Chapter VII: The Caricatures of George Cruikshank (2)

_R-y-l Condescension, or a Foreign Minister Astonished_, published by Fores on the 15th of September, 1817, is one of George Cruikshank's most finished but at the same time indelicate compositions. It refers to the rumours affecting the Princess Caroline's reputation which preceded the "bill of pains and penalties," to which we have already alluded. It appears to us to have originated out of the following circumstance. It was asserted that at a masked ball which the princess had given shortly after she left England to the then King of Naples, Joachim Murat, she appeared in three different disguises; that in one of these, "The Genius of History," she had appeared in so unclothed a state as to call for particular observation; her third disguise was a Turkish costume. It was further asserted that in her changes of dress she had been assisted, not by her female attendants, but by the person with whom her name was so familiarly associated. In the sketch before us, Her Royal Highness's corpulent and redundant figure is clothed in a tight-fitting Turkish dress and trousers, her head being covered by a ponderous turban. The five figures composing her "suite" are the Courier Bartolomeo Bergami, his brothers Louis and Vollotti Bergami, his sister, and William Austin, the youth she had adopted,[79] and who, it was proved, slept in her bed-chamber. The whole are decorated with the crosses and ribbons of the absurd order which she was said to have instituted. The courtly, well dressed foreign gentleman to whom she is introducing these vulgar persons appears to be intended for Metternich, who, while thanking Her Royal Highness for her "condescension," looks the very picture of unfeigned but well-bred astonishment.

DEATH OF PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.

In the evening of the 18th of November, 1817, a mournful procession, at which all the great officers of state attended, quitted Claremont House _en route_ for Windsor. At the impressive ceremony which followed, Garter King at Arms proclaimed its melancholy purport in the following words: "Thus it has pleased Almighty God to take out of this transitory life, unto His Divine mercy, the late most illustrious Princess Charlotte Augusta, daughter of His Royal Highness, George, Prince of Wales, Regent of the United Kingdom." It was even so. The pride and hope of the nation, the heiress of the crown, was on the 6th of November delivered of a still-born child, and within a very few hours afterwards had succumbed to the unlooked-for and fatal exhaustion which followed. The grief which this occasioned was so universal that every one seemed to realize the fact that he or she had sustained an individual loss; scarcely perhaps in English history had the death of a member of a royal family been more sincerely and truly regretted. The mournful event is referred to by the artist in a more than usually touching sketch, entitled, _England's Hope Departing_. Among the medical attendants of Her Royal Highness who followed her to the grave, was the accoucheur, Sir Richard Croft, Bart. This distinguished gentleman was so deeply affected with the unlooked-for result, that his mind refused to recover its tone, and within a month afterwards he committed self-destruction.

Other pictorial satires of George Cruikshank, bearing the date of 1817, are: _Fashionables of 1817_, two figures--a male and female--outrageously caricatured, a rough affair, altogether differing from his usual style; the well-known _double entendre_, _A View of the Regent's Bomb_, which, with our knowledge of his sensitiveness on the subject of his personal appearance, must have given the exalted personage thus outrageously satirized the greatest possible mortification; _The Spa Fields Orator Hunting for Popularity to do Good_, (*) a punning satire on "Orator" Hunt; _A Patriot Luminary Extinguishing Noxious Gas_ (etched from the design of another artist); and two admirable designs bearing the titles of _Vis-a-Vis_ and _Les Graces_. The same year we meet with one of the earliest of his alliterative satires, afterwards so frequently to be seen among the famous illustrations to the "Comic Almanack": _La Belle Assemblee, or Sketches of Characteristic Dancing_, miscellaneous groups, comprising in all thirty figures (exclusive of the orchestra), engaged in a country dance, a Scotch reel, an Irish jig, a minuet, the German waltz, a French quadrille, the Spanish bolero, and a ballet "Italienne." The walls are hung with pictures of dancing dogs, a dancing bear, a dancing horse, rope dancing, the dance of St. Vitus, and "Dancing Mad." Besides this, we find the same year two large sheets showing the _Striking Effects produced by Lines and Dots, for the Assistance of every Draughtsman_, suggested by, but a very vast improvement on, G. M. Woodward's _Multum in Parvo, or Liliputian Sketches, showing what may be done by Lines and Dots_.

