English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.Everitt, Graham
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English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.
Everitt, Graham
Caricature -- Great Britain; Illustration of books -- Great Britain -- 19th century
_The Last Cab Driver_ ["Sketches by Boz"] deserves a passing notice,
because it has preserved from oblivion a class of vehicles which has
long since disappeared from the London streets. It looked for all the
world like the section of a coffin set on end, the seat (which was
intended to accommodate only one person besides the driver) occupying
the centre. The cabman being a very _mauvais sujet_, we find the
surroundings (after the artist's practice) in strict keeping with his
character. The building past which he drives is marked "Old Bailey";
whilst a snuff manufacturer in the street at the back advertises himself
as the vendor of "Real Irish Blackguard."
WAVERLEY NOVELS.
The dry, quaint humour of the author of "Waverley" exactly suited the
quaint imaginings of our artist. Both Scott and Cruikshank delighted in
the supernatural and the marvellous, and this is why some of the most
characteristic of the artist's designs are to be found in his
illustrations to the "Waverley Novels." In one of these he shows us the
illustrious Dominie at the moment, when reaching over to gather a
water-lily, he falls souse into the Slough of Lochend, in which he
forthwith became bogged up to the middle, his plight drawing from him of
course his favourite ejaculation of amazement. By the assistance of some
women the luckless Dominie was extracted from his position, justifying
the remark of one of his assistants, that "the laird might as weel trust
the care of his bairn to a potato-bogle." Which was the most helpless of
the two men--the Laird of Dumbiedikes, or the illustrious Dominie--it
would be difficult to say; both these most original characters took a
powerful hold on the artist's imagination, and as a natural consequence
the ideas of Scott were completely realized. A very comical design is
that in which he shows us the worthy but witless laird with his laced
cocked hat and empty tobacco pipe,[89] and his hand extended "like the
claw of a heraldic griffin," when he managed to utter something beyond
his usual morning greeting, and frightened Jeannie into the belief that
he had so far "screwed his courage to the sticking place" as to venture
on a matrimonial proposal, to which unwonted effort of imagination his
intelligence, however, proved altogether unequal.
ALLITERATIVE DESIGNS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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