George Cruikshank's Omnibus

"MY PORTRAIT."

I respectfully beg leave to assure all to whom "My Portrait" shall come, that I am not now moved to its publication, for the first time, by any one of the ten thousand considerations that ordinarily influence modest men in presenting their "counterfeit presentments" to the public gaze. Mine would possibly never have appeared at all, but for the opportunity thus afforded me of clearing up any mistakes that may have been originated by a pen-and-ink sketch which recently appeared in a publication entitled "Portraits of Public Characters."

The writer of that sketch was evidently animated by a spirit of kindness, and to kindness I am always sensitively alive; but he has been misinformed—he has represented me "as I am not," instead of "as I am;" and although it is by no means necessary that I should offer "some account of myself" in print, it is desirable that I should, without fatiguing anybody, correct some half-dozen of the errors into which my biographer has fallen.

A few words of extract, and a few more of comment, and my object, as the moralist declares when he seeks to lure back one sinner to the paths of virtue, will be fully attained.

The sketch, which professes to be "my portrait," opens thus:—

(1.) "I believe Geo. Cruikshank dislikes the name of artist, as being too common-place."

I have my dislikes; but it happens that they always extend to things, and never settle upon mere names. He must be a simpleton indeed who dislikes the name of artist when he is not ashamed of his art. It is possible that I may once in my life, when "very young," have said that I would rather carry a portmanteau than a portfolio through the streets; and this, perhaps from a recollection of once bearing a copper-plate, not sufficiently concealed from the eyes of an observant public, under my arm, and provoking a salutation from a little ragged urchin, shouting at the top of his voice, hand to mouth—"There goes a copper plate en-gra-ver!" It is true, that as I walked on I experienced a sense of the uncomfortableness of that species of publicity, and felt that the eyes of Europe were very inconveniently directed to me; but I did not, even in that moment of mortification, feel ashamed of my calling: I did not "dislike the name of artist."

(2.) "When a very young man, it was doubtful whether the weakness of his eyes would not prove a barrier to his success as an artist."

When a very young man, I was rather short-sighted, in more senses than one; but weak eyes I never had. The blessing of a strong and healthy vision has been mine from birth; and at any period of time since that event took place, I have been able, even with one eye, to see very clearly through a millstone, upon merely applying the single optic, right or left, to the centrical orifice perforated therein. But for the imputation of weakness in that particular, I never should have boasted of my capital eye; especially (as an aged punster suggests) when I am compelled to use the capital I so often in this article.

(3.) "The gallery in which George first studied his art, was, if the statement of the author of 'Three Courses and a Dessert' may be depended on, the tap-room of a low public-house, in the dark, dirty, narrow lanes which branch off from one of the great thoroughfares towards the Thames. And where could he have found a more fitting place? where could he have met with more appropriate characters?—for the house was frequented, to the exclusion of everybody else, by Irish coal-heavers, hodmen, dustmen, scavengers, and so forth!"

I shall mention, en passant, that there are no Irish coal-heavers: I may mention, too, that the statement of the author adverted to is not to be depended on; were he living, I should show why. And now to the scene of my so-called "first studies." There was, in the neighbourhood in which I resided, a low public-house; it has since degenerated into a gin-palace. It was frequented by coal-heavers only, and it stood in Wilderness-lane, (I like to be particular,) between Primrose-hill and Dorset-street, Salisbury-square, Fleet-street. To this house of inelegant resort, (the sign was startling, the "Lion in the Wood,") which I regularly passed in my way to and from the Temple, my attention was one night especially attracted, by the sounds of a fiddle, together with other indications of festivity; when, glancing towards the tap-room window, I could plainly discern a small bust of Shakspeare placed over the chimney-piece, with a short pipe stuck in its mouth, thus—