1818. ADULTERATION OF TEA.

A report of the House of Commons, showing how four million pounds weight of sloe, liquorice, and ash-tree leaves were annually mixed with Chinese teas in England, was supplemented by a trial in the Court of Exchequer, in which a grocer named Palmer was fined in L840 penalties, for the fabrication of spurious tea. It appeared that there was a regular manufactory of imitation tea in Goldstone Street, which was composed of thorn leaves, which, after passing through a peculiar process, were coloured with logwood; the same leaves, after being pressed and dried, were laid upon sheets of copper, coloured with verdigris and Dutch pink, and sold as _green_ tea. These revelations led, in 1818, to the artist's admirable caricature of _The T Trade in Hot-water, or a Pretty Kettle of Fish: dedicated to J. Canister and T. Spoon, Esquires_. Besides these, we have the same year: _An Interesting Scene on Board an East Indian_, a very coarse but admirable performance; _Introduction to the Gout_ (a fiend dropping a hot coal on the toe of a _bon vivant_); _A Fine Lady, or the Incomparable_, in which it appears to us that Robert had a hand; _Les Savoyards_ and _Le Palais Royal de Paris_; _Comparative Anatomy, or the Dandy Trio_; and _The Art of Walking the Streets of London_, eight subjects, etched by the artist after the design of George Moutard Woodward.

"A SCENE IN KENSINGTON GARDENS, OR FASHIONS AND FRIGHTS OF 1829."

_Face p. 152._]

On the 4th of December, 1818, the number of convicts lying under sentence of death in his Majesty's gaol of Newgate, amounted to no less than sixty, of whom ten were females; probably not three of these unfortunate beings would have been hung now-a-days. Under the Draconian laws, however, then in force, people were hung in scores for passing forged one-pound Bank of England notes; and this barbarous state of things, disgraceful to a Christian country, led to the famous and telling satire of the _Bank Restriction Note_, one of the very few which seem to have escaped oblivion, and which, having been repeated and reproduced in all the latest essays which have been written on him, calls for no extra description from ourselves. It is said to have had the effect desired, and that "no man or woman was ever hanged after this for passing forged one-pound Bank of England notes."

1819.

In 1819 we have one of George Cruikshank's severe and telling attacks upon the Prince Regent, in _Sales by Auction, or Provident Children disposing of their Deceased Mother's Effects for the Benefit of the Creditors_ (*), in which he shows us the prince knocking down (in his character of auctioneer) his dead mother's old hats, gowns, and clothing, and begging the bystanders to bid liberally. At the foot of the rostrum lie sundry snuff-boxes and pots, labelled "Queen's Mixture" and "Prince's Mixture" (in allusion to the old queen's habits), "Strasburg" (in reference to her German tastes and nationality), together with her old china tea-set.

This year is remarkable for producing perhaps the most ambitious and admirable allegory which the artist ever designed; it bears the title of _Old Thirty-nine Shaking Hands with his Good Brother the Pope of Italy, or Covering Up_ versus _Sealing the Bible_. Old Thirty-nine (an English bishop) stands on a pile of volumes labelled, "Never-out-ism," "Ante-biblism," "Never-the-same-ism," etc., whilst the pope, standing on the opposite side on a mass of books bearing similar suggestive titles, shakes hands with his "good brother." By the pope's side we find the devil busily engaged in sealing up the Bible. Behind him stands the Temple of Mammon, surrounded by a crowd of reverend worshippers. Two fiends standing by the side of "Old Thirty-nine" make preparations for a bonfire, to which sundry bundles labelled, "Articles of Faith," "Athanasian Creed," "Catechism," "Liturgies," "Nicene Creed," and so on, will contribute materials. Out of a building in the rear, inscribed, "National School for Thirty-niners only," issues a procession of ecclesiastics and beadles carrying banners. In the foreground stands the figure of "Divine Truth," surrounded by little children, and perusing the pages of the "Holy Bible," held for that purpose by an angel. A roughly executed affair in two compartments, _Preachee and Floggee Too_, satirizes certain clerical magistrates who, while preaching mercy and forgiveness in the pulpit, distinguish themselves by the severity of their sentences for minor offences on the magisterial bench. The titles of other subjects of the year are: _The Hobby Horse Dealer_; _Johnny Bull and his Forged Notes, or Rags and Ruin in the Paper Currency_; _Smoke Jack, the Alarmist, Extinguishing the Second Great Fire of London_; _Love, Law, and Physic_ (*); _The Sailor's Progress_ (six subjects); _Dandies in France, or Le Restorateur_ (*); _A Match for the King's Plate_; _The Belle Alliance, or the Female Reformers of Blackburn_ (*); _Voila t'on mort_; and _Royal Red Bengal Tiger_ (etched from the designs of other artists); _Irish Decency_ (two caricatures); _Giant Grumbo and the Black Dwarf, or Lord G---- and the Printers Devil_; and _Our Tough old Ship Steered Safely into Harbour maugre Sharks of the Day_ (*).

