Part 20 (1/2)
The artist possibly had this quotation in his mind when he designed the following:--The deponent is a country b.u.mpkin, to whom an official tenders the Testament, at the same time extending his disengaged palm.
”Pleas zur,” says Hodge, ”wot be I to zay?” (To him the officer), ”Say, This is the truth and nothing but the truth, so help me G.o.d one and sixpence.”
The open and notorious bribery, corruption, and intimidation which prevailed in those days at parliamentary elections; Sir Robert Peel's ”New Police Act” (which was received with extraordinary suspicion and dislike); the Reform Bill; the universal distress and consequent bread riots of 1830-31, form the subjects of other pictorial satires by Robert Seymour, which seem, however, to call for little notice.
The artist's talent and services were constantly in demand as a designer on wood; but finding that the productions of his pencil suffered at the hands of the wood-engravers to whom they were entrusted, and the very inferior paper upon which the impressions were taken, he, in or about the year 1827, began to learn the art of etching on copper. We believe his earliest attempts in this direction will be found in a work now exceedingly rare, bearing the t.i.tle of ”a.s.sisting, Resisting, and Desisting.” A volume called ”Vagaries, in Quest of the Wild and Wonderful,” which appeared in 1827, was embellished with six clever plates after the manner of George Cruikshank, and ran through no less than three editions.
The ”Humorous Sketches,” several times republished, perhaps the only work by which Seymour is now known to the general public, appeared between the years 1834 and 1836. They were first published at threepence each by Richard Carlisle, of Fleet Street, who is said to have paid the artist fifteen s.h.i.+llings for each drawing on the stone. Carlisle falling into difficulties shortly before Seymour's death, sold the copyright and lithographic stones to Henry Wallis, who in turn parted with the latter to Mr. Tregear, of Cheapside, but retaining his property in the copyright, transferred the drawings to steel, and published them in 1838, with letterpress by Alfred Crowquill. Mr. Henry G. Bohn issued an edition in 1842, and another some twenty-three years later, with plates so sadly worn and blurred by over use that the best part of this last edition (issued by the Routledges in 1878) is the binding.
The ”Humorous Sketches” (we refer, of course, only to the early impressions), although affording fair examples of the artist's comic style and manner, are in truth of very unequal merit. They comprise some eighty subjects, which, owing to the frequent republications, are so well known that it would be superfluous to attempt a detailed description of them here. The best is unquestionably the one numbered XXV., ”This is a werry lonely spot, Sir; I wonder you arn't afeard of being rob'd.” The inevitable sequel is amusingly related by Crowquill:--
”Poor Timmins trembled as he gazed Upon the stranger's face; For cut-purse! robber! all too plain, His eye could therein trace.
'Them's werry handsome boots o' yourn,'
The ruffian smiling cried; 'Jist draw your trotters out, my pal, And we'll swop tiles beside.
That coat, too, is a pretty fit,-- Don't tremble so--for I Vont rob you of a single fish, I've other fish to fry.'”
The ”Sketches,” with other detached works by the artist, reappeared in an edition published by the late John Camden Hotten, ent.i.tled ”Sketches by Seymour,” comprising in all 186 subjects, for the most part sadly worn impressions. Although there is nothing whatever ”Hogarthian” about the originals, as the amiable publisher would have us (as usual) believe, we may admit that the faces in No. 24, _At a Concert_, are a perfect study, and that this sketch, with Nos. 45 and 46 (_Snuffing_ and _Smoking_), afford excellent examples of the artist's ability as a draughtsman.
”THE BOOK OF CHRISTMAS.”
But the work which contains probably some of the best specimens of the artist's style is one now exceedingly scarce. Christmas books, like Christmas cards, are practically unsaleable after the great Christian festival has come and gone; and this was the experience of Mr. T. K.
