Mr. Lambkin being quite recovered with the aid of new milk
George Cruikshank
1844
Steel-engraving
10.4 cm high by 9.3 cm wide, framed
Final illustration for George Cruikshank's The Bachelor’s Own Book; Or, The Progress Of Mr. Lambkin (Gent.), in the Pursuit Of Pleasure And Amusement, p. 38 (right-hand side of the eleventh plate).
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Mr. Lambkin being quite recovered, with the aid of new milk and Sea Breezes, determines to reform his habits, but feels buried alive in the Grand Mausoleum Club; and, contemplating an old bachelor member who sits poring [sic] over the newspapers all day, he feels horrorstruck at the probability of such a fate becoming his own, and determines to seek a reconciliation with the Lady of his Affections. [page 38]
The context in which Mr. Lambkin makes his determination to avoid becoming a solitary, aged bachelor, like the one reading his paper ast the next fireplace in the background, is the reading-room of a London gentleman's club. Cruikshank satirizes the exclusive meeting-place for gentlemen as "the Grand Mausoleum Club," which might suggest any one of a dozen such clubs in operation at the time of publication, including The Carlton Club (founded in 1832), The Athenaeum (founded in 1824), Boodle's (founded in 1762), The Garrick Club (founded in 1831), and White's (founded in 1693). The emotionally barren and deserted clubroom is the suitable locale for Lambkin's achieving a Joycean epiphany.
Cruikshank draws the parallel between Lambkin, looking down at the carpet in front a Palladian fireplace, warming himself, and the "old bachelor member . . . poring over the newspapers all day" through the repetition of the eighteenth-century fireplace and, on the mantlepiece, its magnificent clock with the triumphant figure of Time, who holds aloft an hourglass in the foreground and is clearly a grim reaper armed with the iconic harvester's sickle in both instances. The artist, however, offers in this quiet, refined Regency interior no clue as to which particular club Lambkin makes the stunning realisation that, if he remains a bachelor, he is likely to become that aged member in the background, oblivious to the menacing gesture of the figure on his clock and walled off from the rest of society by his newspaper.
Here Cruikshank abandons the pictorial satire of the bibulous, middle-aged dandy making himself ridiculous by participating in riotous behaviour, a subject which occupies no less than eleven of the twenty-four scenes. The melancholy mood of this eleventh plate (the left-hand image being that of a rather ill-looking, subdued Lambkin, necked securely wrapped in a wollen scarf, waiting to take his restorative draft of fresh milk in Mr. Lambkin's confidence in the curative powers of Hydropathy . . .) prepares the reader for the shift in the hero's fortunes. The causal chain which Cruikshank only intermittently maintain is strongest here as Cruikshank's depiction here of the pathetic, alienated, lonely bachelor in his otherwise deserted club leads directly to the proposal scene. Cruikshank also employs the headings in the books on the table in front of the hapless bachelor to comment upon his dejected mental state: "A Home for the Houseless," "Reflections on Solitude," and "Refuge for the Destitute." The careful shading of the rear area presents these concerns about Lambkin's immediate future in the foreground, even as the growing shadows engulf the aged newspaper-reader that Lambkin foresees himself becoming.
Left: Detail of the aged bachelor engrossed in his newspaper, Clubman reading the daily newspaper (1844). Centre: The clock on the mantlepiece immediately behind Mr. Lambkin, Detail of the clock with Father Time as the Grim Reaper (1844). Right: The clock on the mantlepiece immediately above the newspaper reader, Detail of the clock with Father Time as the Grim Reaper (1844). Far right: The open books on the divan seem to mock Lambkin's unmarried status, Detail of the pages: "A Home for the Houseless," "Reflections on Solitude," and "Refuge for the Destitute." (1844). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Cruikshank, George. The Bachelor’s Own Book; Or, The Progress Of Mr. Lambkin, In The Pursuit Of Pleasure And Amusement. Glasgow: David Bryce, 1844, rpt. 1880.
Kunzle, David. "Mr. Lambkin: Cruikshank's Strike for Independence." George Cruikshank: A Revaluation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. P., 1974. Pp. 169-188.
Last modified 20 May 2018