An unsigned caricature, published by Fores on the 15th of May, 1819, appears to me to be due to the hand of George Cruikshank. It bears the title of _The Dandy Tailor Planning a New Hungry Dress_, and would appear to have reference to some contemplated introduction of foreign mercenaries into the English service. The tailor, while stitching a military jacket, sings a song of which the following is a verse,--

"A tailor there was, and he lived in a stall,
Which served him for palace, for kitchen, and hall.
No coin in his pocket, no nous in his pate,
No ambition has he, nor no wish to be great.
Derry down, down, down, derry down!"

A foreigner enters in military costume, introducing two foreign mercenaries. "Dese men," he says, "will teach you de proper vay to make de Hungarian soldats. I did bring dem expres'. Observe des grands mustaches. No more English soldats." A military figure in jack boots, standing by the side of the tailor, holds the "goose" in readiness for his master's use. The Prince Regent, especially as George the Fourth, was fond of inventing new military costumes, and Mr. Greville describes him in 1829 (the year before his death) as "employed in devising a new dress for the guards;" but by the mitre at his back, and the reference to his impecunious position, I should take this "tailor" to be intended for the Duke of York.

1820.

_Ah! sure such a pair was never seen, so justly formed to meet by nature!_ (*) represents a couple of pears, in which we recognise likenesses of George the Fourth and Queen Caroline, the features of the king being expressive of strong disgust. After Lord Liverpool had decided not to send the "Bill of Pains and Penalties" to the Commons, for the reason stated in a previous chapter, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London distinguished themselves by presenting, on the 10th of December, an address to their "most gracious sovereign," complaining of things in general, and of public expenditure in particular, the real cause of complaint, however, being "the alleged criminality" which, as the petitioners stated, had been "falsely ascribed" to the queen. This address, which was conceived in the worst possible taste, concluded with the following outrageous prayer: "We therefore humbly pray your Majesty to dismiss from your presence and councils for ever those ministers whose pernicious measures have so long endangered the throne, undermined the constitution, and blighted the prosperity of the nation." Now, only fancy any Corporation of London in our time signalizing itself by presenting a petition to "Her Most Gracious Majesty," complaining of the measures of Lord Beaconsfield or Mr. Gladstone, and praying her to dismiss them from her councils! The king returned the following answer: "It has been with the most painful feelings that I have heard the sentiments contained in the address and petition now presented to me by the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London. Whatever may be the motives of those by whom it is brought forward, its evident tendency is to inflame the passions and mislead the judgment of the unwary and less enlightened part of my subjects, and thus to aggravate all the difficulties with which we have to contend." This episode suggested to George one of the most admirable of his caricatures: _A Scene in the New Farce as performed at the Royalty Theatre_. The corpulent monarch, in the character and costume of Henry the Eighth, is receiving a number of deputations from all parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, bearing petitions praying him to dismiss his ministry, the members of which stand on each side of the throne, one of the number being habited as a jester. This exceedingly rare plate carries on it the following explanation: "King Henry VIII. being petitioned to dismiss his ministers and council by the citizens of London and many boroughs, to relieve his oppressed subjects, made the citizens this sagacious reply: 'We, with all our cabinet, think it strange that ye who be but _brutes_ and inexpert folk, should tell us who be and who be not fit for our council.'"

1821.

Another of George Cruikshank's rare and valuable contributions to the Queen Caroline series of pictorial satires is labelled _The Royal Rushlight_, which many people (among them the Chancellor and corpulent George) are vainly endeavouring to blow out. By way (it may be) of contrast, this excellent satire has appended to it the following miserable doggerel,--

"Cook, coachee, men and maids, very nearly all in buff,
Came and swore in their lives they never met with such a light;
And each of the _family_ by turns had a puff
At the little farthing rushlight.
But none of the family could blow out the rushlight."