This was not clothing the palpable and the familiar with golden exhalations from the dawn, but it was reducing the glorious and immortal beauty of Apollo himself to a level with the common-place and the vulgar. Yet there was something not to be quarrelled with in the association of ideas to which that object led. It struck me to be the perfection of the human picturesque. It was a palpable meeting of the Sublime and the Ridiculous; the world of Intellect and Poetry seemed thrown open to the meanest capacity; extremes had met; the highest and the lowest had united in harmonious fellowship. I thought of what the great poet had himself been, of the parts that he had played, and the wonders he had wrought, within a stone's-throw of that very spot; and feeling that even he might have well wished to be there, the pleased spectator of that lower world, it was impossible not to recognise the fitness of the pipe. It was the only pipe that would have become the mouth of a poet in that extraordinary scene; and without it, he himself would have wanted majesty and the right to be present. I fancied that Sir Walter Raleigh might have filled it for him. And what a scene was that to preside over and to contemplate[1]! What a picture of life was there! It was as though Death were dead! It was all life. In simpler words, I saw, on approaching the window and peeping between the short red curtains, a swarm of jolly coal-heavers! Coal-heavers all—save a few of the fairer and softer sex—the wives of some of them—all enjoying the hour with an intensity not to be disputed, and in a manner singularly characteristic of the tastes and propensities of aristocratic and fashionable society;—that is to say, they were "dancing and taking refreshments." They only did what "their betters" were doing elsewhere. The living Shakspeare, had he been, indeed, in the presence, would but have seen a common humanity working out its objects, and have felt that the omega, though the last in the alphabet, has an astonishing sympathy with the alpha that stands first.

This incident, may I be permitted to say, led me to study the characters of that particular class of society, and laid the foundation of scenes afterwards published. The locality and the characters were different, the spirit was the same. Was I, therefore, what the statement I have quoted would lead anybody to infer I was, the companion of dustmen, hodmen, coal-heavers, and scavengers? I leave out the "and so forth" as superfluous. It would be just as fair to assume that Morland was the companion of pigs, that Liston was the associate of louts and footmen, or that Fielding lived in fraternal intimacy with Jonathan Wild.

(4.) "With Mr. Hone" (afterwards designated "the most noted infidel of his day") "he had long been on terms not only of intimacy, but of warm friendship."

A very select class of associates to be assigned to an inoffensive artist by a friendly biographer; coal-heavers, hodmen, dustmen, and scavengers for my companions, and the most noted infidel of his day for my intimate friend! What Mr. Hone's religious creed may have been at that time, I am far from being able to decide; I was too young to know more than that he seemed deeply read in theological questions, and, although unsettled in his opinions, always professed to be a Christian. I knew also that his conduct was regulated by the strictest morality. He had been brought up to detest the Church of Rome, and to look upon the "Church of England" service as little better than popish ceremonies; and with this feeling, he parodied some portions of the Church service for purposes of political satire. But with these publications I had nothing whatever to do; and the instant I heard of their appearance, I entreated him to withdraw them. That I was his friend, is true; and it is true, also, that among his friends were many persons, not more admired for their literary genius, than esteemed for their zeal in behalf of religion and morals.

(5.) "Not only is George a decided liberal, but his liberalism has with him all the authority of a moral law."

I have already said, that I never quarrel with names, but with things; yet as so many and such opposite interpretations of the terms quoted are afloat, and as some of them are not very intelligible, I wish explicitly to enter my protest against every reading of the word "liberal," as applicable to me, save that which I find attributed to it in an old and seemingly forgotten dictionary—"Becoming a gentleman, generous, not mean."

(6.) "Even on any terms his genius could not, for some time past, be said to have been marketable, Mr. Bentley the bookseller having contrived to monopolise his professional labours for publications with which he is connected."

This assertion was to a certain extent true, while I was illustrating Oliver Twist and Jack Sheppard, works to which I devoted my best exertions; but so far from effecting a monopoly of my labours, the publisher in question has not for a twelvemonth past had from me more than a single plate for his monthly Miscellany; nor will he ever have more than that single plate per month; nor shall I ever illustrate any other work that he may publish.

(7.) "He sometimes sits at his window to see the patrons of 'Vite Condick Ouse' on their way to that well-known locality on Sundays," &c.

As my "extraordinary memory" is afterwards defined to be "something resembling a supernatural gift," it ought to enable me to recollect this habit of mine; yet I should have deemed myself as innocent of such a mode of spending the Sabbath as Sir Andrew Agnew himself, but for this extraordinary discovery. I am said to have "the most vivid remembrance of anything droll or ludicrous;" and yet I cannot remember sitting at the window "on a Sunday" to survey the motley multitude strolling towards "Vite Condick Ouse." I wish the invisible girl would sell me her secret.

(8.) "He is a very singular, and, in some respects, eccentric man, considered, as what he himself would call, a 'social being.' The ludicrous and extraordinary fancies with which his mind is constantly teeming often impart a sort of wildness to his look, and peculiarity to his manner, which would suffice to frighten from his presence those unacquainted with him. He is often so uncourteous and abrupt in his manner as to incur the charge of seeming rudeness."

