The elder brother found that George had made wonderful progress in his art in the three years during which he had been at sea. Robert had meantime lost ground as an artist, and had contracted bad habits. Isaac Cruikshank was at this time etching theatrical portraits and scenes for a publisher named Roach, who dwelt in Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane. This connection drew the two sons into an acquaintance with Edmund Kean, then an obscure player, and the three got up an amateur performance of “Blue Beard” in Roach’s kitchen, Kean taking the principal part, Robert and George Cruikshank playing the two brothers, and Miss Roach appearing as Fatima. The copper was the tyrant’s castle. * * In 1855, shortly before his death, Robert Cruikshank made a water-colour sketch of the scene, for a life of Edmund Kean, projected, but never written by Mr. Michael Nugent, a _Times_ parliamentary reporter. The Cruikshanks--but particularly Robert--remained on intimate terms with Kean after he had become famous. The tragedian, on one occasion, to divert them, threw somersaults on the stage of Drury Lane after playing Richard. Robert drew portraits of Kean in most of his characters. * * At the sale of Mr. Lacy’s Theatrical Library, Robert Cruikshank’s theatrical portraits in water-colours fetched £200. On the death of their father the two brothers kept on the house in Dorset Street, with their mother and sister, working together. They had, after the death of Gillray, the command of the whole field of caricature, supplying nearly all those coloured etchings on copper, on the subjects of the day, which drew crowds about the print-sellers’ windows. They were the rough forerunners of H. B.’s pencillings and of Leech’s cartoons in _Punch_. The prize-fighter in those days was the popular idol; and the most notorious “bruisers” found their way to the Cruikshank studio on the second floor in Dorset Street, to stand for their portraits. The Cruikshank brothers were not particular as to sitters, even to murderers * It was a strange workroom, decorated with the most incongruous ornaments. An undergraduate’s cap (the spoil of a town-and-gown riot) upon a human skull with a pipe between the teeth, a sou’wester from Margate, boxing gloves, foils, masks, and weapons of all kinds, proclaimed the wild tastes of the two artists, who generally invited their guests to a bout with the gloves. Both brothers were expert boxers, but George had cultivated the science under a distinguished professor more assiduously than Robert. It was in one of his bouts with this professor that George received a blow on his nose, which, with other taps on the same point, fixed that feature awry for the remainder of his life. * The portrait of Elizabeth Fenning, by I. R. Cruikshank, taken in Newgate, is a very coarse work.