DEATH OF QUEEN CAROLINE.

With the year 1821 came the closing scene in the drama of Caroline's unhappy but singularly undignified career. On the occasion of the king's coronation she had applied to Lord Liverpool, desiring to be informed what arrangements had been made for her convenience, and who were appointed her attendants at the approaching ceremony. An answer was returned that, "it was a right of the Crown to give or withhold the order for her Majesty's coronation, and that his Majesty would be advised not to give any directions for her participation in the arrangements;" but with the obstinacy of purpose which was so fatal a blemish in her character, and which seems to have been the primary cause of all her misfortunes, she insisted on her right, and declared moreover her firm intention of attending the ceremony. A respectful but peremptory reply was returned, reasserting the legal prerogative of the Crown, and announcing that the former intimation must be understood as amounting to a _prohibition_ of her attendance. She was however so ill-advised as to present herself early on the morning of the day (the 19th of July) at the doors of the Abbey of Westminster. The door-keepers refused to allow her to enter as queen; and she was forced to submit to the mortification of having to retire without having succeeded (as it was her evident intention to have done) in marring the arrangements for the splendid ceremony. By this time the enthusiasm in her favour had greatly evaporated, and she was received even coldly by her friends the assembled mob. The mortification proved fatal to her; very shortly afterwards she was taken ill, and died in less than three weeks after the unnecessary mortification to which she had thus insisted on exposing herself.

It is probable that if the wishes of her executors had been allowed to be carried out, the unfortunate woman would have been carried to her grave in peace. She had directed that her remains should, three days after her death, be carried to Brunswick for interment; and had Lord Liverpool been wise, he would have left the executors to carry out the arrangements after their own fashion. Unfortunately, the Government decided to take the arrangements into their own hands, and to lay down the route (the shortest) by which the mournful procession should proceed to Harwich. No fault can be found with the arrangements themselves, which were intended to pay the greatest respect to the memory of the deceased; but the cautions they took brought about the very result they were anxious to avoid, and at once revived all the slumbering sympathies of the mob in favour of the unhappy queen. A squabble took place at the outset, Dr. Lushington, as one of the executors, protesting against the removal of the corpse; but, escorted by squadrons of Horse-guards Blue, the procession left Brandenburg House at eight o'clock in the morning of the 15th of August, in a drizzling rain. The cavalcade reached Kensington in solemn order; but on arriving at the Gravel Pits, and attempting to turn off to the left, its progress was instantly blocked by wagons and carts placed across the road, while a body of men formed across the streets twenty deep and evinced every disposition to dispute the passage. A severe conflict took place between them and the constables, several on both sides being hurt. For an hour and a half the procession waited for orders, and at length it moved towards London. On reaching Kensington Gore a squadron of the Life Guards, with a magistrate at their head, tried in vain to open the park gates, the crowd vociferating in the meantime, "To the city! the city!" On reaching Hyde Park Corner, the gate there was found barricaded with carts, and the procession then moved on to Park Lane, which being also blocked up, it turned back hastily and entered Hyde Park, through which it proceeded at a trot, the soldiers having cleared away the obstacles at the gate. On reaching Cumberland Gate, it was found closed by the populace, and in the conflict which ensued the park wall was thrown down by the pressure of the crowd, who hurled the stones at the soldiers, in return for the use the latter had made of their sabres in clearing the passage. Many of the military and their horses were hurt; and some of the soldiers, irritated by their rough usage, resorted to their pistols and carbines, and two persons (Richard Honey, a carpenter, and George Francis, a bricklayer) were unfortunately killed, and others wounded. The Edgeware Road was blockaded, but quickly cleared, and the procession moved on till it arrived at the turnpike gate near the top of Tottenham Court Road. There the mob made so determined a stand that further opposition was deemed unadvisable, and the popular will being at length acceded to, the cavalcade forthwith took its way into the city. Every street through which a turn could have been made in order to enter the New Road or the City Road was found barricaded. As the funeral passed through the city, the Oxford Blues doing duty there, who had not participated in the outrage, were cordially greeted by the populace on either side of the street. The inquests on the bodies of the dead men lasted for a considerable period. In the case of Francis, a verdict of "wilful murder against a life guardsman unknown" was returned; whilst in that of Honey, the verdict was manslaughter against the officers and men of the first regiment of Life Guards on duty at the time. This event is recorded by George in a caricature entitled, _The Manslaughter Men, or a Horse Laugh at the Law of the Land_,--two ghostly gory figures rising from their graves, which are respectively inscribed, "Verdict, wilful murder," and "Verdict, manslaughter"; a group of life guardsmen grin and point at the body, and one of them jeeringly remarks, "Shake not thy bloody locks at me; ye cannot say who did it." Another satire on the same subject bears the title of _The Horse Chancellor obtaining a Verdict, or Killing no Murder_.