Hervey's ”Book of Christmas,” which, owing to the author's dilatoriness, came out ”a day after the fair,” and despite its attractions proved unmarketable. This circ.u.mstance, we need not say, by no means detracts from its value, and as a matter of fact, the collector will now deem himself fortunate if he succeeds in securing a copy at a price exceeding by one half the original cost. Those who have formed their ideas of Seymour's powers from the oft republished and irretrievably damaged impressions of the ”Humorous Sketches,” will be astonished at the unaccustomed style, vigour, and beauty of these ill.u.s.trations. A few of the earlier _etchings_ are somewhat faint and indistinct, as if the artist, even at that time, was scarcely accustomed to work on copper.
They, however, improve as he proceeds with his work; the larger number are really beautiful, and are characterised by a vigour of conception and execution, of which no possible idea can be formed by those who have seen only the ”Humorous Sketches.” Noteworthy among the ill.u.s.trations may be mentioned the finely executed head of _Old Christmas_, facing page 23; the _Baronial Hall_ (a picture highly realistic of the Christmas comfort and good cheer which is little better than a myth to many of us); _The Mummers_; _Christmas Pantomime_; _Market, Christmas Eve_; _Boxing Day_; and _Twelfth Night in the London Streets_. The cheery seasonable book shows us the _Norfolk Coach_ with its spanking team rattling into London on a foggy Christmas Eve, heaped with fat turkeys, poultry, Christmas hampers and parcels. William Congreve tells us--
”Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.”
The irritable personage awoke from his slumbers by the music of the waits, certainly does not belong to any of the order of animate or inanimate subjects so softened, soothed, or bent, as aforesaid, for he opens his window and prepares to discharge the contents of his jug on the heads of the devoted minstrels. If the ancient ophicleide player, with the brandy bottle protruding from his great coat pocket, might but know of the impending cataract which more immediately threatens himself, he would convey himself from the dangerous neighbourhood with all the alacrity of which his spindle shanks are capable. A younger neighbour on the opposite side of the street awaits the catastrophe with amused interest, whilst a drunken ”unfortunate” executes--under the elevating influences of music and drink--a _pas seul_ on the pavement below. In the etching of _Story Telling_, the deep shadows of an old baronial hall are illuminated solely by the moonbeams and the flickering flame of the firelight; a door opens into a gallery beyond, and one of the listeners, fascinated by the ghost story to which she is listening, glances fearfully over her shoulder as if apprehensive that something uncanny will presently issue out of the black recesses. The ghostly surroundings have their influences on the very cat, who looks uneasily about her as if afraid of her shadow. Besides the thirty-six etchings on copper, the book contains several charming woodcuts, impressed on paper of a very different quality to that on which the artist was accustomed to behold impressions from his wood blocks.
Of a cla.s.s entirely different to the foregoing may be mentioned the still rarer series of comicalities executed by the artist under the t.i.tle of ”New Readings of old Authors,” of which we may notice the following: _Moved in Good Time_ (_Taming of the Shrew_, Act 2, Sc. 1), a tax-gatherer and other creditors bemoaning themselves outside the premises of a levanted debtor; _I am to get a man, whate'er he be_ (Act 3, Sc. 2), disciples of Burke and Hare providing themselves with a living subject; _I do remember when the fight was done, when I was dry_ (King Henry IV., Part 1, Act 1, Sc. 3), a victorious prize-fighter recruiting his exhausted frame by imbibing many quarts of strong ale; _He was much Feared by his Physicians_ (Act 4, Sc. 1), an irascible gouty patient flinging medicine bottles and nostrums at one of his doctors, and stamping a prostrate one under foot; _You are too great to be by me gainsaid_ (_King Henry_ IV., Part 2, Act 1, Sc. 1), a huge woman administering chastis.e.m.e.nt to a small and probably (in more senses than one) _frail_ husband; _My Lord, I over rode him on the way_ (Act 1, Sc. 1), a miserable huntsman who has ridden over and killed one of the master's fox-hounds; _He came, saw, and overcame_ (Act 4, Sc. 2), a wretched Frenchman, who, overbalancing himself, falls over the rails of a bear-pit amongst the hungry animals below; _Never was such a sudden scholar made_, (_King Henry_ V., Act 1, Sc. 1), in allusion to the installation of the Duke of Wellington as Chancellor of Oxford University; _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, a fat sleeper suffering under the agonies of nightmare, under the influence of whose delusion he fancies himself roasting before a vast fire, with a huge hook stuck through his stomach; and, _I beg the ancient privilege of Athens: as she is mine, I may dispose of her_ (Act 1, Sc. 1), an Englishman attempting to dispose of his ugly, wooden-legged old harridan of a wife by auction.
