The Free and Easy
George Cruikshank
8 February 1836
Etching on copper
11.5 x 9.1 cm, vignetted
Sketches by Boz, the cancelled illustration from "The Streets — Night" by Charles Dickens (17 January 1836).
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image by Paul Schlicke, and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The more musical portion of the play-going community betake themselves to some harmonic meeting. As a matter of curiosity let us follow them thither for a few moments.
In a lofty room of spacious dimensions, are seated some eighty or a hundred guests knocking little pewter measures on the tables, and hammering away, with the handles of their knives, as if they were so many trunk-makers. They are applauding a glee, which has just been executed by the three "professional gentlemen" at the top of the centre table, one of whom is in the chair — the little pompous man with the bald head just emerging from the collar of his green coat. The others are seated on either side of him—the stout man with the small voice, and the thin-faced dark man in black. The little man in the chair is a most amusing personage, — such condescending grandeur, and such a voice!
"Bass!" as the young gentleman near us with the blue stock forcibly remarks to his companion, "bass! I b'lieve you; he can go down lower than any man: so low sometimes that you can’t hear him." And so he does. To hear him growling away, gradually lower and lower down, till he can't get back again, is the most delightful thing in the world, and it is quite impossible to witness unmoved the impressive solemnity with which he pours forth his soul in "My 'art's in the 'ighlands," or "The brave old Hoak." The stout man is also addicted to sentimentality, and warbles "Fly, fly from the world, my Bessy, with me," or some such song, with lady-like sweetness, and in the most seductive tones imaginable.
"Pray give your orders, gen'l'm'n — pray give your orders," — says the pale-faced man with the red head; and demands for "goes" of gin and "goes" of brandy, and pints of stout, and cigars of peculiar mildness, are vociferously made from all parts of the room. The "professional gentlemen" are in the very height of their glory, and bestow condescending nods, or even a word or two of recognition, on the better-known frequenters of the room, in the most bland and patronising manner possible.
The little round-faced man, with the small brown surtout, white stockings and shoes, is in the comic line; the mixed air of self-denial, and mental consciousness of his own powers, with which he acknowledges the call of the chair, is particularly gratifying. "Gen'l'men," says the little pompous man, accompanying the word with a knock of the president's hammer on the table — "Gen'l'men, allow me to claim your attention — our friend, Mr. Smuggins, will oblige." — "Bravo!" shout the company; and Smuggins, after a considerable quantity of coughing by way of symphony, and a most facetious sniff or two, which afford general delight, sings a comic song, with a fal-de-ral—tol-de-ral chorus at the end of every verse, much longer than the verse itself. It is received with unbounded applause, and after some aspiring genius has volunteered a recitation, and failed dismally therein, the little pompous man gives another knock, and says "Gen'l'men, we will attempt a glee, if you please." This announcement calls forth tumultuous applause, and the more energetic spirits express the unqualified approbation it affords them, by knocking one or two stout glasses off their legs — a humorous device; but one which frequently occasions some slight altercation when the form of paying the damage is proposed to be gone through by the waiter. — "Scenes," Chapter 2, "The Streets — Night"; running head: "A Cave of Harmony," p. 43-44.
During the following year (1837) Macrone published a Second Series of the "Sketches" in one volume, uniform in size and character with its predecessors, and containing ten etchings by Cruikshank; for the second edition of this extra volume two additional illustrations were done, viz., "The Last Cab-Driver" and "May-day in the Evening." It was at this time that Dickens repurchased from Macrone the entire copyright of the "Sketches," and arranged with Chapman & Hall for a complete edition, to be issued in shilling monthly parts, octavo size, the first number appearing in November of that year. The completed work contained all the Cruikshank plates (except that entitled "The Free and Easy", which, for some unexplained reason, was cancelled) and the following new subjects: "The Parish Engine", "The Broker's Man", "Our Next-Door Neighbours, [sic], "Early Coaches", "Public Dinners, "The Gin-Shop, "Making a Night of It, "The Boarding-House, [and "The Boarding-House. — II], "The Tuggses at Ramsgate, "The Steam Excursion [and Steam Excursion — II], "Mrs. Joseph Porter", and "Watkins Tottle [three plates in total, including The Lock-up House and Mr. Watkins Tottle and Miss Lillerton]. — Kitton, "George Cruikshank," Dickens and His Illustrators, p. 4.