Other subjects of this year are the following: _And when Ahitophel saw that his Counsel was not followed, he Saddled his Ass, and arose and went and Hanged himself_; _O! O! there's a Minister of the Gospel_; _The Royal Extinguisher, or the King of Brobdingnag and the Liliputians_ (etched after the design of Isaac Robert). Six subjects, _La Diligence_ and _La Doriane_, _Venus de Medici and Mer de Glace_, _Visit to Vesuvius_ and _Forum Boarium_, and _Nosing the Nob at Ramsgate_, a coarsely executed satire aimed at his Majesty and his eccentric subject, Alderman Sir William Curtis.

1822. SIR WILLIAM CURTIS.

Sir William Curtis, alderman, trader, and formerly member for the city, is one of the most prominent figures in the satires of his time. Making every allowance for caricature drawing, the likeness must have been on the whole a faithful though an exaggerated one; for in all the numerous comical sketches in which he makes an appearance, we never fail to recognise his ruby nose and ponderous figure. We have already seen him figuring by way of ludicrous contrast with Claude Ambroise Seurat, the "living skeleton," and we shall now find him associated by the caricaturists with no less a person than the king himself. When his majesty, in 1822, paid his visit to Scotland, and by way of compliment to the country and her traditions assumed the "garb of old Gael," Alderman Sir William Curtis, who followed his sovereign at a respectful distance, out of compliment to the country, her traditions, "his most gracious majesty," and himself, put his own corpulent form into fancy costume, and likewise donned the Highland garb. The absurdly ludicrous result is told us by Lockhart. "The king at his first levee diverted many, and delighted Scott by appearing in the full Highland garb--the same brilliant _Stewart tartans_, so-called, in which certainly no Stewart, except Prince Charles, had ever before presented himself in the saloons of Holyrood. His majesty's Celtic toilette had been carefully watched and assisted by the gallant Laird of Garth, who was not a little proud of the result of his dexterous manipulations of the rough plaid, and pronounced the king 'a vara pretty man.' And he did look a most stately and imposing person in that beautiful dress; but his satisfaction therein was cruelly disturbed when he discovered, towering and blazing among and above the genuine Glengarries and Macleods and MacGregors, a figure even more portly than his own, equipped from a sudden impulse of loyal ardour in an equally complete set of the self-same conspicuous Stewart tartans:--

'He caught Sir William Curtis in a kilt--
While throng'd the chiefs of every Highland clan
To hail their brother, Vich Ian Alderman.'[80]

In truth this portentous apparition cast an air of ridicule and caricature over the whole of Sir Walter's celtified pageantry. A sharp little bailie from Aberdeen, who had previously made acquaintance with the worthy Guildhall baronet, and tasted the turtle soup of his voluptuous yacht, tortured him as he sailed down the long gallery of Holyrood, by suggesting that after all his costume was not quite perfect. Sir William, who had been rigged out, as the auctioneer's advertisements say, 'regardless of expense,' exclaimed that he must be mistaken, begged he would explain his criticism, and, as he spoke, threw a glance of admiration on his _skene dhu_ (black knife), which, like a true 'warrior and hunter of deer,' he wore stuck into one of his garters. 'Oo ay! Oo ay!' quoth the Aberdonian; 'the knife's a' right, mon--but faar's your speen?' (where's your spoon?) Such was Scott's story; but whether he 'gave it a cocked hat and walking cane,' in the hope of restoring the king's good humour, so grievously shaken by this heroical _doppel ganger_, it is not very necessary to inquire."[81]

