to throw all their sympathies, their energies, into the elaboration of their leading figure or figures: the att.i.tude, the face, the features, the hands, the costume, leave nothing to be desired, while the rest of the composition is slurred or neglected. This is not the case with Cruikshank, every part of his work bears witness to his careful attention to detail; no part of it is elaborated at the expense of the rest; from the tenants of the room down to the smallest and most insignificant ornament on the chimney-piece, everything appears as distinct as it would appear in actual every-day life.
But this study of Rembrandt and of Hogarth, this minute attention to detail, this careful and conscientious elaboration, would have done little for George Cruikshank if he had not possessed in an eminent degree that faculty of creation, otherwise of originality, which men call _genius_. Various descriptions of this gift have been attempted by eminent men, but the most felicitous seems to us to be that given by Robert William Elliston: ”A true actor,” says this distinguished comedian, ”must possess the power of _creation_, which is _genius_, as well as the faculty of imitation, which is only _talent_.” Subst.i.tute the word ”artist” for the word ”actor,” and the remark will apply with equal felicity to the subject of our present chapter. It was this same gift of genius which, whilst it enabled the artist to lend a sentient expression to such unpromising subjects as a barrel, a wig-block, a jug of beer, a pair of bellows, or an oyster, imparted to his drawings a piquancy which has elevated these apparently insignificant designs into perfectly sterling works of art. The reader who is fortunate enough to number amongst his books the first half-dozen volumes of ”Bentley's Miscellany” and ”Ainsworth's Magazine,” ”The Omnibus,” ”The Table Book,”
”The Comic Almanack,” possesses a series of designs, drawn and etched by the hand of the master himself, the value of which is yearly increasing, not only because they are becoming scarcer and scarcer every day, but because nothing like them--under the conditions in which book ill.u.s.tration is now produced--will ever be seen again.