Beginning in November 1837, Dickens's new (and rather more generous)
publishers, Chapman and Hall, re-issued in monthly parts the Sketches
by 'Boz,' Illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday People, a work which
contained some fifty-seven articles and forty-one illustrations, but which had begun
modestly enough with the anonymously published "Dinner at Poplar Walk" (afterwards called
"Mr. Minns and his Cousin") in the Monthly Magazine in December
1833. Although "Greenwich Fair," "Seven Dials," and "The Drunkard's Death," might
challenge the notion, Chapman and Hall probably conceived of their serialisation as
"family reading," so that so obvious a scene of licentiousness as The Free and Easy must have seemed amiss. Although of course
the essay containing the scene of drinking in the early morning hours was neither
expurgated nor Bowdlerized, dropping the illustration removed a certain emphasis on the
mass drinking scene. Thus, the First Series (February 1836) contains sixteen etchings,
and the Second Series contains twelve, so that another thirteen (as Blanchard Jerrold
mentions, taking into account the dropping of The Free and
Easy) were entirely new illustrations. In 1839, Cruikshank had to redraft all of
the other illustrations completed for the Macrone volumes because the Chapman and
Hall volume's pages were bigger — and for the final (June 1839) serial instalment
he completes a
Cruikshank was engaged to re-etch the old illustrations on a larger scale for the new size of page, and to supply thirteen new plates, making forty in all. — Hammerton, iii.
In fact, if one does not count the illustrated half-title, the 1839 volume contains only thirty-nine illustrations. The Free and Easy must have been cut from the program soon after Chapman and Hall decided to issue an anthology in twenty monthly parts, with two plates accompanying each issue, leaving Dickens considerable latitude as to where thirteen new illustrations in total would be added. Since "The Tuggses at Ramsgate," originally published in the Chapman and Hall Library of Fiction in 1836, had never been part of the Macrone volumes, in the monthly serialisation it would require its own Cruikshank illustration to replace two by Robert Seymour in order to give the volume a uniform look. Just ahead of the final serial instalment, the single volume appeared on 17 May 1839, so that the conception enshrined in the original Macrone volumes had grown considerably: initially there were only sixteen illustrations between the two handsome volumes (8 February 1836), augmented by a third the next year (15 December 1837) as a "Second Series," with six more etchings.
Anther possible explanation for Chapman and Hall's dropping The Free and Easy is Dickens's disliking it as a work of art, and vetoing it, since, by the conclusion of Pickwick, Dickens probably exerted a large measure of control over illustration with his new publishers. Perhaps he simply wanted give his illustrator a chance to do something entirely new. After all, although The Free and Easy may be a bit licentious, one might argue that The Gin Shop or Greenwich Fair are more so. The vignetted illustration itself seems undefined at its borders and internally, because of the puffs of smoke, and contains rather too many partial figures, nine of whom are singularly uninteresting, middle-aged male heads, smoking, guzzling, and eating. As a rapid sketch, the composition seems unfinished, the composition leans away from the vertical (the horizontal is defined by the artist's signature, the vertical by the walls and chandelier) — and the character who should be the focus, the chair, has been ousted by the dynamic figure of the waiter, centre. The background is barely realised, but the gasolier dominates the upper register.
Left: George Cruikshank's original volume illustration of the outdoor concert scene, Vauxhall Gardens by Day (1836). Centre: George Cruikshank's original illustration of the outdoor bacchanal held annually, Greenwich Fair (1836). Right: George Cruikshank's original illustration of the guitar concert on deck, Steam Excursion. — I (1836). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
Bentley, Nicholas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens: Index. Oxfiord: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Dickens, Charles. "Scenes," Chapter 2, "The Streets — Night" Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Chapman and Hall, 1839. Pp. 40-44.
Dickens, Charles. "Scenes," Chapter 2, "The Streets — Night" Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. Pp. 25-27
Hammerton, J. A. "The Story of this Book." Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-Day People. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 1. Pp. i-v.
Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899. Pp. 1-28.
Kitton, Frederic G. The Minor Writings of Charles Dickens: A Bibliography and a Sketch. London: Elliot Stock, 1900.
Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing. New Haven and London: Yale U. P., 2009.
Last modified 31 May 2017