Which indeed of the absurd pair looked the most ridiculous it would be hard to say: a great-grandson of George the Second in the Highland garb of "Bonnie Prince Charlie," was perhaps as absurd an anachronism as a fat cockney alderman in the same fancy costume. Our friends the caricaturists were fully alive to these puerilities. An anonymous caricature of the day celebrates the ludicrous event in a satire entitled, _Equipt for a Northern Visit_, which represents the fat king and the fat alderman in kilts, the point of the pictorial epigram lying in the fact that the corpulent king recommends his corpulent subject to lay aside the costume as unbecoming to a man of _his_ proportions. George has several pictorial satires on the same fertile theme; one of these, _Bonnie Willie_, depicts the huge man in Highland garb. A rare and most amusing caricature shows us the supposed unfortunate _Results of this Northern Excursion_. The fat king and his fat subject have caught the northern complaint vulgarly termed the "Scottish fiddle," and are vigorously going through the traditionary process of rubbing themselves against the post, blessing the while his grace the Duke of Argyle. An English acquaintance, not unnaturally afraid of infection, refuses the alderman's proffered hand.

A caricature of altogether another kind commemorates a raid made by the Bow Street officers on the numerous gaming establishments of 1822. It is called, _Cribbage, Shuffling, Whist, and a Round Game_, is divided into six compartments, and is most humorously and admirably treated. The principal performers are the knaves of cards. One of the compartments shows us the knaves on the treadmill, which is marked "Fortune's Wheel;" while in another a knave is undergoing the discipline of the "cat," and calling out at every stroke "E. O.! E. O.! E. O.!"[82]

STATUE OF ACHILLES.

Sir Richard Westmacott's statue of Achilles was executed in 1822. The nude, undraped colossal figure, which was subscribed for by the ladies of England in honour of the Duke of Wellington and his soldiers, was the occasion of numerous contemporary satires--most of them (in those plain-spoken days) of the broadest possible character. One of the most indelicate (*) (drawn by the artist from the sketch or suggestion of another) gives a burlesque front and back view of the figure, which is surrounded by a number of people (principally ladies), among whom we recognise a caricature likeness of the "Dook." The inscription runs as follows: "To Arthur a Bradley, and his jolly companions every one, this brazen image of Patrick O'Killus, Esq., is inscribed by their countrywomen."[83] Besides the foregoing, we meet this year with _A Lollipop-Ally Campagne and Brandy Ball_ (*); _Premium, Par, and Discount_; _Showing-off--Bang up--Prime_ (*); and _A Sailor's description of a Chase and Capture_ (*).

1823.

A large proportion of his satires for 1823 are aimed at Louis the Eighteenth's Spanish expedition, the object of which we have already related. One of these shows us _France the great Nation driven by the North into the South_; in another, Ferdinand the Seventh and the Duc d'Angouleme figure respectively as a _Spanish Mule and a French Jackass_; _A French Hilt on a Spanish Rapier_, is likewise dedicated to the Duc d'Angouleme; another shows us _Old Bumblehead the 18th trying on Napoleon's Boots_; a fifth is entitled, _A Hint to the Blind and Foolish, or the Bourbon Dynasty in Danger_; while a sixth shows us _Louis the Fat troubled with Nightmare and Dreams of Terror_. In all these caricatures, the figure of Napoleon, already sleeping his last sleep at St. Helena--the place of his exile and of his grave--is represented by way of contrast to the unwieldly and incompetent Bourbon. Another caricature, the point of which I fail to see, bears the title of _The Tables Turn'd, or the Devil Outwitted and Cruelly Punished,--a Scene on the Portsmouth Treadmill_; this last, though said to be "designed by an amateur," and "etched by G. Ck.," is unquestionably all his own.

1824.

