CHAPTER IX

. ILLUSTRATIONS TO HARRISON AINSWORTH’S ROMANCES.

Early in 1839, on the conclusion of “Oliver Twist,” Charles Dickens handed over the editorship of _Bentley’s Miscellany_ to Harrison Ainsworth; and with this transfer, George Cruikshank’s etching-needle passed from the pages of the old to those of the new editor.

Cruikshank by no means stood alone as illustrator at the outset of _Bentley’s Miscellany_. Samuel Lover illustrated his own “Handy Andy,” and Buss and Phiz appeared as etchers. Dickens, in announcing vol. ii. in a theatrical address, said: “The scenery will continue to be supplied by the creative pencil of Mr. George Cruikshank.” In the second volume, by way of illustration to “The Autobiography of a Joke”--Dr Charles Mackay’s first appearance, he tells me, as a magazine writer--Cruikshank drew one of his wonderful jovial bottles dancing upon the table. It was in the third volume, beginning with the year 1838, that Cruikshank stood alone as illustrator. Early in 1839, Dickens transferred the editorship of the _Miscellany_ to one of his “most intimate and valued friends,” Mr. Ainsworth.

In the first volume of 1840 we find illustrations by Alfred Crowquill in the Miscellany; in the second volume of the same year Leech appeared, both on wood and steel. The woodcuts--especially one of “a highly respectable man”--are full of humour and fresh observation.

Extraordinary as the advance had been which Cruikshank had made by his powerful dramatic illustrations to “Oliver Twist,” his illustrations to Mr. Ainsworth’s romances, and particularly to “The Tower of London,” and “Windsor Castle,” and “The Miser’s Daughter”--proved that he had yet higher laurels to win. His etchings on steel show a greatly superior technical handling to his earlier work with the needle. He obtained effects which Rembrandt would not have disdained. He showed for the first time that he could realize a middle distance, as well as a foreground and a background. And then he had in perfect subjection, and ready to his hand and mind, all the vast store of observation of men and things, he had been inde-fatigably accumulating from his boyhood His plates to these three works are absolutely astonishing, when they are analysed, for the amount of original thought,--for the technical skill in rendering infinite varieties of light and shade, of emotion, of scenery,--which they comprehend.

It is deeply to be lamented that Cruikshank’s connection with Harrison Ainsworth *--a connection in which the artist found some of his finer inspirations--was marred by quarrels, and was sundered finally with a controversy, which is the counterpart of that he engaged in with the biographer and the friends of Charles Dickens. I suspect that Thackeray involuntarily led Cruikshank to claim more than his proper share in the successes he and Harrison Ainsworth had together.

* Mr. Ainsworth died while these volumes were passing through the press, January 1882.

“With regard to the modern romance of ‘Jack Sheppard,’” Thackeray remarks, “in which the latter personage (Jonathan Wild) makes a second appearance, it seems to us that Mr. Cruikshank really created the tale, and that Mr. Ainsworth, as it were, only put words to it. Let any reader of the novel think over it for a while, now that it is some months since he has perused and laid it down--let him think, and tell us what he remembers of the tale. George Cruikshank’s pictures--always George Cruikshank’s pictures. The storm in the Thames, for instance; all the author’s laboured description of that event has passed clean away--we have before our mind’s eye the fine plates of Cruikshank. The poor wretch cowering under the bridge arch, as the waves come rushing in, and the boats are whirling away in the drift of the great swollen black waters; and let any man look at that second plate of the murder on the Thames, and he must acknowledge how much more brilliant the artist’s description is than the writer’s, and what a real genius for the terrible as well as for the ridiculous the former has; how awful is the gloom of the old bridge, a few lights glimmering from the houses here and there, but not so as to be reflected on the water at all, which is too turbid and raging; a great heavy rack of clouds goes sweeping over the bridge, and men with flaring torches--the murderers--are borne away with the stream.

“The author requires many pages to describe the fury of the storm, which Mr. Cruikshank has represented in one. First, he has to prepare you with the something inexpressibly melancholy in sailing on a dark night upon the Thames; ‘the ripple of the water,’ ‘the darkling current,’ ‘the indistinctly seen craft,’ the solemn shadows,’ and other phenomena visible on rivers at night, are detailed (with not unskilful rhetoric) in order to bring the reader into a proper state of mind for the deeper gloom and horror which is to ensue. Then follow pages of description.... See what a tremendous war of words (and good loud words too; Mr. Ainsworth’s description is a good and spirited one) the author is obliged to pour in upon the reader before he can effect his purpose upon the latter, and inspire him with a proper terror. The painter does it at a glance, and old Wood’s dilemma in the midst of that tremendous storm, with the little infant at his bosom, is remembered afterwards, not from the words, but from the visible image of them that the artist has left us.” Thackeray rates these “Jack Sheppard” plates among the most finished and the most successful of Cruikshank’s performances; dwelling lovingly on the conscientiousness of the artist, and that shrewd pervading idea of _form_ which is one of his principal characteristics. They bear witness to the minuteness as well as to the fidelity of the artist’s observation. Not the smallest object, nor its proper place in his design, escapes his eye. He has stored up in the camera of his brain the many ways in which a chair may fall, as well as the thousand and one lights and shadows of expression which play upon a man’s face as he progresses through the chapters of his life.

Thackeray, let it be said, was always unjust to Harrison Ainsworth. He caricatured him unmercifully in _Punch_, and never lost an opportunity of being amusing at his expense. His reasoning in regard to “Jack Sheppard” is manifestly unjust and unsound. “Jack Sheppard” was the natural sequence to “Rook-wood,” which, in popular parlance, had taken the town by storm, and had suddenly made the young author famous. “Dick Turpin’s Ride to York” became the talk of all England. Colnaghi published a separate set of illustrations, by Hall, of the principal scenes described by Mr. Ainsworth. Cruikshank was called in only to furnish some illustrations to the second edition.

The success of “Rookwood” directed the mind of Bulwer to “Paul Clifford,” and probably suggested to Dickens his “Oliver Twist.” Even Cruikshank himself admits that “Jack Sheppard” was “originated” by the author. A fashion for highwaymen and burglars as heroes of romance had been set by Ainsworth; and Bulwer and Dickens dived into the haunts of thieves to get at their _argot_, or “patter flash,” * and their ways of thinking and acting. Both made great hits. “Paul Clifford” and “Oliver Twist” were the two books of the day. Mr. Ainsworth, irritated at the unceremonious manner in which his ground had been invaded, put forth “Jack Sheppard” (1839), on assuming the editorship of _Bentley’s Miscellany_. It was as natural a step from “Rookwood,” especially after “Paul Clifford” and “Oliver Twist,” as chapter two is from