The lithographic stones on which the drawings to these ”New Readings”
were made, and which comprised no less than three hundred drawings, were effaced before the artist's death, and impressions from them are now, of course, more than difficult to procure. The Shakespeare series were collected and republished in four volumes, in 1841-2, by Tilt & Bogue, of Fleet Street, and even these last are very seldom met with.
On the 10th of December, 1831, there started into life a periodical of decidedly p.r.o.nounced political bias and opinions, ent.i.tled ”Figaro in London.” Politics ran high in those days; it was the time of the great agitation for ”reform,” which in those days, as we shall presently see, was both loudly called for and imperatively necessary. A mob of boys and degraded women had taken complete possession of Bristol,--had driven its deformed little mayor over a stone wall in ignominious flight,--had burnt down the gaol and the mansion-house, and laid Queen Square in ashes, whilst the military and its very strangely incompetent officer looked on while the city was burning.[103] Every one in those days was either a rabid Tory or an ultra Radical. It was just the period for an enthusiastic youth to plunge into the excitement of political life; but the crude, unformed opinions of a young man scarcely of age are of little value, and the political creed of the proprietor and originator of this literary (?) venture does not appear to have been clearly defined even to himself. In his valedictory addresses written three years afterwards, when things were not altogether so rosy with him as when he started his periodical, he confesses that he belongs to no party, for ”we have had,” he says, ”such a thorough sickener of the Whigs, that we do expect something better from the new government, _although it be a Tory one_.”
The price of ”Figaro in London,” one of the immediate predecessors of the comic publications of our day, was a penny, quite an experiment in times when the price of paper was dear, and periodical literature was heavily handicapped with an absurdly heavy duty. ”Figaro” consisted of four weekly pages of letterpress ill.u.s.trated by Robert Seymour. The projector, proprietor, and editor, was Mr. Gilbert a Beckett, whose name--with those of men of vastly superior literary attainments--was a.s.sociated in after years with the early fortunes of _Punch_. The literary part of the performance was indeed sorry stuff,--the main stay and prop of the paper from its very commencement was Seymour, whose drawings however suffered severely at the hands of the engraver and paper maker. An eccentricity of the publication perhaps deserves notice.
It professed to look with sovereign contempt upon advertis.e.m.e.nts, as occupying a quant.i.ty of unnecessary s.p.a.ce--considering, however, that exception was made in favour of one particularly persevering hatter of the period, we are driven to the conclusion that the projector's contempt for a source of revenue which modern newspaper proprietors can by no means afford to despise, was nearly akin to that expressed by the fox after he had come to the melancholy conclusion that the grapes he longed for were absolutely beyond his reach.
