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"It's my cousin, ma'am."
George Cruikshank
1847
steel-engraving
11.1 x 9.4 cm
Illustration by George Cruikshank for the Mayhew Brothers' The Greatest Plague of Life: or, The Adventures of a Lady in Search of a Good Servant, source: McLean, p. 80.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Contemporary with such writers and artists as Charles Dickens (1812-70) and Hablot Knight Browne (1815-82), Henry Mayhew (25 November 1812 — 25 July 1887), trained as a lawyer, but, like Dickens is remembered as an English journalist, playwright and advocate of reform — although not usually as a novelist. He was, more pertinently, one of the co-founders of the satirical weekly magazine Punch; or, The London Charivari, and served with Dickens's friend Mark Lemon as the magazine's joint-editor in the 1840s. He and Lemon recruited a group of talented writers and illustrators, many from the Dickens Circle, to join the venture, including writers Douglas Jerrold, Shirley Brooks, Angus Reach, and illustrators John Leech and Richard Doyle. He is largely known for his work as a social researcher, publishing an extensive series of newspaper articles in the Morning Chronicle that was later compiled into the book series London Labour and the London Poor (1851), an innovative sociological study of the urban problems of crime, sanitation, housing, transportation, and poverty. Consequently, his foray into satirical fiction with veteran illustrator and caricaturist George Cruikshank, twenty years his senior, in The Greatest Plague of Life: or, The Adventures of a Lady in Search of a Good Servant is something of a rarity among his works, revealing the influence of Punch.
Although George Cruikshank never actually joined the team of talented artists such as John Leech who illustrated Punch; or, The London Charivari, he illustrated fictional works of such Punch authors as the Mayhew Brothers. In particular, he worked on their books of topical humour Whom to Marry and The Greatest Plague of Life, both of which are told in the first person by frivolous females, and are essentially elaborations on the habitual Punch jokes, "Servantgalism" and marriage.
They are tales of ludicrous misfortunes which befall stupid and gullible people. The clever, knowing sneer of Punch is not altogether absent from the narrative: but there is no trace of it in Cruikshank's illustrations, which are a joyful celebration of the absurdities of the servant problem [a shortage resulting from overseas emigration] and the marriage question. Instead of feeling a rankling disapproval (even if disguised by jocularity) of servant maids who gossip instead of working, Cruikshank depicts them as a charming sight (Plague, facing p. 182). One of his subjects in The Greatest Plague of Life ("It's my Cousin, M'am!") was given the compliment of imitation by Leech, who copied it in "Domestic Bliss" (Punch, 31 August 1850). . . . . In Cruikshank's plate the housewife, discovering the maid entertaining a follower, seems to glory in (rather precarious) dignity, the maid glories in her pertness and the guardsman in his splendid punctilio. — Burton, p. 117-118.
Burton, Anthony. "Cruikshank as an Illustrator of Fiction." George Cruikshank: A Revaluation. Ed. Robert L. Patten. Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1974, rev., 1992. Pp. 92-128.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Part One, "Dickens and His Early Illustrators: 1. George Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980. Pp. 15-38.
Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899. Pp. 1-28.
McLean, Ruari. George Cruikshank: His Life and Work as a Book Illustrator. English Masters of Black-and-White. London: Art and Technics, 1948.
Mayhew, Augustus, and Henry Mayhew, ed. The Greatest Plague of Life: or, The Adventures of a Lady in Search of a Good Servant by one who has been 'Almost Worried to Death'. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London, D. Bogue, 1847.
Last modified 15 July 2017