_Drilling One-tenth of the Military in the Manual Exercise_, and _Saint Shela_ (two subjects), have reference to the Tenth Hussars and Battier scandal, mentioned in a previous chapter;[84] other subjects of 1824 are: _Parisian Luxury_ (a man being shaved in a bath); _Preparing for a Duel_; and _The Ostend Packet in a Squall_; all etched by George from the designs of other artists. The mania for joint-stock companies in 1825, was scarcely equalled by the speculation mania which inaugurated the passing in our own time of the "Limited Liability Act." In 1824 and the beginning of 1825, two hundred and seventy-six companies had been projected, of which the aggregate capital (on paper only) represented L174,114,050. Thirty-three of these were established for the construction of canals and docks, forty-eight of railroads, forty-two for the supply of gas, six of milk, and eight of water, four for the working of coal, and thirty-four of metal mines; twenty new insurance companies were started, twenty-three banks, twelve navigation and packet companies, three fisheries, two for boring tunnels under the Thames, three for the embellishment and improvement of the metropolis, two for sea-water baths, and the rest for miscellaneous purposes; it is a somewhat significant fact that two only had for their object the establishment of newspapers. Notwithstanding the manifest absurdity of many of these projects, the shares of several--especially of the mining adventurers in South America--rose to enormous premiums. Among the last may be mentioned those of the Real del Monte, the price of which, between the 10th of December and the 11th of January, rose from L550 to L1350, and the United Mexican during the same period from L35 to L1550. On these last shares only L10 had been paid, and on the former only L70. Speaking of this mania, the Rev. T. F. Dibdin (in his "Reminiscences") says, "If it did not partake of the name, it had certainly all the wild characteristics of the South Sea Bubble. To-day you had only to put your name down to a share or shares in the Rio de la Plata or other South American mines, and to-morrow a supplicant purchaser would give you fifty per cent. for every share taken. The old were bewitched ... the young were in ecstasies. Everybody made a rush for the city. A new world of wealth had been discovered. It was only to ask and have." George Cruikshank refers to this state of things in a caricature called, _A Scene in the Farce of Lofty Projects, as Performed with great success for the benefit and amusement of John Bull_. Besides these, he gives us _The Four Mr. Prices_ (High Price, Low Price, Full Price, and Half Price).

I can assign no date to _Waiting on the Ladies_; _The Death of the Property Tax, or Thirty-seven Mortal Wounds for Ministers and the Inquisitorial Commissioners_; or to _The Court at Brighton, a la Chinese_, one of the most admirable of the whole series. In this last, the fat prince habited as a mandarin, is seated on a sofa between the Princess Charlotte and an enormously fat woman, probably intended for the Marchioness of Conyngham. He is handing to a Chinese official a paper inscribed "Instructions for Lord Amhurst, to get fresh patterns of Chinese deformities to finish the decorations of Pavilion G. P. R." A specimen of regency taste and sympathies stands on a pedestal in the form of the Hottentot Venus, while a statuette of the fat prince himself, habited in a red coat, white waistcoat, yellow inexpressibles, and silk stockings, is labelled the "British Adonis." The princess recommends her papa to order the officer to bring her over "a Chinaman, instead of getting her a husband among our German cousins." A variety of miscellaneous articles are strewn about the floor, among them a box containing the Regent's wigs and whiskers, a treatise on "The Art of making Punch," the indispensable hamper of champagne, and a pair of curling irons; while no one will fail to recognise the interior of the Brighton Pavilion as the scene where this admirable satire is laid. Another undated satire remains to be noticed: it represents a young man in a boat with three young women, one of them of considerable personal attractions, that is to say from a Cruikshankian point of view, and evidently a likeness. On the shore stands another young woman and her child, whom the young spark has evidently left behind him. In the stern of the boat is a hamper of wine and a goblet fashioned out of a skull; a noseless man rows the boat, while three sailors in an adjoining vessel make ribald observations in reference to the young man's female companions. By the star on his coat, the turned-down collar, profile, and the arrangement of the hair, we take it that the person thus satirized is Lord Byron. Any doubts we may have on the subject seem removed by the words of the song he is supposed to be singing while waving his hat to the disconsolate woman on the shore:--

"All my faults perchance thou knowest,
All my _madness_ none can know."

And the concluding stanza:--

"Fare thee well! thus disunited,
Torn from every nearer tie,
Seared in heart, and lone, and blighted,
More than this I scarce can die"!!