The new periodical a.s.sumed from the outset a position which cannot fail to amuse the journalist and reader of the present day. It professed to look down upon all other publications (with certain exceptions of magnitude, whom the editor deemed it prudent to conciliate) with supercilious contempt. The absurdity of these pretensions will strike any one who turns over its forgotten pages, and compares his pretensions with Mr. a Beckett's own share of the performance. The mode in which this young gentleman's editorial duties were conducted, gathered from extracts taken at random from the ”Notices to Correspondents,” were, to say the least, peculiar: ”A. B., who has written to us, is a fool of the very lowest order. His communication is rejected.” Poor Mr. c.o.x of Bath is told he ”is a rogue and a fool for sending us a letter without paying the postage. If he wants his t.i.tle page, let him order it of his bookseller, when it will be got as a matter of course from our publisher,” and so on. The aristocracy are regarded with a disfavour which must have given them serious disquietude. The ”coming out” of the daughter of the late Lord Byron, or a _soiree_ at the d.u.c.h.ess of Northumberland's town house, serve as occasions for indulging in splenetic abuse of what Mr. a Beckett was pleased to term ”the beastly aristocracy.” Authors, even of position, were not spared by this young Ishmael of the press, the respected Mrs. Trollope, for instance, being unceremoniously referred to as ”Mother Trollope.” The only excuse of course for this sort of thing is to be found in the fact that comic journalism being then in its infancy, personal abuse was mistaken for satire; while, so far as the bad taste of the editor is concerned, allowance must be made for an inexperienced young man who imagined that the editors.h.i.+p of a paper, wholly dest.i.tute of merit except that which Seymour brought to its aid, conferred upon himself a position which rendered him superior to the rules of literary courtesy.
With all these pretensions, however, a Beckett was conscious of the powerful a.s.sistance he was receiving from the artist; and we find him, after his own peculiar fas.h.i.+on and more than questionable taste, constantly alluding to the fact; describing him at various times as ”that highly gifted and popular artist, Mr. Seymour;” ”our ill.u.s.trious artist Seymour;” and so on. In the preface to his second volume, he indulges in the following flight of fancy, which will suffice to give us an idea of the literary merits of the editor himself: ”In this our annual address,” he says, ”we cannot omit a puff for the rampant Seymour, in whom the public continue to _see-more_ and more every time he puts his pencil to the block for the ill.u.s.tration of our periodical.”
This was the sort of stuff which pa.s.sed for wit in 1832.[104] As for Seymour himself, he was annoyed at these fulsome and foolish compliments, and in a letter which he wrote to a Beckett after the quarrel to be presently related, told him in the plainest terms that, ”the engraving, bad printing, and extravagant puffing of his designs were calculated to do him more harm than good as an artist.”
But artist and editor jogged on together in perfect good will until the 16th of August, 1834, when, for the first and only time, ”Figaro in London” made its appearance without any ill.u.s.trations at all. The two succeeding weekly issues contained each a single woodcut after Seymour's drawing, but from that time until the end of the year, when a Beckett himself retired from the proprietors.h.i.+p and disposed of his interest in the concern, the paper was ill.u.s.trated by Isaac Robert Cruikshank; this change was due to the following circ.u.mstance.
A special feature of ”Figaro in London” was its theatrical leader. a Beckett had always taken an interest in dramatic matters, and was himself author of some thirty plays, the very t.i.tles of which are now forgotten. Not content with being proprietor and editor of a newspaper, he was concerned at this time in another venture, being proprietor and manager of a theatre in Tottenham Court Road, known at different times under the various designations of the Tottenham Street or West London Theatre, the Queen's, and latterly as the Prince of Wales' Theatre. The result was almost a foregone conclusion. A newspaper is a sufficiently hazardous speculation, but a theatre in the hands of an inexperienced manager is one of the most risky of all possible experiments; and the result in this case was so unfortunate, that a Beckett in the end had to seek the uncomfortable protection of the insolvent court. He was considerably indebted to Seymour for the ill.u.s.trations to ”Figaro,” half of the debt thus incurred being money actually paid away by the artist to the engraver who executed the cuts from his drawings on the wood.
Finding that a Beckett was in no position to discharge this debt or to remunerate him for his future services, Seymour did--what every man of business must have done who, like the artist, was dependent on his pencil for _bread_, refused any longer to continue his a.s.sistance. Apart from the bad paper and bad impressions of which he complained, and above all the bad taste displayed in fulsome adulation of his own merits, supremely distasteful to a man of real ability, Seymour appears. .h.i.therto to have entertained no bad feeling towards a Beckett personally.