A Walk from London to FulhamCroker, Thomas Crofton
History
A Walk from London to Fulham
Croker, Thomas Crofton
London (England) -- Description and travel
The literary labours of Crofton Croker were attended with more gratifying
results than his long and unwearied official services. The ‘Researches
in the South of Ireland’ (1824), an arrangement of notes made during
several excursions between the years 1812 and 1822, was his first
important work. It was published by John Murray, the father of the
present publisher of the ‘Quarterly Review,’ and contained illustrations
by Mr. Alfred and Miss Nicholson: with the ‘Fairy Legends,’ however, the
name of Crofton Croker became more especially associated, the first
edition of which appeared anonymously in 1825, and produced a
complimentary letter from Sir Walter Scott, which has been published in
all subsequent editions. The success of the first edition of the legends
was such as immediately to justify a second, which appeared the next
year, illustrated with etchings after sketches by Maclise, and which was
followed by a second series (Parts 2 and 3) in 1827. The third part,
although it appeared under the same title, namely ‘Fairy Legends and
Traditions of the South of Ireland,’ may be considered as forming almost
a separate work, inasmuch as it comprised the fairy superstitions of
Wales and other countries, in addition to those current in Ireland. A
translation of the legends by the Brothers Grimm appeared in Germany in
1825, and another in Paris in 1828 (‘Les Contes Irlandais, précédés d’une
introduction par M. P. A. Dufau’), but it was not until 1834 that Murray
published them in a condensed form in his ‘Family Library,’ the copyright
of which edition, as revised by the author, was purchased of Murray by
the late Mr. Tegg, and is now published by his son. In October, 1826,
Croker was introduced to Sir Walter Scott at Lockhart’s in Pall Mall.
Sir Walter recorded the interview thus:—“At breakfast Crofton Croker,
author of the Irish fairy tales—little as a dwarf, keen-eyed as a hawk,
and of easy, prepossessing manners, something like Tom Moore. Here were
also Terry, Allan Cunningham, Newton, and others.” At this meeting, Sir
Walter Scott suggested the adventures of Daniel O’Rourke as the subject
for the Adelphi pantomime, and, at the request of Messrs. Terry and
Yates, Croker wrote a pantomime founded upon the legend, which was
produced at the Adelphi the same year. It succeeded, and underwent two
editions: the second was published in 1828, uniform with the legends, and
entitled ‘Daniel O’Rourke; or, Rhymes of a Pantomime, founded on that
Story.’ Croker wrote to his sister (Mrs. Eyre Coote, alive at the
present time) the following account of the breakfast party at Lockhart’s,
which, though already published in ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine’ (November,
1854), is sufficiently interesting to be repeated. He first mentions
“the writing and preparing for the Adelphi Theatre a Christmas pantomime
from the renowned adventures of Daniel O’Rourke, two or three meetings
with Sir Walter Scott, some anxious experiments in lithography under the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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