Though unaccustomed to spend the Sabbath day in the manner here indicated, I have never yet been regarded as Saint George; neither, on the other hand, have I ever before been represented as the Dragon! Time was, when the dove was not more gentle; but now I "frighten people from my presence," and the isle from its propriety. The "Saracen's Head" is all suavity and seductiveness compared to mine. Forty thousand knockers, with all their quantity of fright, would not make up my sum. I enter a drawing-room, it may be supposed, like one prepared to go the whole griffin. Gorgons, and monsters, and chimeras dire, are concentrated by multitudes in my person.

The aspect of Miss Jemima Jones, who is enchanting the assembled party with "See the conquering hero comes," instantaneously assumes the expression of a person singing "Monster, away." All London is Wantley, and all Wantley is terror-stricken wherever I go. I am as uncourteous as a gust of wind, as abrupt as a flash of lightning, and as rude as the billows of the sea. But of all this, be it known that I am "unconscious." This is acknowledged; "he is himself unconscious of this," which is true to the very letter, and very sweet it is to light at last upon an entire and perfect fact. But enjoying this happy unconsciousness—sharing it moreover with my friends, why wake me from the delusion! Why excite my imagination, and unstring my nerves, with visions of nursery-maids flying before me in my suburban walks—of tender innocents in arms frightened into fits at my approach, of five-bottle men turning pale in my presence, of banquet-halls deserted on my entrance!

(9.) "G. C. is the only man I know moving in a respectable sphere of life who is a match for the under class of cabmen. He meets them on their own ground, and fights them with their own weapons. The moment they begin to swagger, to bluster, and abuse, he darts a look at them, which, in two cases out of three, has the effect of reducing them to a tolerable state of civility; but if looks do not produce the desired results—if the eyes do not operate like oil thrown on the troubled waters, he talks to them in tones which, aided as his words and lungs are by the fire and fury darting from his eye, and the vehemence of his gesticulation, silence poor Jehu effectually," &c.

Fact is told in fewer words than fiction. It so happens that I never had a dispute with a cabman in my life, possibly because I never provoked one. From me they are sure of a civil word; I generally open the door to let myself in, and always to let myself out; nay, unless they are very active indeed, I hand the money to them on the box, and shut the door to save them the trouble of descending. "The greatest is behind"—I invariably pay them more than their fare; and frequently, by the exercise of a generous forgetfulness, make them a present of an umbrella, pair of gloves, or a handkerchief. At times, I have gone so far as to leave them a few sketches, as an inspection of the albums of their wives and daughters (they have their albums doubtless) would abundantly testify.

(10.) "And yet he can make himself exceedingly agreeable both in conversation and manners when he is in the humour so to do. I have met with persons who have been loaded with his civilities and attention. I know instances in which he has spent considerable time in showing strangers everything curious in the house; he is a collector of curiosities."

No single symp—— I was about to say that no single symptom of a curiosity, however insignificant, is visible in my dwelling, when by audible tokens I was (or rather am) rendered sensible of the existence of a pair of bellows. Well, in these it must be admitted that we do possess a curiosity. We call them "bellows," because, on a close inspection, they appear to bear a much stronger resemblance to "bellows" than to any other species of domestic implement; but what in reality they are, the next annual meeting of the great Scientific Association must determine; or the public may decide for themselves when admitted hereafter to view the precious deposit in the British Museum. In the mean time, I vainly essay to picture the unpicturable.