The foregoing contains a list and description of some of George Cruikshank's graphic satires, many of which we have reason to believe will be entirely new to the great majority of our readers. They support the description given of him by Lockhart at the opening of our chapter: "People consider him as a clever, sharp caricaturist, and nothing more--a free-handed, comical young fellow, who will do anything he is paid for, and who is quite content to dine off the proceeds of a 'George IV.' to-day, and those of a 'Hone,' or a 'Cobbett,' to-morrow." It must be remembered that these represent but a branch of his work; and that while content to design a satire as elaborate and as admirable as any which owe their origin to the hand of Gillray, or to dash off a rough and carelessly executed caricature, he was equally ready to etch the work of an inferior artist, or even of an amateur; to execute a drawing on wood for a ballad, or for one of the numerous political hits of the day, whether on the loyal or the popular side mattered but little to him; to do anything, in fact (to use the words of Lockhart), that "was suggested or thrown in his way." It is barely possible that the very imperfect series we have given may astonish those who have hitherto regarded George Cruikshank only as an illustrator of books, and supposed that, with the exception of the woodcuts for Hone's various _jeux d'esprits_, and the rough work which appears in "The Satirist," "The Scourge," and publications of a similar character, he executed but few pictorial satires. A perfect set of impressions from his caricatures probably does not exist; if it did it would command a high price indeed. We have seen a set of about seventy plates advertised by one enterprising bookseller at the price of seventy pounds. The specimens we have cited (exclusive of two from "The Scourge") 128 in number, were published between the years 1808 and 1825, by G. and H. Humphrey, S. Fairburn, Thomas Tegg, Ackermann, M. Jones, J. Fairburn, J. Dolby, W. Hone, S. W. Fores, A. Bengo, J. Sidebotham, S. Knight, and J. Johnstone. If to the foregoing we add the plates in "Cruikshankiana"--twenty-six in number, thirty in "The Scourge," six in "Fashion," nine in "The Satirist," and eight in the "Loyalists' Magazine," we get seventy-nine more, making a sum total of over two hundred in all. How many more have escaped notice--how many have disappeared for ever from public notice without a chance of recovery or revival--it would be, perhaps, impossible to say; for even George himself was sometimes at fault, when the long-forgotten work of his early years was presented to him for recognition or acknowledgment.

FOOTNOTES:

[66] Alluding to the "Life in London."

[67] This certainly was not true; both Gillray and Rowlandson were
draughtsmen and artists of exceptionable ability.

[68] The article from which this is quoted is variously assigned to
Professor Wilson and Lockhart; it matters little which. Meanwhile, we
must have a name, let it be Lockhart's.

[69] The editor of "The Scourge" was one Jack Mitford. He received a
classical education, was originally in the navy, and fought under
Hood and Nelson. Besides "The Scourge," he edited "The Bon Ton"
magazine, and "Quizzical Gazette," and was author of a sea song once
popular, "The King is a true British Sailor." He was an irreclaimable
drunkard, thought only of the necessities of the hour, and slept in
the fields when his finances would not admit of payment of a twopenny
lodging in St. Giles's. His largest work was "Johnny Newcome in the
Navy," for which the publisher gave him the generous remuneration of
a shilling a day till he finished it. He died in St. Giles's
workhouse in 1831.

[70] The reader may remember that Napoleon once contracted a skin
disease from taking up a weapon which had been wielded by a dead
artilleryman, which gave him trouble at various periods of his life.
It may be that this suggested the subject.

[71] See the "Declaration of the Powers," from which we have already
quoted.

[72] "Narrative of Captain Maitland," p. 109.

[73] The Regent's selfish nature and expensive habits may be judged
by the following extract from the Greville Memoirs. Under date of
1830, Mr. Greville writes: "Sefton gave me an account of the dinner
in St. George's Hall on the King's [William IV.] birthday, which was
magnificent, excellent, and well served. Bridge came down with the
plate, and was hid during the dinner behind the great wine-cooler,
which weighs 7,000 ounces, and he told Sefton afterwards that the
plate in the room was worth L200,000. There is another service of
plate which was not used at all. The king has made it all over to the
crown. _All this plate was ordered by the late king, and never used;
his delight was ordering what the public had to pay for._"--_Greville
Memoirs_, vol. ii. p. 42.

[74] See Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on
the Earl of Elgin's Collection ... of Marbles ("Annual Reg.," 1816,
p. 447).

[75] See Chapter III. (1817).

[76] The idea of the letterpress description (a very long one), from
which the above is an extract, is borrowed of course from Dr.
Arbuthnot.

[77] See Chapter III. (1817).

[78] See Chapter III. (1817).

[79] She was fond of adopting children, and it was proved that she
had adopted a daughter of the man Bergami.

[80] Byron's "Age of Bronze."

[81] Lockhart's "Life of Scott," vol. v. p. 203.

[82] "E. O." was another name for roulette, and forms the subject of
one of Rowlandson's early and best caricatures.

[83] The following are the words of the original inscription: "To
Arthur, Duke of Wellington, and his brave companions in arms, this
statue of Achilles, cast from cannon taken in the battles of
Salamanca, Vitoria, Toulouse, and Waterloo, is inscribed by their
countrywomen."

[84] See Chapter IV.