Eccentric, noseless, broken-winded, dilapidated, but immortal, these bellows have been condemned to be burnt a thousand times at least; but they are bellows of such an obstinate turn of mind that to destroy them is impossible. No matter how imperative the order—how immediate the hour of sacrifice, they are sure to escape. So much for old maxims; we may "sing old Rose," but we cannot "burn the bellows." As often as a family accident happens—such as the arrival of a new servant, or the sudden necessity for rekindling an expiring fire, out come the bellows, and forth go into the most secret and silent corners of the house such sounds of wheezing, squeaking, groaning, screaming, and sighing, as might be heard in a louder, but not more intolerable key, beneath the roaring fires of Etna. Then, rising above these mingled notes, issues the rapid ringing of two bells at once, succeeded by a stern injunction to the startled domestic "never on any account to use those bellows again," but, on the contrary, to burn, eject, and destroy them without reservation or remorse. One might as well issue orders to burn the east wind. A magic more powerful even than womanly tenderness preserves them; and six weeks afterwards forth rolls once more that world of wondrous noises. Let no one imagine that I have really sketched the bellows, unless I had sketched their multitudinous voice. What I have felt when drawing Punch is, that it was easy to represent his eyes, his nose, his mouth; but that the one essential was after all wanting—the squeak. The musician who undertook to convey by a single sound a sense of the peculiar smell of the shape of a drum, could alone picture to the eye the howlings and whisperings of the preternatural bellows. Now you hear a moaning as of one put to the torture, and may detect both the motion of the engine and the cracking of the joints; anon cometh a sound as of an old beldame half inebriated, coughing and chuckling. A sigh as from the depths of a woman's heart torn with love, or the "lover sighing like furnace," succeeds to this; and presently break out altogether—each separate note of the straining pack struggling to be foremost—the yelping of a cur, the bellowing of a schoolboy, the tones of a cracked flute played by a learner, the grinding of notched knives, the slow ringing of a muffled muffin-bell, the interrupted rush of water down a leaky pipe, the motion of a pendulum that does not know its own mind, the creaking of a prison-door, and the voice of one who crieth the last dying speech and confession; together with fifty thousand similar sounds, each as pleasant to the ear as "When am I to have the eighteen-pence" would be, to a man who never had a shilling since the day he was breeched. The origin of the bellows, I know not; but a suspicion has seized me that they might have been employed in the Ark had there been a kitchen-fire there; and they may have assisted in raising a flame under the first tea-kettle put on to celebrate the laying of the first stone of the great wall of China. They are ages upon ages older than the bellows of Simple Simon's mother; and were they by him to be ripped open, they could not possibly be deteriorated in quality. The bellows which yet bear the inscription,

"Who rides on these bellows?

The prince of good fellows,

Willy Shakspeare,"

are a thing of yesterday beside these, which look as if they had been industriously exercised by some energetic Greek in fanning the earliest flame of Troy. To descend to later days, they must have invigorated the blaze at which Tobias Shandy lighted his undying pipe, and kindled a generous blaze under that hashed mutton which has rendered Amelia immortal. But "the days are gone when beauty bright" followed quick upon the breath of the bellows: their effect at present is, to give the fire a bad cold; they blow an influenza into the grate. Empires rise and fall, and a century hence the bellows may be as good as new. Like puffing, they will know no end.

(11.) And lastly—for the personality of this paragraph warns me to conclude—"In person G. C. is about the middle height and proportionably made. His complexion is something between pale and clear; and his hair, which is tolerably ample, partakes of a lightish hue. His face is of the angular form, and his forehead has a prominently receding shape."

As Hamlet said to the ghost, I'll go no further! The indefinite complexion, and the hair "partaking" of an opposite hue to the real one, may be borne; but I stand, not upon my head, but on my forehead! To a man who has once passed the Rubicon in having dared to publish his portrait, the exhibition of his mere profile can do no more injury than a petty larceny would after the perpetration of a highway robbery. But why be tempted to show, by an outline, that my forehead is innocent of a shape (the "prominently receding" one) that never yet was visible in nature or in art? Let it pass, till it can be explained.

"He delights in a handsome pair of whiskers." Nero had one flower flung upon his tomb. "He has somewhat of a dandified appearance." Flowers soon fade, and are cut down; and this is the "unkindest cut of all." I who, humbly co-operating with the press, have helped to give permanence to the name of dandy—I who have all my life been breaking butterflies upon wheels in warring against dandyism and dandies—am at last discovered to be "somewhat" of a dandy myself.

"Come Antony, and young Octavius, come!

Revenge yourselves—"

as you may;—but, dandies all, I have not done with you yet. To resume. "He used to be exceedingly partial to Hessian boots." I confess to the boots; but it was when they were worn even by men who walked on loggats. I had legs. Besides, I was very young, and merely put on my boots to follow the fashion. "His age, if his looks be not deceptive, is somewhere between forty-three and forty-five." A very obscure and elaborated mode of insinuating that I am forty-four. "Somewhere between!" The truth is—though nothing but extreme provocation should induce me to proclaim even truth when age is concerned,—that I am "somewhere between" twenty-seven and sixty-three, or I may say sixty-four;—but I hate exaggeration.
Exit, G. Ck.

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